This interview was conducted for the bonus features of the Blu-Ray edition of Bambi and is reproduced with the kind authorization of The Walt Disney Company.
Mel Shaw: I was working for Harman-Ising Studio at that time and Harman-Ising, who had a Warner Brothers release,56 had lost their contract with Warner, and they weren’t doing anything. I happened to be playing polo and Walt knew that we had lost the contract, and I had worked on a thing they called Merbabies, which Harman-Ising had done for him.
EMC West: Do you remember the story of the bee going into Bambi’s ears?
MS: That was just another type of thing you can get involved with in a nature story. Because there were so many other things that were beautiful: Little sequences of the love affair with two leaves, the autumn falling—It was just a beautiful story. You could get a thing like that and get involved with the dramatics of that, but you’re getting so far away from the basic storyline. […]
