Critics who are involved in film studies are often at odds with critics who study written texts. Those involved in textual analysis refer the film back to the book. Since most award-winning films have evolved from books,2 it seems logical to refer the viewer back to the book. However, the critics who insist that film adaptations should simply reproduce the book will find little that can meet their demands. Books will remain supreme. Film studies faculty argue that when the books are considered "film scripts," film is being ignored as a separate art form. They maintain a film can never really reflect a written work. George Bluestone claims that the filmmaker does not attempt to recreate the written work found in a book, that he hopes to "paraphrase" the novel. Bluestone concludes, "In the fullest sense of the word, the filmist becomes not a translator for an established author, but a new author in his own right" (62).

	Must a film be a book? Obviously this is a rhetorical question. Film is a different medium from text, but it also originates from a textual story. In The Open Work, Umberto Eco suggests ways that textual criticism and film criticism can merge. According to Eco, the emotional response of visual, oral, or written text cannot be privileged. Eco places all critical analysis in the public arena, saying that "informal art" raises these critical questions:

	1. What are the historical reasons for--the cultural background of--such a poetics, and what vision of the world does it imply? 2. Are such works legible? If so, what are the conditions of their communicability and what are the guarantees that they will not suddenly lapse into either silence or chaos? In other words, can we define the tension between the mass of information intentionally offered to the reader [viewer] and the assurance of a minimal amount of comprehensibility, and is there a possible agreement between the intention of the author [producer] and the viewer's response? (86-87)

	Janet Staiger has noted that contemporary film interpretation is often controlled by the interpreter's personal history. She names "occupation, class, gender, sexual preference, nationality, ethnicity, race, life-style, and political allegiances" as factors determining the individual's interpretative process. According to Staiger, those who write and teach about filmmaking need to consider the social and political aspects of audience reception and film evaluation. She concludes, "Notions of value are not universal. They can be political weapons" (96).

	Film criticism cannot ignore the power of cultural visual signs in this audiovisual medium. Children's literature experts who have turned to Walt Disney's productions and have written about them as children's fare are representative of Staiger's arguments about film evaluation. Their evaluations of Disney films depend on their earlier experiences with written texts. In contrast, "failed versions" have been proclaimed cinematic winners. Why do Disney's family films lack rejection from "book people"?3

	Most of the negative evaluations of Disney come from experts who study children's literature and its cultural implications; they believe that Disney has distorted the story's literary reality in harmful ways. These critics acknowledge that children are apt to see and enjoy Disney films, but they assert that children are immature viewers who will subconsciously accept the "undesirable" socio/political standards Disney proposes. Thus, socio/economic issues become paramount in film evaluation. Few of the children's literature critics who have published pieces discussing Disney's films have looked at them as an art form. Thus, Disney's morality is suspect, and not his filmmaking process.

	As a leading expert in children's literature, Frances Clark Sayers issued a personal attack on Disney's productions in a letter sent to the Los Angeles Times. Sayers wrote:

	I call him to account for his debasement of the traditional literature of childhood, in films and in the books he publishes: He shows scant respect for the integrity of the original creations of authors, manipulating and vulgarizing everything for his own ends . . . I find genuine feeling ignored, the imagination of childhood bludgeoned with mediocrity, and much of it overcast by vulgarity. Look at that wretched sprite with the wand and over-sized buttocks which announces every Disney program on TV. She is a vulgar little thing, who has been too long at the sugar bowls (602).

	Sayers' stance is a personal interpretation based upon class, life-style, and gender. As such, her interpretation is political. Her remarks were reprinted in The Horn Book Magazine, a professional periodical read by children's literature experts, and she was interviewed by the magazine. She gained the attention of contemporary teachers and school librarians, arguing that Disney was not worthy of children's attention.

