Donnie Dunagan, original voice of Disney’s Bambi and triple Purple Heart marine, dies aged 92

Dunagan was six when he voiced the young deer in the classic cartoon, with an assistant director instructing him to pretend his own mother had died

Donnie Dunagan, who voiced Bambi in the Walt Disney classic, as well as playing the son of Frankenstein opposite Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff, has died aged 92.

Dunagan was six when he was chosen to provide the voice of the young deer in the animation’s most heartbreaking chapter. He recalled the experience in the recording booth as easy and relaxed, with rudimentary technology and notes from an assistant director instructing him to pretend his own mother had died when voicing Bambi’s reaction to his mother being killed by a hunter.

The actor recalled that Bambi’s mother originally dies on screen, but Disney altered this in the edit. Nonetheless, Dunagan received considerable hate mail from the hunting community afterwards.

Bambi, whose release was delayed in the wake of the attack on Pearl Harbor, ended up being Dunagan’s final film. He began his career on horror films Son of Frankenstein and Tower of London, playing the curly blond-haired son of Rathbone’s Dr Frankenstein, as well as featuring in films such as Mother Carey’s Chickens, The Forgotten Woman, Vigil in the Night and Meet the Chump.

He recalled often playing checkers with Karloff on set, while the latter was in full makeup dressed as the monster.

After college, Dunagan joined the military in 1952 where he spent 25 years and for which he was awarded a bronze star and three Purple Hearts for bravery. He never disclosed his early career to his comrades, but said that “one of the biggest regrets of my life is that I didn’t have the courage to tell my close personal friends in the Marine Corps that I had been a part of the wonderful work of Mr Disney”.

In 2015, he reflected on the experience by calling it “pure joy that both children and 80-year-olds can enjoy the film together. I could be working in the White House and children couldn’t care less. But let someone say, ‘that dude over there was the face or voice of Bambi’, and I am an immediate adopted grandfather to them. That is just an unmatchable joy, and a real responsibility.”