![]() (The most popular was arguably Der Fuehrer’s Face, in which Donald Duck dreams he’s working in a German munitions factory.) (When asked how the war might affect the studio, he replied: “What war?”) But after half the studio was requisitioned as a base for antiaircraft troops, Walt threw himself into making government training and propaganda films. But nothing would ever be the same- not least because on December 7, 1941, the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, sending a shocked America reeling into World War II.įrom the start, Walt’s perspective on the conflict had been uninformed. Disney did not return for the funeral, but when he finally reemerged in Los Angeles, Walt discovered that Roy had resolved the strike, giving the workers almost everything they had asked for. “I have a case of the D.D.s-disillusionment and discouragement.”ĭuring Walt’s southern sojourn, Elias died. “It gives me a chance to get away from this god-awful nightmare,” he wrote. Just as he had done after his nervous breakdown, Walt escaped-this time, to South America. “Animators were highly skilled workers, hard to replace with scabs, which provided them with added leverage,” Gerald Horne, author of Class Struggle in Hollywood: 1930–1950, tells LIFE. MORE: How Toy Story Changed Movie Historyĭisheartened and confused, Walt fell back on a paranoid conspiracy theory, claiming through an ad in the trade paper Variety that the strike was “Communistic.” But he was, for once, powerless. In fact, when Babbitt shouted from the picket line, “Shame on you, Walt Disney!” as Walt drove to work, Disney got out of his car and charged at him. Even as the studio’s stock dropped precipitously because its films were losing money, Walt refused to negotiate. On May 29, 1941, after a valued senior animator named Art Babbitt was fired for joining the union, nearly half the Disney art department walked out. This condescending speech turned more Disney employees to the union cause than ever before. If you’re not progressing as you should, instead of grumbling and growling, do something about it.” “My first recommendation to the lot of you is this,” he said: “Put your own house in order. For Walt, this was literally unbelievable: Weren’t they all a family? In February 1941, he held a meeting he thought would resolve the issue once and for all. Increasingly dissatisfied, Disney’s workers moved toward unionization. ![]() “Walt was following a very hardline capitalist model,” says : “the big boss upstairs with the vision, and the worker drones down on the production line.” ![]() And the women in the lowly Ink and Paint Department (pretty much the only place where women were allowed) were paid a pittance. Suddenly employees knew what the boss was making: at least five times that of his top people. Get your history fix in one place: sign up for the weekly TIME History newsletter To make matters worse, the Disney organization reluctantly went public in 1940, selling stock to meet its mounting losses. But “lesser” artists often couldn’t afford to eat in the cafeteria. The most valued animators were allowed entrance to the so-called Penthouse Club, which included a steam room and a gym featuring a trainer who had competed on the Swiss Olympic team. There was little consistency in Disney studio salaries or perks. When the Great Depression ended in 1939, millions of American workers, having endured years of unemployment, began demanding job security and a stake in the new prosperity, leading to a radicalism that influenced labor relations-not least in the movie business.īy 1940, Hollywood’s Screen Cartoonists Guild had unionized the town’s major animation departments except Disney’s, despite the fact that the Mouse House employed the vast majority of the industry’s artists.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |