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ML: How did you first hear about the Dumbo project at the Studio?

WK: It happened in the parking lot on Hyperion Avenue, the old studio. I happened to pass Walt coming back from lunch, and he stopped me, and he said he wanted to tell me about a new picture they were considering, and it sounded like a good one. He quickly outlined the whole plot in about five minutes, and thought that I would enjoy working on a sequence where the crows teach Dumbo how to fly.

I was a little excited about it, because it seemed to be such a tight story, and the fact that he could tell the whole thing in five minutes, even though he condensed it, it sounded like a great idea. An elephant, a little baby elephant with big ears, of which his clown friends who were making fun with him. So that’s the first I ever heard of it.

ML: Would that have been in 1939 or in 1940?

WK: That would be in the early part of ‘39.

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