117. Pinocchio story meeting notes, Boobyland and escape, December 8, 1938, WDA.
118. “Theatre Taken Here for Disney ‘Fantasia,’ ” New York Times, September 25, 1940, 35.
119. Franz Hoellering, “Films,” Nation, November 23, 1940, 513.
120. Hermine Rich Isaacs, “New Horizons: Fantasia and Fantasound,” Theatre Arts, January 1941, 58.
121. Walt Disney Productions, 1941 annual report, 13, Baker.
122. Walt Disney, “Growing Pains,” 39.
123. Herb Lamb to Walt Disney, memorandum, February 8, 1941, WDA.
124. Fantasia sequel story meeting notes, January 27, 1941, WDA.
125. Invitation to the Dance story meeting notes, April 24, 1941, WDA.
126. Walt Disney to George J. Schaefer, March 27, 1941, WDA. The Hound of Florence was the source of The Shaggy Dog, a Disney live-action comedy made almost twenty years later.
127. 13 NLRB 873, 875.
128. Johnston, interview with Bob Thomas, May 17, 1973, WDA; Hannah, 1976 interview.
129. Legg, December 1976 interview.
130. Legg, March 1976 interview.
131. Hal Adelquist to Walt Disney, memorandum, December 23, 1940, WDA. The first members of the animation board were Eric Larson, Fred Moore, Ward Kimball, Dick Lundy, Charles Nichols, John Lounsbery, Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston, and Norm Ferguson.
132. Lundy, interview with Gray, December 5, 1977.
133. Douglas W. Churchill, “Disney’s ‘Philosophy,’ ” 23.
134. Kimball, 1976 interview.
135. The union was variously known in its early days as the Screen Cartoonists Guild and the Screen Cartoon Guild.
136. Testimony by Arthur Babbitt, 125, NLRB/Babbitt.
137. Babbitt exhibit F, NLRB/Babbitt.
138. Babbitt, 1973 interview.
139. Babbitt exhibit F.
CHAPTER 6 “A Queer, Quick, Delightful Gink”
1. Lessing exhibit 23A, 943–45, NLRB/Babbitt.
2. Lessing exhibit 23, NLRB/Babbitt.
3. Testimony by Hal Adelquist, 903, NLRB/Babbitt.
4. “Who Started the Guild?” CSUN/SCG.
5. Lessing exhibit 23.
6. Bradbury interview.
7. The Exposure Sheet (newsletter of the Disney unit of the Screen Cartoonists Guild), undated but published late in February 1941, reported that Babbitt was elected chairman at the February 18 meeting, AC. Babbitt’s own testimony in his NLRB case placed his election in March, however.
8. House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry, 80th Congress, 1st sess., 1947, 284. Disney testified on October 24, 1947.
9. Walt Disney to Bosustow, memorandum, May 20, 1941, SB; Bosustow interview.
10. Lessing exhibit 23A, NLRB/Babbitt; Hilberman, 1976 interview.
11. Adelquist exhibit 12B, NLRB/Babbitt.
12. Lessing exhibit 23.
13. Hilberman, 1976 interview.
14. Jack Boyd, interview with Gray, March 14, 1977.
15. Thomas Brady, “Whimsy on Strike,” New York Times, June 29, 1941, sec. 9, 3; Babbitt, 1973 interview.
16. Preston Blair to author, October 3, 1978.
17. Schaefer to N. Peter Rathvon, June 27, 1941, RKO.
18. Arthur W. Kelly to E. C. Raftery, June 24, 1941, Wisconsin/UA.
19. Testimony by Phyllis Lambertson, 364, NLRB/Babbitt.
20. George Morris to Roy Disney, memorandum, October 16, 1941, WDA.
21. “Disney Strike Washup Near,” Daily Variety, July 1, 1941, 1.
22. “AF of L Quits Disney Strikers,” Daily Variety, July 9, 1941, 1.
23. Roy Disney, June 1968 interview.
24. Hilberman, interview, November 24, 1986.
25. Stanley White to J. R. Steelman, telegram, July 4, 1941, Case File 196/2188, Subject and Dispute Files, records of the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, Record Group 280, National Archives, Washington, D.C. Other documents related to the Disney strike—including the arbitrators’ “final report”—are part of the same file.
