Donnie Dunagan, who gave young Bambi his voice in Disney’s 1942 classic, has died at 92. He died on Wednesday, November 4, of lung cancer, his agents confirmed. They said he had asked them “not to be sad due to the great life I lived.” He is survived by his wife, Dana, whom he married in 1992.
A Child Actor Walt Disney Called Personally
Donald Roan Dunagan was born on August 16, 1934, in San Antonio, Texas, and grew up in Memphis. At three years old he won a talent contest there with a tap dance routine, and an RKO talent scout in the audience brought the family to Hollywood.
He made his film debut in Mother Carey’s Chickens in 1938, then played the young son of Baron Frankenstein in Son of Frankenstein opposite Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff. He worked with both of them again in Tower of London in 1939.
Then Walt Disney called his mother himself. The studio first wanted Dunagan as a facial model for a little deer, and he later recalled the animators sitting around him, asking him to look happy, look up and look sad. The voice role came after that. He finished recording young Bambi when he was six, and it turned out to be the seventh and last film of his career.
From Bambi To Major Bambi
Dunagan enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps in 1952, at 18, and became one of the youngest drill instructors in the Corps’ history. He served three tours in Vietnam, earned a Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts, and retired as a major in 1977.
Through his whole military career he never told anyone he had been the voice of Bambi. The secret only came out shortly before he retired, when a general who had learned about it greeted him as “Major Bambi.” Dunagan later said one of the biggest regrets of his life was not having the courage to tell his closest friends in the Marines that he had been part of Walt Disney’s work.
News of his death came two days before Veterans Day, which Disney’s parks mark each year with a Veterans Day merchandise collection at Disneyland and Walt Disney World.
Back With Bambi
In his later years Dunagan embraced the role he had kept quiet for so long. He joined Peter Behn, the original voice of Thumper, for interviews around the film’s 75th anniversary in 2017, and in 2023 he visited Walt Disney World to see the Bambi statue in the Disney Fab 50 Character Collection during the resort’s 50th anniversary celebration.
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