	During the Horn Book interview Sayers suggested that Disney was aware of his audience. She believed that Disney made his films appealing for mainstream American adults, and she concluded, "This is the whole trouble. Everything is made to reach everyone, and in order to reach everyone, he must introduce the Hollywood 'touch'" (607). Sayers' stance suggests two important aspects of film criticism that have been ignored: filmmakers feel a need to rewrite "the traditional literature of childhood" for an audience unfamiliar with children's classics, an audience that willingly accepts visual retellings as legitimate versions of written stories, and filmmakers hope to create stories that can reach a wide cross-section of the American public. They are trying to create entertainment films for people in different cultural groups who have divergent life-styles and political allegiances. They must cross the barriers of race, ethnicity, and age in order to appeal to this broad audience.

	Most filmmakers who hope to create films that can entertain their audience must consider the story's possible visual impact and create adaptations that will work on the screen. Disney was always aware of his audience; he once admitted that he created films for adults as well as children, explaining, "It is necessary for our cartoons to appeal to the adult, since adults form the largest part of our audience" (257). And he explained that while his studio sometimes used earlier written stories, they drastically condensed and revised them, adding, "without such cuts there would be no room for our own fantasy, comedy and characterization" (255). Disney's explanation of his process was written at a time when he had begun preliminary work on Bambi. He wrote,

	We have a realm all our own, where little animals and even inanimate objects can talk and think and act like human beings, only more charmingly. While we have improved greatly on our handling of human figures, it will be many years before we can draw them as convincingly as we can animals. This is largely because the audience knows exactly how a human character looks and acts, but it is rather hazy regarding animals, and therefore accepts our caricatured interpretations of animals without reservation (271).

	History has proven that Disney knew his audience. His animated productions were originally accepted by contemporary film critics as masterpieces. His artistic techniques were considered innovative and breathtaking. By 1937 he had won six Academy Awards for his cartoons. His ideals for animation fit into the realms of film criticism. During 1942, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art set up a special Disney exhibit that displayed stills, drawings, painted cells and backgrounds from the Disney films. A three-minute sequence from Bambi was continually running (Art Digest 15). His artwork and production techniques were being acknowledged by the visual arts. In 1939, Margaret Farrand Thorp acknowledged that film must appeal to a large constituency, and she asserted that Disney understood the market he worked in, a market that needed to "bring that other twenty-six million [Americans] into the fold without losing any of the eighty-five million [already attending films]" (3). For her, the only two filmmakers able to appeal to a large cross-section were Charley Chaplin and Walt Disney. Looking at early reactions to Disney in the popular press and at early film studies, Thorp wrote, "On Snow White and Mickey Mouse it is scarcely possible to find a dissenting voice" (3-4).

	These early film critics were arguing for new critical evaluations of film in the twentieth century. While they acknowledged that audience reception often could be traced to a book, the importance of "a good visual story," they felt should be investigated and respected. Furthermore, they maintained that films had begun to attract a larger audience than the written word. As such, film deserved serious study as a contemporary art form. In 1949, Paul Rotha wrote that films "superseded the novel and the play as a topic of fashionable conversation. ... Nine out of ten newspapers notice movies in their columns, and at least ninety per cent of those mentioned are American" (126). Bluestone later explained the importance of audience reception by comparing it to a profitable novel, saying that 20,000 volumes would make an author a substantial profit, but it would take an audience of millions for a film to be profitable (34).

	Disney hoped to appeal to a large audience. In his discussion of Disney's influence on American culture, Eric Smoodin has noted that while Disney played to the tastes of middle-class society, his "comic strip" style probably also appealed to lower-class adults because they could easily "read" the visuals and interpret the jokes. Furthermore, Disney used the print media to his advantage when he created regular cartoon-style children's columns for Good Housekeeping in the late 1930s. These helped him reach an affluent middle-class family audience and introduced his stories to "literate" families as they read together (Smoodin 16-17).