26. “Disney Strikers Return to Jobs,” Los Angeles Times, July 30, 1941.
27. “Disney Closed Shop Okayed,” Daily Variety, July 31, 1941, 1.
28. Harry Teitel to Walt Disney, memorandum, October 14, 1941, WDA. Teitel later changed the spelling of his name to Tytle.
29. Hilberman, 1976 interview.
30. Testimony by Adelquist, 893, NLRB/Babbitt.
31. Walt Disney to Westbrook Pegler, August 11, 1941, WDA.
32. Roy Disney to Walt Disney, memorandum, “Visit of Jock Whitney,” October 31, 1940, WDA.
33. Roy Disney to Francis Alstock, June 9, 1941, RAC.
34. Roy Disney, memorandum, “South American Short Subjects,” October 7, 1941, WDA.
35. “Report on the Walt Disney South American Field Survey,” records of the Department of Information, Motion Picture Division, Office of Inter-American Affairs, Record Group 229, National Archives, Washington, D.C. (hereafter cited as Department of Information records).
36. Alstock to Nelson A. Rockefeller, memorandum, “Report of John Hay Whitney from Rio de Janeiro, August 29, 1941,” September 8, 1941, RAC.
37. “Report on the Walt Disney South American Field Survey.”
38. “Pollen Man,” New Yorker, November 1, 1941, 14–15.
39. 1940 annual report, 4.
40. As reflected in Disney’s remarks in the Bambi story meeting notes from February 27, 1940, WDA.
41. George Morris to Roy Disney, memorandum, “Resume of Events,” October 16, 1941, WDA.
42. March 29, 1947, balance sheet. The Walt Disney Company’s more recent negative-cost figure is more than $25,000 higher, perhaps reflecting costs related to early reissues.
43. Huemer, 1973 interview.
44. Thomas and Johnston, The Illusion of Life, 94–95.
45. Larson interview.
46. Thomas and Johnston, Illusion of Life, 475.
47. “Mammal of the Year,” Time, December 29, 1941, 27.
48. Adelquist exhibit 9, NLRB/Babbitt. Luske was briefly classified as an animator after the strike, although he had directed parts of Pinocchio and The Reluctant Dragon. Tytla quit the Disney staff in February, 1943.
49. Frank Tashlin, in a December 4, 1939, letter to Fred Niemann, FN; Tashlin wrote that Disney had given him “a feature to do—with Mickey, Donald, and Goofy in it—I’m writing the screen adaptation now—am working for Walt directly with no in between bosses.” His involvement receded rapidly over the next six months, as other writers prepared storyboards for different sequences.
50. Bambi story meeting notes, February 27, 1940, WDA.
51. Alice in Wonderland meeting notes, April 2, 1940, WDA.
52. “Jack and the Beanstalk” story meeting notes, May 14, 1940, WDA.
53. March 29, 1947, balance sheet.
54. March 29, 1947, balance sheet. The Walt Disney Company’s more recent negative-cost figure for Bambi is about $40,000 higher, perhaps reflecting costs related to early reissues.
55. Roy Disney to Walt Disney, memorandum, “Studio Situation,” October 18, 1941, WDA.
56. Walt Disney to Jackson, memorandum, March 3, 1941, WDA.
57. Testimony by Arthur Babbitt, 153–55, NLRB/Babbitt. This episode, which Babbitt placed around April 15, 1941, is curiously similar to a presumably different incident that he described in a personal letter written more than six months earlier; internal references suggest that it was written in late September 1940. “A month ago,” Babbitt wrote, “I tried to get a raise for a chap doing inbetweens for me. He was as capable and as speedy as any of the other boys—but still was receiving $18.00 a week—same as he had been paid in the traffic dept. Knowing full well that the ‘proper officials’ wouldn’t do a damn thing—I wrote a note to Walt asking him to consider this particular case and if necessary set aside his rules about raises. He called me on the phone and for ten
minutes blistered my ears. It seems that I don’t mind my own business, that I’m a ‘Bolshevik in a corner uninformed about the rest of the studio’—a ‘sourpuss with a chip on my shoulder’ and ‘someday someone would knock the chip off and me out from under it’ and on and on. I won’t go into details but I had the doubtful pleasure of telling Mr. Disney what I’ve wanted to say for years—fully expecting to get fired for it. But instead of getting angrier—he started to laugh and assured me many times that there were no hard feelings and that he was glad I had brought the matter to his attention. Still reeling from all the unexpected turns my little note had brought about I sat down for a breather—when his secretary came down to tell me—that ‘I don’t know what you said to Walt—but when he finished talking with you—he called Herb Lamb and Hal Adelquist [two Disney executives concerned with personnel and financial matters] and gave them hell about something.’ It seems that not only my inbetweener but 12 more got $4.00 raises. You try to figure it out. Walt has smiled charmingly at me ever since but nary a word has been mentioned—maybe I’m crazy.” Babbitt to Robert Durant Feild, Feild Papers, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.
