Millinocket's Bambi

               In 1942, Walt Disney Productions filmed and released the animated motion picture Bambi. It was based on the 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods. Disney 

planned to base the Bambi character on a mule deer from California but was persuaded by illustrator Jake Day to make the movie Bambi a white-tailed deer, more common throughout the United States.

            Millinocket had its own Bambi in 1947 as described in The Millinocket Herald Tribune. An August issue made the front page with the title “Local Bambi Finds Haven Amidst Civilization.” The article begins, “You’ve seen him in the movies; you’ve read about him in books; now you lucky local people can see him in the flesh right here in Millinocket.”

            Local game warden A.H. Cummings found the deserted fawn near the old Hathaway farm. He was out there searching for dogs that had been reported for chasing and killing deer. Cummings picked up the fawn (described as unsteady and unable to walk) and carried the fawn to his vehicle, drove home and constructed a pen and a home for the deer. The fawn became domesticated.

            Both locals and visitors to town were curious about the fawn and its new living situation. They watched him run and play with Cummings and with Pal, the Cummings dog. They were even more surprised to see young Billy Cummings and Bambi interact. Billy became Bambi’s trainer, teaching the fawn to follow commands. Even though the pen’s gate was open each day, the fawn did not leave the area. Bambi rode on a float during the 4^th of July parade that year. The float won 1^st prize for Bambi and its wildlife setting. It was said that “Bambi posed like a professional model.”

A few weeks after the news article appeared, Bambi (no longer a fawn) was slated to be moved to the State of Maine’s Wild Life Sanctuary at Swan’s Island breaking up the friendship between Billy and the fawn. At the Sanctuary Bambi would receive special attention, including some from Don Higgins (formerly of Millinocket), member of the fish and game department and stationed at the Sanctuary.

A note on Maurice (Jake) Day, illustrator on the movie “Bambi.” Day convinced Disney to have Bambi be a white-tail deer in the movie (more recognizable) rather than a mule deer. Day, a Maine native, came to Maine and took thousands of photographs of the Maine woods landscape (trees, grasses, birch bark, blueberries, beaver dams rotting logs) for inspiration for the scenery in the movie.  Many of the photos were in the area around Katahdin. Day and a companion studied the script and matched their photos to the various scenes.

Disney animators had never seen a live white-tail deer, Day arranged to have two orphaned fawns (the Millinocket fawn was not one of them) brought from Maine via Railway Express to California to be sketched by studio artists. One would be the model for Bambi and the other Bambi’s girlfriend Faline. The studio artists did drawings of the two for nine months as they aged, lost their spots and grew to adulthood. The deer lived at the studio for the five years it took to produce the film.     

Disney wanted the film's premiere in Augusta to recognize Day's contributions, but officials voted against it, fearing protests from the local hunting community.  Instead, Bambi premiered in London on August 8, 1942, and then at Radio City Music Hall in New York City before its first "public showing" in Portland, Maine.