1923 was not just an historic year for Disney, but for author Felix Salten as well. That’s the year his most popular book, Bambi: A Life in the Woods, was published. The Austrian novel was translated to English in 1928 and Americans quickly started “fawning” over it. Although bunny Thumper and skunk Flower were not a part of the story until Disney’s animated version of the story, they were introduced to U.S. audiences on this day in 1942 when Bambi was released, with a U.S. premiere at New York’s Radio City Music Hall. The film literally changed the life of one artist who had been working on the film, Marc Davis. The late Disney Legend told D23’s Scott Wolf in 1997, “I’d say now this was almost three years that I had worked on Bambi. (Walt) became so intrigued with the drawings that I had done of the characters, the young characters, that he said, ‘I want to see this man’s drawings on the screen. He has to become an animator… teach him how to animate.’ So that’s how I became an animator, literally. And something you might enjoy if you remember the story of Bambi at all, the film, Perce Pearce who was the story director would come down to all of our rooms in this wing and he would say, ‘Man is in the forest.’ That meant Walt Disney. Walt’s in… you know, was in the wing and that meant to shape up and whatever stupid you’re doing, don’t do.”