58. Testimony by Babbitt, 159, NLRB/Babbitt.
59. Testimony by Babbitt, 201, NLRB/Babbitt.
60. Babbitt to Feild, undated letter written in late fall of 1942, Feild Papers.
61. Roy Disney, 1967 interview.
62. “Production Shift at Disney Plant Lays Off 200,” Daily Variety, November 25, 1941, 6.
63. “Disney Turns Over Studio Bldg. to Army Detachment,” Variety, December 17, 1941, 145.
64. Dick Pfahler to “Those Listed,” memorandum, July 29, 1941; Carl Nater to “Those Concerned,” memorandum, January 22, 1942, WDA.
65. Robert Perine, Chouinard: An Art Vision Betrayed (Encinitas, 1985), 99.
66. “Walt Disney Weeps as He Gets Oscar,” Daily Variety, February 27, 1942, AMPAS.
67. J. R. Josephs, Motion Picture Sub-Committee, to Coordination Committee for Mr. Francis Alstock, memorandum, “Argentine Opening of Walt Disney’s Saludo,” Department of Information records.
68. March 29, 1947, balance sheet.
69. “Walt Disney: Great Teacher,” Fortune, August 1942, 156; “Walt Disney Goes to War,” Life, August 31, 1942, 61.
70. As reported in Dispatch from Disney’s, a booklet intended for former Disney staff members in the armed services and published in June 1943.
71. Herbert Ryman, as interviewed by Robin Allan on July 7, 1985, in Didier Ghez, ed., Walt’s People: Talking Disney with the Artists Who Knew Him (2006), 2:199.
72. March 29, 1947, balance sheet.
73. Joe Grant, interview, December 6, 1986. Grant’s comparison actually fits George Pullman better than Henry Ford.
74. David Culbert, “ ‘A Quick, Delightful Gink’: Eric Knight at the Walt Disney Studio,” Funnyworld 19 (Fall 1978): 13.
75. Johnston to author, August 8, 1977.
76. “Corn & Corn Products” and “The Soy Bean,” story meeting notes, April 15, 1942, WDA.
77. Production Management to “Those Concerned,” memorandum, Prod. 2016, June 9, 1942, AC. This memorandum reported that story work had been authorized on June 5, 1942, for the interstitial material in the second Latin American compilation feature.
78. Alstock to Roy O. Disney, December 8, 1942, Department of Information records.
79. From a translation of an article in Poblicaciòn, February 1943, Department of Information records.
80. Edwin Schallert, “Busy Future Outlined by Disney as Mickey Mouse Turns 25 Years,” Los Angeles Times, February 22, 1953, AMPAS.
81. Roy Disney, June 1968 interview. For a brief summary of how Eyssel made his way from Kansas City to New York, see David Loth, The City Within a City: The Romance of Rockefeller Center (New York, 1966), 84.
82. G. S. Eyssell to Rockefeller, November 29, 1944, RAC.
83. March 29, 1947, balance sheet.
84. Dispatch from Disney’s.
85. “Disney’s Speed-up,” Variety, June 30, 1943, 20.
86. W. H. Clark to Rathvon et al., memorandum, May 24, 1943, RKO. The memorandum says that the contract was canceled by a letter agreement dated May 19, 1943.
87. Walt Disney Productions, 1945 annual report, 3, RKO.
88. “Walt Disney—Teacher of Tomorrow,” Look, April 17, 1945, 26, AMPAS.
89. “Walt Disney Plans Cartoon Movies for Industrial Use,” Wall Street Journal, December 1, 1943, 4.
90. J. V. Sheehan to Walt Disney and Roy Disney, memorandum, November 9, 1944, WDA.
91. “Realign Disney Organization Top Personnel,” Motion Picture Herald, September 15, 1945, AMPAS.
