Pink Elephants on Parade

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Pink Elephants on Parade is a segment from the Disney animated movie Dumbo in which Dumbo and Timothy Mouse, after accidentally becoming intoxicated, see pink elephants sing, dance, and play trumpets during an infamous hallucination sequence. This famous song was written by Oliver Wallace and Ned Washington[1] and sung by the Sportsmen. The segment was directed by Norman Ferguson and animated by Hicks Lokey, Frank Thomas and Howard Swift.[2]

The song, along with the segment itself, has been ingrained in pop culture as an infamous allusion to intoxication. The scene is also notorious for being quite scary for some children and is one of the classic "scary scenes" in Disney films most adults still remember from their childhood. For this reason it has been included at Number 90 in retrocrush's "100 Scariest Movie Scenes" in 2004[3] and in a list compiled by filmsite [4].

The Dumbo the Flying Elephant ride at Disneyland was originally going to be based on this scene, but the idea was scrapped and the ride creators changed it to the friendlier titular elephant from the movie.

Contents

[edit] Covers

  • The song was covered by Sun Ra. A recording of this arrangement is available on Stay Awake, a tribute album of Disney tunes played by various artists, and produced by Hal Willner. The song was also covered by Circus Contraption

[edit] Cultural references

  • An allusion to the scene appears in the film Fritz the Cat (1972), where Fritz talks about seeing the world instead of studying and has sex with a large pink, big breasted woman.
  • Barney Gumble hallucinates a pink elephant very similar to the ones in Dumbo in The Simpsons episode D'oh-in' in the Wind.
  • In Tiny Toon Adventures, in an episode where Plucky wants to channel Albert Einstein in order to pass a math exam, this scene is spoofed with little Einsteins replacing the pink elephants.
  • In the MMORPG World of Warcraft "Pink Elekks on Parade" is a seasonal quest during the "Brewfest" event. Elekks are a fictional creature quite similar to elephants. The quest objective is to go around and drive away the pink Elekks with a zapper - but to be able to see them the player character has to be drunk.
  • Part of the song can be heard in the late 2007 film Enchanted.
  • During the ending scene of Who Framed Roger Rabbit, one of the many background characters seen in the far back of the crowd of Toons resembles a re-colorized version of one of the pink elephants.
  • UK breakbeat group Heavy Artillery sampled the segment for the 2009 mixtape.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  1. ^ Frank Churchill Biography – Yahoo! Shopping
  2. ^ http://www.myfiveyearplan.net/archives/28]
  3. ^ http://retrocrush.buzznet.com/scary/90.html
  4. ^ http://www.filmsite.org/scariestscenes6.html
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