	Sayers penned her critique of Disney in 1965. Although she condemned Disney's animated adaptations of the fairy tales, Peter Pan, and Pinocchio, she did not mention his feature-length adaptation of Felix Salten's Bambi. Yet, the film had been released in 1942. Perhaps Sayers simply chose to forget Bambi in her attack. Or, perhaps she knew that the book was not written for children.

	Published as an adult allegory in Austria, Bambi was reviewed as a book appropriate for children's audiences when it was released in the United States.4 In fact, Disney's version of Bambi may have been created more for adult audiences than children. It, too, depends a good deal on cultural allusions about the negative aspects of human society. Neither the book nor the film looks favorably at man. Both Walt Disney and Felix Salten created animal fantasies depicting contemporary society in unfavorable ways. Both presentations contained sharp criticisms of humanity.

	Although it is obvious that Salten and Disney immediately gained critical attention with their stories, there is no reason to believe that they hoped to spark audience outrage. In both cases, however, when Bambi was released, it caused strong emotional responses that resulted in censorship. The author's book was banned in his homeland; the American Rifleman's Association made a public statement against the film's depiction of hunters and asked that the film be prefaced with a pro-hunting statement (Newsweek 70). Because both men broke with traditional cultural attitudes about victims and hunting within their countries and produced stories that condemned their societies' values, they were risk-takers who used allegory to go beyond traditional cultural values. In both cases early criticism looked upon their productions as innovative and controversial.

	During the 1940s, book and film critics proclaimed both stories as noteworthy. Furthermore, they noted their popularity with U.S. youngsters. Two children's librarians in New York state surveyed the circulation figures in their libraries in order to identify a set of books that students "read with eagerness and affection" (Williams and Wilson 1492). The first book listed for grades 7-9 was Salten's Bambi. They explained, "The primitive simplicity of the story, the sympathy aroused for the hunted animal, the gentle strength of the deer make this a present and probably future classic" (1494). Disney, they found, was also popular with youngsters. They argued for his productions, saying,

	Perhaps his books are not arty enough for the idealists, but they represent a half-way stage in the child's appreciation, when shapeliness and cuteness are his notions of beauty. And who can say that he is wrong? Bambi will be art in a hundred years, and Scamper the Rabit [sic] from "Bambi" will be as famous as Ernest Shepard's Mr. Toad in "The Wind in the Willows." (1496)

	Indirectly, Disney paid tribute to Salten's book in his 1937 article. As Disney explained the filmmaking process, he acknowledged the need for a good story arguing, "if the story is weak, good color, music and animation cannot save it" (255). However, he also alluded to his need to produce a different kind of story for a visual audience when he wrote,

	A subtle idea may be intriguing, but is doomed to fail before an audience. All our business must be direct and obvious. Our technique has not reached the point at which we can successfully express subtleties through drawn action, and be sure of the result (260).

	A Jew born in Budapest, Hungary in 1869, Siegmund Salzmann was living in Vienna when he wrote his animal allegories for adults. His animal allegories all contained allusions to politics. Of his books, only Bambi, written under the pseudonym of Felix Salten, has had lasting universal appeal. Originally, Bambi did not fare well in Europe. First published in Vienna in 1926, Bambi was banned by the Nazis ten years later. Although it was unavailable in Austria and in Nazi occupied lands during Hitler's reign, it has remained available to American audiences since Simon & Schuster released their translation in 1928.5 When the book was released in the United States, William Rose Benet's review called Salten's depiction of man's hunting a "holocaust." Though he was not alluding to Hitler's treatment of the Jews, he pointed to Salten's use of allegory. He considered the book neither fact nor fiction; he said it was a book written to depict "catalytic murderousness from the point of view of the wild animals . . . " (1032). Still, though he praised the book's descriptions, he concluded, "with all its virtues, it does not, as a whole, leave an indelible impress upon the mind one feels it might" (1032).

