Dumbo is a 1941 American animated fantasy drama film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures.

Throughout most of the film, his only true friend, aside from his mother, is a mouse named Timothy – a relationship parodying the stereotypical animosity between mice and elephants.

Produced to recoup the financial losses of both Pinocchio and Fantasia, Dumbo was a deliberate pursuit of simplicity and economy.

In Florida, while a large circus spends the off-season in its winter grounds, a flock of white storks delivers many babies to the animals.

A belated stork catches up with a moving train named Casey Jr. and drops off the expected baby elephant, Jumbo Jr.

When some rowdy boys started to bully Dumbo and his ears, Mrs. Jumbo spanks their leader and throws hay bales at them.

After scaring off the other elephants, Timothy, a mouse that travels with the circus, befriends Dumbo and decides to make him a star.

After, all elephants exile Dumbo permanently as he is put in with the clowns' firemen act, regularly jumping from a "burning building" prop into a vat of pie filling.

Meanwhile, the clowns decide to increase the popularity of their fireman act by dangerously raising the platform Dumbo jumps from.

As Dumbo successfully flies about the big top, much to the audience’s delight, he throws a trunkful of peanuts to the other elephants as payback.

[9] The children's book was first brought to the attention of Walt Disney in late 1939 by Kay Kamen, the studio's head of merchandise licensing, who showed a prototype of the Roll-A-Book that included Dumbo.

[11] At the time, the foreign markets in Europe had been curtailed due to World War II, which caused Pinocchio and Fantasia to fail at the box office.

With the film's modest budget, Dumbo was intended to be a low-budget feature designed to bring revenue to the studio.

They riffed on elephants' fear of mice by replacing a wise robin named "Red" found in the original story with the wisecracking mouse character, Timothy.

[14] From Disney's perspective, Dumbo required none of the special effects that had slowed down production and grew the budgets of Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Bambi.

Kimball recalled that Disney approached him in a parking lot about Dumbo and summarized the entire story in five minutes.

[19] Some have interpreted the clowns' requests to get a raise from their boss being a reference to the Disney animators that went on strike in 1941 (during the creation of the film), demanding higher pay from Walt himself.

Original songs performed in the film include: Dumbo was completed and delivered to Disney's distributor, RKO Radio Pictures, on September 11, 1941.

[38] All versions of the 70th Anniversary Edition contain deleted scenes and several bonus features, including "Taking Flight: The Making of Dumbo" and "The Magic of Dumbo: A Ride of Passage", while the two-disc Blu-ray version includes games, animated shorts, and several exclusive features.

[24] Variety wrote that Dumbo was "a pleasant little story, plenty of pathos mixed with the large doses of humor, a number of appealing new animal characters, lots of good music, and the usual Disney skillfulness in technique in drawing and use of color.

The website's consensus reads "Dumbo packs plenty of story into its brief runtime, along with all the warm animation and wonderful music you'd expect from a Disney classic.

Ward Kimball, the chief animator of the crows, used famous African-American dancers Freddie and Eugene Jackson as live-action reference for the characters.

The personalities and mannerisms of the crows—specifically their fast-paced, back and forth dialogue—were inspired by the backchat found on the band records of Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong.

The animation historian John Canemaker felt that the crows were amongst the very few characters in the film that sympathize and are empathetic with Dumbo's plight.

"[65][66] In 2021, the film was one of several that Disney limited to viewers 7 years and older on their service Disney+, citing similarity of the crows' depictions to "racist minstrel shows".

In the game, the Disney Villains alter the happy endings from Jiminy Cricket's book; in particular, the Ringmaster forces Dumbo to endlessly perform humiliating stunts in his circus.

Dumbo appears in the popular PlayStation 2 game Kingdom Hearts released in 2002 in the form of a summon that the player can call upon in battle for aid.

Dumbo's circus friends included the chaotic twin bears Claude and Lolly, the curious zebra Dot, the older, independent hippo Godfry, and the adventurous ostrich Penny.

[83] John Lasseter cancelled Dumbo II,[82] soon after being named Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2006.

[93] Two weeks later, it was reported that Colin Farrell had entered negotiations to play the role of Holt, which was originally offered to Will Smith.