Donnie Dunagan, smiling, in a white shirt embroidered Voice of Bambi during an interview on Toon'd In! with Jim Cummings. Image: Toon'd In! with Jim Cummings
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Donnie Dunagan, the Voice of Young Bambi, Dies at 92. He Kept It Secret Through 25 Years as a Marine

Sarah Robbins · November 9, 2026 · 5 min read

Donnie Dunagan, the child actor who gave Disney's Bambi his voice and his face as a fawn, has died at 92. He made seven films as a small boy, walked away from Hollywood, and spent 25 years as a Marine without telling his comrades who he'd been. Film historian Tom Weaver reported that he died on Wednesday of lung cancer.

Dunagan was born Donald Roan Dunagan in San Antonio, Texas, on 16 August 1934. He's survived by his wife, Dana, whom he married in September 1992. The news reached the wider press on Monday, when The Hollywood Reporter published an obituary built on interviews he gave over the past two decades.

Bambi was released in 1942, and Dunagan voiced the young fawn, the wide-eyed Bambi who learns to talk and loses his mother. The deer as an adolescent was voiced by Hardie Albright. For generations of children, that small voice calling for his mother is the saddest moment they remember from a cinema seat.

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