Tom Poole
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 Posted: Wed Apr 13, 2005 2:15 pm Post subject: Bambi Was A Marine |
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Another hero, victim of Silky Poodle and all the propaganda, made a comeback.
| Nancy Churnin, Dallas Morning News, Apr 13 wrote: | The voice behind 'Bambi'
A Texas tale: How Disney's favorite fawn became a Marine
Bambi is alive and well and living in Texas.
After 65 years of keeping his early life secret, Donnie Dunagan, a much-decorated former Marine drill sergeant, has fessed up to having been the voice and model for Disney's wobbly, well-loved fawn. "I was trained to be one of our Corps' leading gunfighters. If these guys, who would have followed me anywhere, found out I was Bambi, they would have teased me into oblivion," says Mr. Dunagan from the home he shares with his wife, Dana, in San Angelo. But the secret slipped out at a fund-raising dinner where he was the guest speaker last year. Word spread and executives at the Disney studio, who wondered what happened to the blond, curly-headed 5-year-old, tapped him for an interview on the extras in the two-disc Bambi Special Edition. It was released in March and already has sold more than 4 million VHS tapes and DVDs combined.
The disclosure has taken him down an unexpected path to a new life, complete with a new fan base and Web site for Mr. Dunagan: www.donniedunagan.com. Look for a snippet of Mr. Dunagan's Bambi, too, in Disney's upcoming Bambi and the Great Prince of the Forest , a new direct-to-DVD offering previewed on the Bambi DVD for a 2006 release. "I'm loving it to death," says Mr. Dunagan, who's having a blast hearing from Marines who call him Major Bambi and Captain Frankenstein after another one of his early films, Son of Frankenstein. "I figure I'm 70 now, so what the dickens."
His first 'fortune'
Unexpected turns are nothing new to Mr. Dunagan. Born Aug. 16, 1934, into poverty, his parents moved him from San Antonio to Bandera, Texas, and then Memphis, Tenn., in search of a better life. While his mother cleaned houses and his father sold golf balls and picked up extra cash as a bare-knuckle boxer, Mr. Dunagan, then only 3 years old, tried to copy the steps of a black street performer he knew only as Sam. Sam took a shine to the barefoot boy, and they sang and danced for nickels and dimes as an old Victrola played Sam's one record: "A Tisket, A Tasket." Sam also taught Mr. Dunagan a thing or two about character. One day when they were performing, a woman stepped out of a limousine, applauded and gave Sam a $10 bill. "Sam just froze," Mr. Dunagan recalls. "Then he ran off with the music still playing. He returned with two $5 bills and gave me one. That made a powerful impression on me. Besides it was a fortune to us. Our rent was $4 a month."
Courtesy of Donald R. Dunagan
Not long after, Sam helped his young friend prepare for a talent contest at the Orpheum Theatre. Sam couldn't compete because it was for whites only in segregated Memphis. But Sam dyed a paper bag with black shoe polish to make it look like a top hat for Donnie. He dyed a straight branch from a tree to make it look like a cane. While the 3-year-old didn't like the idea of performing without Sam, he gave it all he could because the prize was $100. He won, and a talent scout in the audience arranged for the family to go to Hollywood. Later, Sam's relative, former Cotton Club dancer Peg Leg Bates, who died last year in Tennessee, wrote and visited Donnie in Hollywood. Those letters, he says, are among his most prized possessions. He acted in Mother Carey's Chickens in 1938, followed by Son of Frankenstein, Forgotten Woman and Tower of London all in 1939 before Walt Disney cast him as the model for Bambi's facial expressions and in 1940 as the voice of young Bambi (another child did the voice of the older Bambi).
A guarded secret
He was a precocious child who started reading when he was 3. When his directors figured out he memorized everyone else's lines, they began paying him in dimes to prompt the other actors. In those days, he would do anything for a few extra coins or ice cream. Mr. Dunagan says Walt Disney called him his "ice cream critic." Apart from the rollers his mother made him wear to curl his hair, it was a great ride, he recalls – learning to play checkers from Boris Karloff in Son of Frankenstein and wreaking havoc at the Disney studios with the water pistol Mr. Karloff gave him. But it didn't last. After Bambi, he says his family was "spoiled by the money" and split up. At 5½ years old, he ended up in an orphanage.
He was determined to get out. At 13 years and 10 months, he lived on his own in a boardinghouse run by a kind, World War II widow. He worked in a machine shop to support himself, earned straight A's and dreamed of becoming a doctor. But at age 18, urged by recruiters, he signed up for the Marines. He found a home there and spent the next 25 years earning the respect and admiration of his colleagues. Son of Frankenstein was one of Donnie Dunagan's early films. He's shown here with Boris Karloff who taught him to play checkers. According to 2nd Lt. Thomas R. Dolan, a spokesman for the U.S. Marine Corps, who researched Mr. Dunagan's record for this article: "He is the man, and it would have been a pleasure to have served with him." During that time, only one of his superiors discovered his secret, Mr. Dunagan says. But he kept it to himself. Though Mr. Dunagan kept mum about his Bambi past, his memories of that time kept him safe.
"There's a scene where Bambi's mother is killed off camera. There's a rifle shot that must have grazed Bambi because he's traumatized and down. Then his father says, 'Bambi. Get up. Get up. You must get up.' All my life, I've remembered that. I always get up."
Challenging his destiny
The film had other messages that he shared with kids in the orphanages he visited around the world. Fifteen years ago, he bought 112 copies of Bambi for orphans in Panama, Mexico and Guam. He never told the kids about his role. But he studied the kids as they watched his favorite scenes, including the one in which Bambi calls the skunk Flower. The rabbit, Thumper, thinks that's terribly funny and tells Bambi that a skunk can't be Flower. But the skunk puts his head down and says, "That's all right. He can call me Flower if he wants to." For Mr. Dunagan, that scene is all about people challenging their destiny and becoming what they aspire to be. Just as he did.
Despite brushes with death and many injuries, including one that almost cost him a leg, he flourished in the military. He received 13 promotions in 21 years, which elevated him to battalion commander, and was loaned to the Army, where he served in counterintelligence. He received many awards and commendations. But the two he is most proud of are the Bronze Star and Purple Heart – given for pulling his seriously wounded radio operator through machine-gun fire to safety. But Mr. Dunagan, who had gone from street performer to child star and from abandoned child to Marine hero, was about to undergo another reversal of fortune. Things about the Vietnam War, in which he fought, still make him angry. After he studied the details behind the leaked "Pentagon Papers," he became "painfully disappointed with our lies about Vietnam." He wrote letters of apology to relatives of the 137 young men who died under his command there. Then he retired, declining a promotion to lieutenant colonel and a posting to the prime War College of the Army at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
He became a successful businessman, but invested all of his money in Enron and lost it. Since then, life had been quiet for Mr. Dunagan – until Bambi came back into his life. At least now, he says, he's old enough to enjoy it. "I know in my heart that these guys would have teased me because it is a name that speaks to sensitivity. But I'm 6-1, 190 pounds and I don't have anything to prove anymore. I can call myself 'Bambi' now and no one is going to mess with me." And no, he has never shot a deer with anything but a camera. Major Dunagan
E-mail nchurnin@dallasnews.com |
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'58 Airedale HMR(L)-261 VMO-2 |
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