Donnie Dunagan has died at the age of 92: before turning eight, he had the honor of entering the history of cinema, voicing the few lines of the young Bambi in Disney’s animated masterpiece of the same name. It was 1942, so it’s natural to wonder what happened to one of the many “child stars“: did he get lost in the treacherous world of show business? No, he emerged onto a completely different path and… military service. Only in recent times did he begin to open up about that commitment and about that magical encounter with Walt Disney.
[Photo of Donnie Dunagan in 2024 by Super Festivals, from Wikimedia Commons]
Who Was Donnie Dunagan, the Original Voice of Little Bambi
In 2011 Donnie Dunagan, in an interview with Animated News, recalled the effect it had on him when he was around six years old to interact with Walt Disney: “He was a leader, he was everywhere, he helped, instructed, laughed. Even a child like me could sense that there was a air of deep respect toward him on the set. It wasn’t always like that in other studios when the boss arrived. But Mr. Disney made history in his own right.”
Dunagan was born in Texas in 1934, but he moved to Hollywood at a very young age, when at 3 he astonished his own parents with his tap-dancing abilities: noticed by an agent, he began appearing on the big screen as early as age 4, with roles in The Son of Frankenstein (1939), The Usurper (1939), Angels of the Night (1940), until he earned the voice of the little Bambi in the eponymous animated feature, released in 1942 when he was eight years old and stopped acting. Interested in football during college, he later joined the Marines, accumulating thirteen promotions and medals over more than twenty years, taking part in the Korean War (1950-1953) and in the Vietnam War (1955-1975), becoming moreover the youngest instructor in the history of the corps. It seems that until 1977, when he retired, he had hidden from his colleagues that he had been the voice of Bambi. In the pre-internet era and without an accredited presence in the credits, Major Dunagan had no trouble keeping a low profile about the matter.
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