It’s probably safe to assume you’ve seen Walt Disney’s “Bambi.” A coming-of-age classic, the 1942 film’s themes of loss, growth and self-reliance are monumental — even as they’re communicated through a group of adorable forest animals.  

But no matter how well you think you know this seminal film, it’s only after learning about background artist Tyrus Wong’s contributions can you truly see this movie.  

Take the opening scene. The camera pans over a dense forest, its tall trees and sparkling waterfall creating a three-dimensional effect, but serving as little more than a suggested backdrop. You can’t make out many details in the foliage, and the colors blend together like watercolor.  

The background landscape is deliberately dream-like — a setting that allows the story’s star woodland creatures, with their bold outlines, rich hues and lifelike movements, to emerge from the soft canvas and take command of the screen. This is the magic of Tyrus Wong. 

Through years of research, the film scholar, cultural critic and University of Houston English professor Karen Fang gives the underappreciated artist the spotlight he deserves in her latest book, “Background Artist: The Life and Work of Tyrus Wong,” painting a picture of a Chinese immigrant who had a profound impact not just on our screens, but in annals of art history.  

Thoughtful and compelling, her portrait invites us to explore Wong’s impressive life, Fang’s pursuit in appreciating it, and the ideals — artistic vision, transformation, recognition — connecting the two. 

Humble Beginnings  

Wong was about 10 years old when he immigrated with his father to the United States, arriving on Angel Island, the processing center for immigrants on the West Coast, in 1920. The Chinese Exclusion Act, federal policy that systematically regulated and marginalized Chinese immigrants, was still in effect, causing Wong to be separated from his father and detained at the port of entry for weeks.  

When Wong finally reunited with his father, the two lived a modest life in Los Angeles’ Chinatown. A precocious art student and always one to overcome difficult circumstances, Wong earned a scholarship to the Otis Art Institute, studying the art of the Song Dynasty in his free time and honing his brush-painting craft between odd jobs that kept the lights on at home.  

After graduating in 1932, Wong rose rapidly in the art industry, showing works alongside Picasso and Matisse at the Chicago Art Institute that same year, and later in the galleries of New York and Paris.  

In the mid-1930s, he cofounded the Oriental Artists’ Group, an association of California-based Chinese and Japanese American artists, and painted his 6-foot magnum opus, simply called “Chinese Jesus,” in 1936. (“It’s exactly what it sounds like,” Fang says.) 

Though he attended art school in America, Wong never forgot his heritage, fusing Eastern and Western techniques into a style of evocative brush painting all his own. 

“It’s an ideal, a suggestion and a mood,” Fang says of his style. Established and refined, the artist then set his sights on Disney. 

Going Hollywood 

By 1937, Disney had released its first animated feature film: the game-changing “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” the success of which proved that animated storytelling was capable of moving audiences. 

With the studio on the hunt for artists to work on its next major work — an emotionally heavy ’toon starring only animals — Wong was hired. Unfortunately, the studio hit a snag with “Bambi” when filmmakers couldn't decide on the feature’s artistic vision. 

To keep the House of Mouse afloat and give its artists ample time to work, the studio then released “Pinocchio,” “Fantasia” and “Dumbo.”

In the meantime, Walt Disney welcomed anyone and everyone’s input to advance the “Bambi” production — including Wong, an accomplished artist hired at an entry-level position. Wong suggested tweaking the backgrounds, explaining that the artistry was too detailed to allow the animals to stand out.  

“By doing this, he sort of sneaks in Chinese-style landscape painting in these sample boards for ‘Bambi,’” Fang says. “When Walt sees them, he immediately recognizes the genius and famously says, ‘I like it better than all this indecipherable junk behind it.’” 

In the opening sequence of “Bambi,” Wong is credited as a “background artist.” To some, the title was seen as an insult — a way to diminish the work of a Chinese immigrant. But the reality is quite the contrary.  

“Early on in Disney history, no one received credits,” Fang says. “‘Bambi’ was the first feature to have credits. Prior to that, everything was just ‘a Walt Disney film.’ The fact that Wong is even in there as a credit is pretty significant.” 

The role of a background artist — today referred to as the concept artist or inspiration sketch artist — is invaluable. Responsible for setting the mood and vibe of a film, “the concept artist is one of the first people to visualize what a movie is going to look like,” Fang says. Their contribution stewards the film’s overall beauty, tone and evolution. 

But the title harbors even greater meaning for Fang. 

“What I wanted to do with my book was to reclaim that title,” Fang says. “All immigrants are background artists working in the background and making our lives better, often in ways we don’t recognize or understand. But immigrant artists are especially important and interesting, because they refuse to stay in the background. Because what they’re actually doing is making our world more beautiful.”

Outside of his film work, Wong continued to make the world more beautiful, even becoming one of the greatest greeting card artists of all time. His ethereal stationery enjoyed massive popularity in the 1950s through the 1970s.  

“If the only thing Wong had done was ‘Bambi,’ that in itself would be an amazing story,” Fang says. “This non-white, noncitizen helped make one of the world’s most iconic films and essentially saved one of America’s greatest companies. But he did so many amazing things.”  

In the Background No Longer

Wong died in 2016, at the age of 106. With his passing came multiple televised tributes and gallery homages. “As a film scholar and Asian American, I had been running across his name a lot,” Fang says.  

She began working on the project in earnest after observing the rise in racially motivated crimes in United States in the years following the COVID-19 pandemic’s onset. 

“I was sitting here thinking, ‘Oh my gosh, it’s 100 years later, and we’re enduring the same thing Tyrus endured,’” Fang says. “With Wong’s name popping up everywhere, it was a sign to write the book.” 

Fang wanted the world to know about Wong’s story, so she got to work poring over files and archives at the Academy of Motion Pictures and Sciences, various museums, the U.S. Office of Customs and Border Protection, and, of course, The Walt Disney Company.  

“Any kind of research with Disney is a very delicate process, as you can imagine,” Fang says.  

Reinventing herself as a narrative writer, the scholar stitched together the fragments of Wong’s life, creating a masterpiece she calls the “most rewarding project of her career.” After a lengthy shop-around, Rutgers University Press finally bit.  

“It took me longer to place the book than I thought; because this is such an amazing story, I thought people should be falling all over themselves to read it,” she says. 

From her book, she hopes readers take away themes of empathy, community and creativity. She also hopes they learn about the Chinese Exclusion Act and all its ugliness. But more broadly, she wants readers to revel in the power of a great story.  

“His story is such an amazing and universally inspiring story about creativity sustaining you through everything and creating community,” she says.

A High-Flying Legacy 

Today, Wong is credited in art circles as the father of the Los Angeles Orientalists movement of the ’30s and ’40s. Major film buffs might know of his connection to “Bambi.” And perhaps traditionalists are able to note a Tyrus Wong greeting card original.  

But to many who were lucky enough to cross paths with the visionary artist, he was just “the kite man.”   

During his retirement, Wong began designing and building massive kites shaped like centipedes, pandas and other wildlife, and he would then fly them over Santa Monica Beach. Folks would gather to watch the “icon of the skies” maneuver his handmade kites through gusts of wind.  

With Fang’s biography now available, she hopes Tyrus Wong — the Chinese immigrant, the provocateur behind “Chinese Jesus,” the background artist, the greeting card marvel and the kite man — will emerge in the public imagination as the singular, multifaceted legend he is.