The real bloody story of Bambi the fawn, which Disney hid from us

On August 9, 1942, the animated film "Bambi" by Walt Disney Studios was released for the first time. It was the fifth full-length film of the company and its filming was traditionally approached seriously. Animators carefully studied the habits of real animals, thought out facial expressions and the world around them. It turned out to be a wonderful fairy tale with funny animals, a wise teacher and a first love. But some viewers who noticed the words "based on the story of Felix Salten" in the credits read the original story and were shocked.

The cartoon "Bambi" did not become a hit immediately after the premiere. He came out in the midst of the Second World War and the audience was not up to him. The painting in 1942 collected $ 3 million at a production cost of $ 858 thousand. But later "Bambi" "shot" and the studio re-released it many times. Today, its fees amount to 240 million, and this does not include sales of cassettes and discs.

So what's wrong with Felix Salten's story, which is taken as the basis of the script? Felix Salten, whose real name is Sigmund Saltzman, was born into a family of Hungarian Jews in Pest, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He gained fame in Vienna, where he worked as a journalist for a long time and published his literary works.

In 1923, Salten published two novels, the heroes of which were animals. The first one was called "The Florentine Dog" and told about a boy who turned into a dog to travel with Archduke Ludwig from Vienna to Florence. There he studied art. The second book was the novel "Bambi. Biography from the forest".

The novel about forest animals was filled with harsh realities. In it, male deer abandon females immediately after mating, and hunters kill everyone in a row. In the book, not only the mother of the main character dies, but also his cousins and friends. Growing up, Bambi behaves the same way as others. He abandons his doe with the children and does not try to somehow participate in their fate.

Felix Salten's books can hardly be called children's. Unless someone comes to mind in this way to prepare the younger generation for the harsh prose of life. And what can you expect from an author who was an avid hunter? Zalten himself once admitted that he personally killed at least 200 deer. Maybe the writer lied, but the fact remains that he saw animals only as prey.

Despite the fact that Salten was not interested in politics, when the Nazis came to power, his works were banned. Most likely, because of his Jewish origin. The book "Bambi. Biography from the forest" was burned in squares along with other "unreliable" literature. In 1938, fearing for his life, the writer, with the help of friends, fled from Austria to Switzerland.

While living in a foreign land, the author wrote two more works about the forest in which Bambi lived. In 1938, he published the story "Perry the Squirrel", in which the fawn appeared as a minor character. In 1940, the book "Bambi's Children" was published. Salten spent the last years of his life in Zurich. He died in 1945.

The book about the fawn was well known in English-speaking countries. It was published in translation by Whittaker Chambers. We can say that it was an adaptation, a free retelling, like The Adventures of Pinocchio by Alexei Tolstoy, based on Carlo Collodi's fairy tale "Pinocchio".

Walt Disney acquired the rights to the film adaptation of Chambers' version. The scriptwriters of the studio removed unnecessary tragedy from the work, resulting in a children's fairy tale. The cartoon "Bambi" was known and loved. The tape was presented to Soviet children by Walt Disney himself. Felix Salten's original remained unknown, and a very mild retelling by the writer Yuri Nagibin was published instead since 1957.

In the mid-1980s, director Natalia Bondarchuk made two children's feature films: "Bambi's Childhood" and "Bambi's Youth". It was customary to write the name of the main character that way. The animals in the films were played by actors. The role of an adult Bambi was played by the director's husband Nikolai Burlyaev, and their son Ivan Burlyaev was a fawn.  Natalia Bondarchuk herself played Bambi's mother. One of the roles was given to Katya Lycheva, a girl who traveled to the United States with a peace mission under Gorbachev.

Today there is no problem to find the book "Bambi. Biography from the forest" and read the real, bloody history of the fawn. But if you want to keep bright childhood memories of a Disney picture, then it's better not to do it.