In Bambi, the next feature-length cartoon with which Walt Disney hopes to repeat the world-shaking success of his Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the leading character is a deer.
But even though he is a deer, Bambi has human characteristics.
One of the major things he has to learn in the course of his growing-up is to distinguish between things to eat and things to smell, or to disctinguish, that is, between food and flowers. All of which is fairly simple for him until, out strolling in the woods one day, he comes upon a skunk.
It is a very shy skunk, who knows that he lacks personality. Bambi, sniffing it, is most perplexed when it starts to run away.
"Why, I thought you were a flower," says Bambi.
The skunk simply collapses in flattered delight. “ oh, did you really? it asks.
From which anecdote I trust you gather that financial success, coming to Walt Disney, has only succeeded in making him more himself. His brain child, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, will earn some millions of dollars before it is through. From this vast sum Walt himself will net about two millions, which is doing all right for a guy who up to now has never had anything much but worry. But worry has never bothered Walt greatly, and a fortune isn’t bothering him now. Visiting him at his tidy green-and-white studio, you find him still modest, eager-eyed, and enthusiastic. He still eats his lunch at the hamburger stand near by and he still can’t talk of anything but what he is going to do next.
[…]