92. Harry Tytle, One of “Walt’s Boys” (Mission Viejo, 1997), 99.
93. Tytle, One of “Walt’s Boys,” 51.
94. Joe Grant, 1986 interview.
95. Jackson, 1973 interview; Jackson, July 28, 1975.
96. Roy Disney to Flora Disney, August 18, 1938, photocopy, private collection.
97. Diane Disney Miller, interview with Hubler, June 11, 1968, BU/RH.
98. Sharon Disney Brown, interview with Hubler, July 9, 1968, BU/RH.
99. Sharon Disney Brown, Hubler interview.
100. Diane Disney Miller, Hubler interview.
101. Diane Disney Miller, Hubler interview.
102. Diane Disney Miller, Hubler interview.
103. Disney was interviewed on the Vox Pop program on November 12, 1946, from the premiere of Song of the South at the Fox Theater in Atlanta. Recording courtesy of Keith Scott.
104. “Background on the Uncle Remus Tales,” April 8, 1938; “The Uncle Remus Stories,” April 11, 1938, WDA.
105. Hee interview.
106. From “About the Author” on the dust jacket of Dalton Reymond’s only novel, Earthbound (Chicago, 1948).
107. Hedda Hopper, “Looking at Hollywood,” Los Angeles Times, January 24, 1945, 9; “Potter Sues Disney, Asks $11,000 Salary,” Hollywood Reporter, May 2, 1945, 3.
108. Jackson, 1973 interview.
109. Jackson, 1976 interview. Jackson spoke of the shooting as taking place at MGM, but that was probably a slip of the tongue: the Disney studio’s records show that it took place at the Goldwyn Studio. David R. Smith to author, e-mail, July 17, 2006.
110. Jackson, 1976 interview.
111. Roy Disney to Ned E. Depinet, March 29, 1946, RKO.
112. Depinet to Rathvon, April 25, 1946, RKO.
113. Tytle, One of “Walt’s Boys,” 57–58.
114. Walt Disney Productions, 1946 annual report, 9, photocopy, AC. RKO’s loan was paid off by 1949, liquidated, as Roy Disney wrote, “entirely from the conversion into dollars of motion picture earnings from twenty-four blocked currency countries.” Walt Disney Productions, 1949 annual report, 5, Jackson Library, Stanford University, Stanford, CA.
115. Tytle, One of “Walt’s Boys,” 74, 83.
116. Tytle, One of “Walt’s Boys,” 58.
117. Joe Grant, 1988 interview.
118. Jack Kinney, interviews, November 3, 1976, and December 8, 1986.
119. Eldon Dedini, interview with Gray, January 31, 1977.
120. Davis, 1976 interview.
121. Ralph Wright, interview with Gray, February 1, 1977.
122. Brightman interview.
123. Hedda Hopper, “Walt Disney Back in Stride,” Los Angeles Times, June 30, 1946, AMPAS.
124. “Disney to Go to Ireland,” New York Times, November 20, 1946, 43.
CHAPTER 7 “Caprices and Spurts of Childishness”
1. The alliance’s “statement of principles” was published as a full-page advertisement in both Daily Variety and Hollywood Reporter on February 7, 1944.
2. “Leaders of Film Industry Form Anti-Red Group,” Los Angeles Times, February 5, 1944, 1; “Film Leaders Form Alliance Against Communism, Fascism,” Los Angeles Herald-Express, February 5, 1944, B1; and “The Battle of Hollywood,” Time, February 14, 1944, 23.
3. Maurice Rapf, Back Lot: Growing Up with the Movies (Lanham, 1999), 131.
4. Rapf, Back Lot, 140.
5. Hilberman, 1976 interview.
6. House Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings Regarding the Communist Infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry, 80th Congress, 1st sess., 1947, 284–85.
7. Tytle, One of “Walt’s Boys,” 14.
8. Lillian Disney, Hubler interview.
9. Sharon Disney Brown, Hubler interview.
10. Hal Adelquist, story inventory report, May 28, 1947, RKO.
11. Roy Disney to Rathvon, May 29, 1947, RKO.
12. Thomas F. Brady, “Hollywood’s Mr. Disney,” New York Times, July 14, 1946, sec. 2, 1. