No Hunting and Wildfire Prevention

My Disney film marathon has inspired me to seek out lesser known works related to each of the films.  We've seen the Seven Dwarfs collecting war bonds and Figaro the cat becoming Minnie Mouse's pet.

And now we find Bambi making cameo appearances in a selection of short cartoons.

First up is No Hunting, a Donald Duck cartoon from 1955.  Donald is bitten by the hunting bug and heads off to the forest with his gun.  The film parodies hunters and the hunting season - drawing parallels with all out war - and briefly, in the middle, we see a young deer and its mother drinking from a stream which becomes polluted by the debris of man.  The mother says 'Man is in the forest.  Let's dig on', and they leave.  Although the deer are not explicitly Bambi and his mother, the use of the 'Man is in the forest' line is an obvious repeat of scenes from Bambi the film.  The young deer does look very much like Bambi although both creatures are much more crudely drawn than in their original feature. 

Bambi then went on to feature in some American Wildfire prevention Public Information Films.  A 1964 film features the dramatic forest fire scene from the film intercut with new footage of Smokey Bear - the 'mascot' for the campaign.  These scenes are then followed by live action footage showing good American citizens how to avoid causing forest fires.

A 1982 PIF shows some cute scenes of Thumper and Bambi followed by Man's campfire starting the forest blaze.  A slightly scary 'live action' Smokey Bear then delivers the film's message.

A 2004 film shows footage of a young Bambi with the many forest animals and the scene of him meeting Flower for the first time.  The tagline for this short is 'Allow Nature to Live...Happily Ever After'.  Interestingly, this film doesn't feature the forest fire footage.

There were also some radio adverts featuring clips of the movie's soundtrack.

Using Bambi, the film, to highlight the dangers of forest fires is a logical step and, as we've seen with the use of the Seven Dwarfs to promote war bonds, using the Disney characters to encourage good citizenship was common from the very early days of Disney.  It make sense considering the outlook on life Walt Disney had and his motivation for creating places like Disneyland.