	Salten's book is largely reflexive and subtle. Much of the drama is described. There are few scenes of conversation; usually the scenes hold large descriptive passages of the animals' action, indirectly implying the animals' emotional responses to past, present, and future conditions. For instance, when the deer are gathered and discussing Him, Salten interrupts the conversation and interjects,

	They listened curiously to the many stories that were always horrible, full of blood and suffering. They listened tirelessly to everything that was said about Him, tales that were certainly invented, all the stories and sayings that had come down from their fathers and great-grandfathers. In each of them they were unconsciously seeking for some way to propitiate this dark power, or some way to escape it (125).

	Salten reveals time passage through the animals' introspective thoughts about the past in comparison to the present. Change in conditions is observed rather than acted out. At one point, Salten writes that winter has set in:

	Bambi noticed that the world was changed. It was hard for him to get used to this altered world. They had all lived like rich folk and now had fallen upon hard times. For Bambi knew nothing but abundance. He took it for granted that he would always have plenty to eat. He thought he would never need to trouble about food. He believed he would always go about in his smooth, handsome, glossy red coat (111).

	Episodic scenes tie the characters together. While the characters become familiar, no character gains the reader's empathy. Bambi is closest to being a sympathetic character since he is the story's central character, but his conversations are always cautionary. Throughout, conversation alludes to the encounters with Him. In the "romantic scene" between Faline and Bambi, Salten includes bits about community loyalty, family deaths, and past betrayals. He writes about the tamed deer in this meeting, alluding to his trust for Man and subsequent death:

	"So you recognized me again?" Faline replied. "How could I help recognizing you?" cried Bambi. "Didn't we grow up together?" Faline sighed. "It's a long time since we've seen each other," she said. Then she added, "People grow to be strangers," but she was already using her gay bantering again. They remained together. "I used to walk on this path with my mother when I was a child," Bambi said after a while. "It leads to the meadow," said Faline. "I saw you for the first time on the meadow," said Bambi a little solemnly. "Do you remember?" "Yes," Faline replied. "Gobo and me." She sighed softly and said, "Poor Gobo . . . " (163-164).

	Salten's Bambi is an allegory of the Jewish struggles in Europe between World War I and World War II, and its voice and social messages allude to the oncoming cultural/ethnic holocaust of the Europeans Jews.

	Disney grew up in the Midwest, surrounded by countryside and nature. When he moved to Hollywood, he faced urban living. The feature-length fantasies that Walt Disney worked on were set in a naturalistic background, devoid of cities and industry. Disney World was created because of Walt Disney's interest in the natural environment. One of his employees, when asked if deer might be hunted because they threatened the Disney Florida ecology, replied, "Shoot Bambi? Unthinkable!" (Bloomfield 55).

	Disney's interest in Bambi came prior to U.S. involvement in World War II. He was concerned with the holocaust that Benet had referred to in his review--the sanctioned hunting of wildlife in U.S. forests. His version of Bambi was produced for an American audience, and his heroes were the forest creatures that were chased out of their homes in the woods and killed. He wanted to create a film about man's mismanagement of the U.S. forest. His story was not a commentary on the Jews in Europe.

	Disney's revisioning of Salten's written text fits within film criticism. According to Bluestone, a new vision of a book in a film depends upon a primary theme. Bluestone argues, "The film becomes a different thing in the same sense that a historical painting becomes a different thing from the historical event which it illustrates," and comments, "each is autonomous, and each is characterized by unique and specific properties" (5).

	Perhaps Americans as a whole did not see Bambi as a political cautionary tale. It is clear from the early film reviews that U.S. reviewers did not seem to see any overt refocusing of Salten's story. When Bambi was released in 1942, one film reviewer commented:

	"Bambi" represents Disney's first go at a modern best seller. It is based on Felix Salten's 1928 novel [the American edition of the Austrian] of the same name. And while the backgrounds, flora, and fauna stem from the mountainous Katahdin country of Maine rather than Salten's Black Forest of Germany, the film otherwise sticks closely to the original outline of Bambi's biography. (Newsweek 70)

	Still, Disney himself knew that he was not simply retelling Salten's story; his earlier quoted article about filmmaking makes that clear. He was revisioning the plot for a nonreading American audience.

