The Disney classic ‘Bambi’ is a love letter to the Maine woods
By Emily Burnham, Bangor Daily News Staff
How old were you when you first watched “Bambi,” the animated Disney classic? You were probably very small. After watching it, did you weep the sad, confused tears of a child confronted with the concept of mortality, after Bambi’s mother was killed by Man, the hunter?
It’s a formative experience for many children to learn this difficult lesson from an otherwise sweet film. For some, it reinforces big ideas about life, death and the natural world. For others, it inspires a future commitment to being vegetarian or vegan.
Whatever you take away from “Bambi,” one thing you can know for certain is that those sweeping landscapes of forests and mountains, those idyllic scenes of flowers, fields and woodland creatures are all inspired by Maine — and in fact, the film is actually set in Maine.
That’s thanks almost entirely to Maurice “Jake” Day, a Damariscotta-born artist and animator who by the late 1930s was one of the top talents at Walt Disney Studios. In that era, Disney had just begun to thrill audiences with his first feature films like “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” and “Pinnochio.” Day — an established outdoors illustrator for magazines and publishing houses — was sought by Disney himself to add a painterly touch to his movies, specifically for his upcoming animated adaptation of the book “Bambi, a Life in the Woods” by Felix Salten.
“BAMBI” ARTIST — Maurice “Jake” Day seen seated at his easel. Damariscotta native Day was one of the artists behind the film “Bambi.”
Salten’s book is set in Austria and features a European roe deer as its protagonist Bambi. Disney, a longtime California resident, wanted to change the species to a mule deer, which is common west of the Rocky Mountains. Day, an avid hunter and outdoors enthusiast, told Disney that a white-tailed deer would be much more recognizable to the majority of the American audience. Not fully convinced, in 1938 Disney sent Day back to Maine to photograph white-tailed deer and the landscape they live in to see if it was worth making the change.
Day spent months in the Maine woods, capturing with his camera details through three seasons, from shimmering dew on cobwebs to towering pine trees. According to a profile of Day published in Collier’s Magazine in 1942, he caught “the gorgeous mahogany-red of pitcher plants; a thousand autumn reds and yellows; the blue of mountain lakes; the dark chimneys of Katahdin, and the mottled russet of peat swamps, where he followed Bambi’s trail over land that trembled but never yielded entirely to his weight.”
When he returned to California later that year, Day’s photos convinced Walt Disney that the landscape of Maine would be the right backdrop for his film, and that a white-tailed deer should serve as Bambi. With that decided, Disney animators got to work building the world of “Bambi,” with legendary Disney animator Tyrus Wong appointed art director of the film, who created impressionistic landscape paintings based on Day’s field photos.
Disney requested that Maine game wardens provide his artists with two live white-tailed deer to serve as models for Bambi and for Faline, the female fawn. The Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife shipped two 4-month-old white-tailed deer via train to Hollywood, accompanied by cans of Maine spring water and a special milk formula they were to be fed.
Disney animator Marc Davis combined a realistic approach to deer anatomy with the classic Disney face — big, expressive eyes and a cute demeanor — in his character design for both Bambi and Faline. The influence of those early animal sketches for “Bambi” would play out in future Disney animated films like “Lady and the Tramp” and “The Jungle Book.”
“Bambi” was finally released in August 1942. Walt Disney wanted to hold a world premiere of the film in Augusta, but officials in Maine nixed the idea, knowing the Bambi story was often perceived to be “anti-hunting,” and Maine’s large outdoorsman constituency might object to the screening. A premiere was instead held in Portland in July 1942, with Disney himself telling then-Gov. Sumner Sewell that he thanked Mainers for “the wholehearted cooperation and interest your great state gave us during the five years ‘Bambi’ was in the making.”
Day’s career with Disney was, at that point, already over. After four years in Hollywood, Day longed for his home state of Maine, and in 1940 moved back home to Damariscotta. He remained a respected Maine artist for the rest of his life, as a painter, sculptor and designer. He was likely best known for being the first artist in residence at Baxter State Park, designing the first park map and its official seal. He was active outdoors well into his 70s, and famously hiked Katahdin with then-Gov. Ken Curtis for his 78th birthday in 1971.
Day’s love for the Maine woods is evident, not just in the way he lived his life, but in the legacy he left behind with “Bambi,” a film that celebrates the beauty of the natural world in Maine, as seen through the eyes of a man who cared for it deeply.