Two elephants, one wearing a pink hat with a bow, are resting indoors against a backdrop of light brown wooden paneling; their blue eyes stand out amidst muted gray tones. 1:05
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Dumbo, the big-eared elephant who learns to fly

Dumbo's ears are so big and floppy that they make him clumsy, and he gets picked on for it. Those same ears are what will one day lift him into the air. more

He gets turned into a sideshow act and taken away from his mother. He finds an unlikely friend in Timothy, a mouse. An elephant and a mouse make an odd pair.

Then Dumbo is given a magic feather. He flies, and he frees his mother.

Two elephants, one wearing a pink hat with a bow, are resting indoors against a backdrop of light brown wooden paneling; their blue eyes stand out amidst muted gray tones. The headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Dumbo's ears are so big and floppy that they make him clumsy, and he gets picked on for it.

Walt Disney released Dumbo on October 23, 1941. It was his fourth animated feature film, and RKO Radio Pictures put it in theaters. The story came from Helen Aberson and Harold Pearl.

The studio needed a win. Pinocchio and Fantasia had both failed at the box office, hurt by trouble in foreign markets and by World War II. Dumbo was planned as a low-cost film that could earn some of that money back.

So Walt kept a close eye on costs. The backgrounds were painted in watercolor, as they had been for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. When he had a chance to add 10 more minutes, he passed because it would cost too much. Dumbo stayed a short 64 minutes.

The plan worked. Dumbo cost $950,000 to make, half as much as Snow White and a third as much as Pinocchio. It took in more than $1.3 million and became Disney's top-earning film of the 1940s.

A gray cartoon elephant with a blue eye smiles and raises his trunk in front of a wooden background. A headline runs in white letters across the lower third.Save
Dumbo cost half as much as Snow White to make and became Disney's top earner of the 1940s.

That profit let Walt keep his animation going. Bambi came next, and later Cinderella. Not bad for an elephant who got teased for his ears.

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