	A filmmaker must always be aware of his audience, and he must use visual structures that his audience can easily grasp as he paces his story, develops his characterization, depicts his characters' inner emotions, and provides for passage of time. Linda Seger has suggested that adaptation demands a clear-cut story structure that the audience can appreciate and enjoy as a continuous scene. She concludes, "There's no opportunity to turn back the page, recheck a name, reread the description. Clarity is an important element in commercial viability" (7). Since filmmaking is a complex activity that involves several people, clarity comes with planning. Indeed, film producers do not create in a vacuum. Films are collaborative ventures. When he was explaining the adaptation process for animation in 1937, Disney wrote,

	We discuss our ideas over and over until we finally have a definite outline. Then this is written in a synopsis form, with suggestions of situations which may be elaborated on in the story. A copy of this outline is handed to the entire staff of the studio individually; they read it over in their spare time or at home, and illustrate it with very rough sketches and any further suggestions of situations which may be elaborated in the story. Two weeks later these are handed in to the story department. Often an idea results which changes the entire slant of the story (258).

	Bambi production materials have been carefully compiled and conserved by Disney Productions. The archives at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California holds transcripts of staff meetings, memos between staff members, and field notes taken by a naturalist who observed animals in Maine's woods. I have perused these materials to ascertain how Disney worked with the crew as they worked on the film version of Bambi. Taken chronologically, these records work as a guidepost to Disney's adaptation process. They show a dynamic collaborative process that depended upon many artists.

	An early typed document housed in the archives discusses Salten's depiction of the forest animals. It reveals that Disney was already planning an adaptation that varied from Salten's story. The manuscript discusses what a general audience would expect and calls for an authentic portrayal of the deer, commenting, "Just how many people know these things about deer is a question, but I'm sure a great many people do and would criticize the picture if, for instance, we showed a buck with full-grown antlers in early spring" (10). However, the group doubted the need to include several incidents from the book with little visual significance to the plot. Together they conceptualized possible good scenes.

	Earlier articles written about Disney suggest that work on Bambi began as early as 1936. Disney Studio transcripts record the production crew working together by 1937, and contain a December 15 meeting called for story revisions. At that meeting Disney stressed the need to build a foreboding mood through the visuals. He wanted the audience to sense the threat of hunting to the environment by having the film's animals respond naturally. He hoped to build on the audience's intuitions about wildlife:

	Walt [Disney]: Their sense of small is a good thing to play up. That is something everybody knows about. We don't want to use anything that will be too difficult to put across to the audience. Ted [Sears]: We planted the sense of smell strongly, but we haven't definitely connected it with danger. Larry [Morey]: We can build that up a great deal more where Bambi and his Mother start out on the meadow. When she stops and sniffs so cautiously, we can bring that to a climax where you think something is going to happen. We will cut back to Bambi, tense, shivering with excitement and ready to run. Then cut back to the Mother, she relaxes, and everything is all right.

	Later the same day, as Sidney Franklin watched he described an opening scene that could establish characterization:

	The introduction of your important characters can be done right here, as the animals gather around at the time of the birth. We should pick out and dramatize the characters that are going to be used later, as they reach the points of vantage where they are going to watch. As the rabbit comes in to his place, have him come into a close-up, introducing him without mentioning it.

