Neglected creator of 'Bambi' celebrated in Vienna show
- 12 Jun 2021
Gulf Today Report
While the 1942 Disney film "Bambi" is world famous as a classic of animated cinema, the man behind the story — an eminent writer in pre-war Vienna who had to flee the Nazis — is little known.
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Felix Salten was a product of the cultural blossoming in the capital of the then Austro-Hungarian Empire around the turn of the 20th Century, according to AFP.
As a Vienna exhibition which shines a spotlight on the neglected creator shows, he was a prolific writer who moved in the same circles as the likes of Sigmund Freud, the father of psychoanalysis.
Salten wrote the iconic and poignant tale of the fawn bereaved of his mother by hunters in 1922 under the title "Bambi: A Life In The Woods".
On its publication the following year, it did not enjoy immediate success among the reading public.
However, in the 1930s, Salten — himself a hunter — sold the film rights for the text for $1,000 to an American producer, who in turn sold them to Disney.
As for the book itself, "Felix Salten changed publishers and from then on it became much more successful," said Ursula Storch, curator of the exhibition at the Wien Museum dedicated to the city's history.
"Of course it was made even more famous by the film adaptation in 1942," Storch said.