Donnie Dunagan, Voice of Bambi and a Marine Major, Dead at 92

Donnie Dunagan, the child actor who voiced Bambi in Disney's 1942 classic, died on Nov. 4 at 92. His agents at CelebWorx confirmed the cause was lung cancer, Variety reports.

His career in film lasted only a few years and seven movies. Yet it included two enduring classics: Bambi and the 1939 horror film Son of Frankenstein. Not bad for a boy discovered at a Memphis tap-dancing contest.

"We were proud to represent a Marine, beloved by fans around the world," Kris Jones and Nery Lemus of CelebWorx said in a statement. They added that Dunagan had asked them, in his words, "not to be sad due to the great life I lived."

How did a Texas kid become Bambi?

Dunagan was born Aug. 16, 1934, in San Antonio. His family moved often before settling in Memphis, where a neighbor taught him to tap dance. He won two local talent contests, and a Hollywood scout spotted him at the second one. RKO Pictures signed him soon after.

At four, he made his debut in the 1938 family drama Mother Carey's Chickens. The next year he played Peter, son of Baron Wolf von Frankenstein, opposite Basil Rathbone, Boris Karloff as the Monster and Bela Lugosi as Ygor — a supporting cast most adult actors would envy. Two more 1939 films followed, Tower of London and The Forgotten Woman, then uncredited bits in Vigil in the Night (1940) and Meet the Chump (1941).

Walt Disney personally chose Dunagan as the facial model for Bambi because of his brown eyes. Animators sketched him, he recalled in a 2011 interview, as they "asked me to look happy, look up, look sad, etc." He then got the voice role too. He called the job "the thrill of my young life."

"I grew to realize that Mr. Disney had let me become part of a neverending love story in this world," Dunagan said. "My debt to him is great."

Why did he hide Bambi for decades?

His screen career ended amid family turmoil. His parents divorced; he spent time in an orphanage and boarding school, worked odd jobs, boxed and played football well enough to earn a University of Alabama scholarship.

In the early Fifties he volunteered for the Marines and served 21 years, through Korea and Vietnam, collecting a Bronze Star, a Purple Heart and the rank of Major. He also kept his acting past a secret from the ranks.

"If these animals I was leading had ever found out about Bambi — as much affection as I had for it — they'd have ridden me out on a rail," he said in 2005.

Disney tracked him down in the early 2000s for a Bambi DVD release. He became a Disney ambassador and a fixture at fan conventions. "I love it now — when people realize, 'This old jerk, he's still alive and was Bambi,'" he said in 2015. "And I wouldn't take anything for it, not a darn thing for it."

His agents' tribute closes the arc neatly: a Major who inspired troops, and a deer who still inspires everyone else.