	The crew was discussing stimuli that depended upon the senses of sight, hearing, and smell. They were also referring to what a typical audience could be expected to respond to in sympathetic ways. Disney stressed that the audience would appreciate naturalistic animal behavior; he continually alluded to audience response, emphasizing the importance of building Bambi's characterization within the scenes. When Disney discussed the hunt scene where Bambi and Faline are separated, he created a scene close to the one found in the movie, describing how emotional tension in the actions could create empathy for the deer:

	. . . I want to have Bambi become a hero. I'd like to see him do it as a deer would do it, but I'd like to see him built up here. While the hunt is going on, and the smaller animals are being shot here and there, Faline and Bambi become separated. The hounds follow Faline, baying at the hunters, and Bambi tries to locate Faline. All this time, the hunters are coming closer and closer. The dogs finally have Faline at bay, and you don't know who is going to reach her first, the hunters or Bambi. Bambi rushes in and attacks the dogs, tossing them in the brush and scaring them away. Bambi and Faline run away just as the hunters come up, and as the two deer run over the hill, the hunters shoot after them, fraying the brush all around them. Mr. Franklin: How do you see the Hunters? Walt: You never get close enough to them to see any personality to them . . . The features will be indistinct, and we will never have close-ups with full lighting on their features.

	By 1937 Disney was certain the movie could hold man's threat to the environment within the action and still be acceptable to a popular audience if he used certain cinematic techniques. He wanted a film with little dialogue from the start. At the December meeting there is little recorded conversation discussing when the animals should "talk" with one another. In fact, when Disney described the important scenes it was as if the production was a silent film. He visualized actions rather than conversations. For instance, when he described the forest fire, Disney said,

	I see a marvelous scene after the forest fire. We will fade out on the fire, and fade in on the following morning, with all the charred tree trunks silhouetted like crosses against the morning sky. It is a very desolate scene--devastated. We see the silhouettes of Bambi and the Old Stag coming through the fog and smoke. The stag brings Bambi to the place where Man is, then leaves him. We see the stag going over the hill, and Bambi is left alone.

	While dialogue was not imperative, literary "signs" were emphasized. Disney described cultural icons that could suggest sacrifice within the traditional hero's journey: the charred tree trunks should look like crosses; the older male would lead a younger one through a rite of passage; Bambi would be isolated from all the other animals. Later, Disney described the typical literary circular pattern in his visual plot structure, saying that the last scene with the birth of Bambi's children should parallel the first scene when Bambi was born.

	Disney wanted the story to depict man's threat to nature through a naturalistic depiction of the deer, but he was less firm about the supporting cast of animal characters. Scenes were linked together in patterns that could resemble the literary structures of the epic. Disney approached the need for the circular pattern in nature, commenting, "We carry through one Fall, one Winter, and one Spring, then the second Spring is the finish." He wanted to create a heroic drama with Bambi as the central character.

	By the August 31, 1939 production meeting, characterization became a central topic. The use of conversational scenes was again discussed. Disney stressed the importance of creating a feeling of realism that would work for novice audiences. His remarks centered upon both the film's realistic and emotional appeal for the audience:

	I'd even like the mother a more natural type. ... The tempo in a lot of that is very slow. It's too much preparation. Too much fooling around before they get into it. I feel you have to get sort of human things into it. Like the old Owl comes out of his hole in the tree and scratches all his feathers. You still get a little humanness [sic] into it. And sort of--like the activity of the morning there. I believe the audience will like that more than the straight. Based on the straight, but going to the sort of humanizing them. That will fit better with our talking, I think.

	The importance of dialogue emerged. Although Disney had earlier described scenes without conversation, he now began to turn to the need for conversation to establish time sequences. He argued,

	I think, too, you might help the audience out a little bit on some of these things, like just before you fade out on one of the sequences, give a suggestion of what is going --in other words, she says, WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN, I'LL TAKE YOU TO THE MEADOW. GO TO SLEEP NOW, or whatever it is. And he goes to sleep, and then you fade in and it's sunset, and you immediately know she's taken him to the meadow. Or things like that. A little dialogue to link the things together.

	Once the crew began to imagine dialogue they turned to the sound track. At this point, Disney began to visualize a seamless production. The next day everyone reassembled, and Disney discussed the movie's musical score. He began to envision a "classical sound," commenting, "This is one picture the music plays a hell of a big part. I just wonder why before we go ahead and definitely decide we're going to use voices on the fugue, we'll pull an orchestra in here and see what can be done with an orchestra, because it might be a marvelous effect."

	At the same time Disney wanted a serious interpretation of the animals; he did not want to rely on caricature to develop the mood or the characterization, especially when it came to the deer. When the transcripts are chronologically followed it becomes apparent that Disney never intended to recreate Felix Salten's story. He was interested in using a new source of materials--scientific information about animals and actual footage of animals in the U.S. woods--instead of relying on the old Disney techniques of cute animation. At times the animators disagreed with Disney. They were used to placing humor in their scenes, and they wanted to depict human foibles and visual slapstick humor in the film's creatures. Perce Pierce had been reviewing live-action films on deer and was encouraged to create life-like movements. He tried to keep the crew centered on Disney's ideals. On September 1, 1939, the crew returned from lunch and began to discuss the animation prior to Disney's arrival:

	Dave: ... We've got to find something in the little guy it seems to me, to humanize some way. Fred: I'm almost positive, Dave, that when you get to the part where he's sneaking upon the owl. ... I'm almost sure you can get more human there. He looked like he's doing that. Perce: There's this other side, too, that doesn't fight away from that at all, I don't think, but when you fellows begin to study the wealth of material we've been piling up in live action of little fawns and so on, you'll find many natural animal actions which you can capitalize on that are just as cute in their way as just simply aping a human. Yet it covers the same point.

	Though Disney wanted a simplified Bambi, he did not want a distortion of its overall tone or on the depiction of Him as "the other" who was an intruder in the forest.

	It became clear on September 1, 1939 that the crew was thinking of the forest folk as idyllic animals. One of the animators says, "They're all in a sympathetic side. At least they're all friends." Perce Pierce makes the point that "their one common enemy is Man. That's the conflict--and keep it simple."

	Since he preferred simplicity, emotional appeal, and a sequential plot, Disney later suggested that the crew tamper with Salten's plot, and he turned his attention to the film's audience. As a filmmaker, Disney argued that Salten's ending was too long and too jumpy for a film, that it held too many small episodes. He began to discuss the need to develop a visual sense of Man as enemy, and he commented:

	I wondered last night if the audience sitting in there really got the danger of that situation. That the meadow was dangerous. There was nothing planted. You've got to know the book. We can't build this picture for people who know the book.

	Throughout the meetings Disney stressed a sense of the wonder of nature. He talked of rainstorms, blizzards, moonlight, "the crickets and the frogs and everything in the wind and the trees." Finally, he described a scene which would appear in the film:

	What do you think about taking that raindrop sequence instead of letting it be so short here--going from the raindrops where it goes really into showers, where you see Bambi and his Mother in this thicket out of the rain, and you see the little trickle of streams by where Bambi can watch that, and see the little birds and squirrels up here out of the rain. ... You could get a lot of interesting shots of these characters like a rainstorm out in the woods.

	Disney was the genius in this collaboration. The transcripts for Bambi show how Disney's visualized scenes became the adventures found on the screen. When visual descriptions for something didn't seem to work for him as the crew viewed clips in the sweatbox, Disney would orally revise scenes. For instance, while watching the film's opening on November 22, 1939, Disney suggested the establishment of a particular mood and of certain characters:

	... here's what I was thinking. Why don't we open our story with this. Say we open up with morning in the forest. Everything is getting up. You show everything getting up. And then you come to the old Owl and he's going to sleep. Then we introduce the Squirrel and Chipmunk. We introduce all the characters we want in that morning ... And then, as a final thing here, the Owl had finally got everything quiet and ... it's happened ... and the whole dammed woods begins to fuss and swarm. ... Then you can take Bambi right on.

	Disney never forgot who the villain was in his drama; he continually stressed that man was the forest's intruder. On December 18, 1939, he returned to this idea after he described Bambi's futile search for his Mother and Pierce asked if the scene wasn't too sad. Disney replied,

	Well, we'll see it first. I was just thinking when she is shot, and you see her drop and fall, then this little guy--she's not with him. He starts back and starts calling for her. The audience knows she's been shot, but he never meets her, but he meets the Stag, and just in a few words from the stag it's all summed up, you know. Where he says, YOUR MOTHER'S GONE AWAY ...

	Disney's story contained an envisioned plot that could be visually perceived by his audience, as the story continuously revealed itself in scenes. There was an identifiable and likable protagonist whose adventures would end on an upbeat, creating a romanticized ending. At the same time, Disney guided his crew away from easy visual jokes and quick caricatures, stressing pacing and mood. He was concerned that the conversation be kept down, but he was aware that dialogue was needed to keep the audience informed. Thus, Disney's sense of story depended upon elements of style that could immediately appeal to the emotions and the senses.

Disney's act of producing film can be linked to ideas of contemporary audience reception. The transcripts from the Disney Studios disclose Disney's creative genius as a "restructurer" of the written text within the contemporary codes of the American society surrounding him. For Disney, the ability to create links between written text, visual interpretation, and audience reception defines the characteristics of a noteworthy film producer.

Footnotes 1. I would like to thank Morton Schindel of Weston Woods and the Children's Literature Association for making my research trip to Burbank, California possible. All quotes from the Disney transcripts are found in documents housed at the Disney Archives, Disney Studios, Burbank, California. 2. According to Linda Seger, 85% of all Academy Award winners are book adaptations. (The Art of Adaptation, 1992) Seger says that many authors believe film adaptations will help sell their books. Indeed, the books listed on the New York Times best sellers'lists support her claim; many are titles that have recently been released in films. 3. For a more complete analysis of Disney's criticism, refer to J. P. May, "Walt Disney's Interpretations of Children's Literature." (Language Arts. 58:(4), 463-472). 4. The author would like to thank Jeff Garrett, Humanities Librarian at Northwestern University and former Editor of Bookbird: World of Children's Books, for checking German reviews and ascertaining that the book was first published as allegory and the plot in the original was fully captured in the first U.S. translations. 5. For further critical information about Salten's writing, see J. P. May and G. R. Mork, "Felix Salten." (Writers for Children. Charles Scribner's Sons, 1988).

References Art Digest. "Disney's Bambi Rated as Democratic Art." (August 1, 1942) 15. William Rose Benet. "Bambi." Saturday Review of Literature. (1928) 1032. Howard Bloomfield. "Mickey Mouse Grows Trees Too." American Forests. (July 1976):       16-19, 55. George Bluestone. Novels into Film. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1957. Walt Disney. "Mickey Mouse Presents," in We Make the Movies. Nancy Naumburg, ed.       NY: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1937. Umberto Eco. The Open Work. Anna Cancogi, trans. Cambridge: Harvard University       Press, 1989. Newsweek. "Bambi's Debut." (August 1942) 70-71. Felix Salten. Bambi. NY: Grosset & Dunlap, 1929. Frances Clark Sayers. "Walt Disney Accused." The Horn Book Magazine. (December       1965) 602-611. Linda Seger. The Art of Adaptation: Turning Fact and Fiction into Film. NY: Henry       Holt and Company, 1992. Eric Smoodin. Animating Culture: Hollywood's Cartoons from the Sound Era.      New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1993. Janet Staiger. Interpreting Films: Studies in the Historical Reception of America       Cinema. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992. Margaret Farrand Thorp. America at the Movies. New Haven: Yale University Press,       1939. Gweneira M. Williams and Jane S. Wilson. "Why Not? Give Them What They Want!"      The Publisher's Weekly. (April 18, 1942) 1490-1496. --Jill P. May, Professor of Literacy and Language Purdue University West Lafayette, IN Lecture materials used with permission of Jill P. May. Copyright, Jill P. May, 1995.

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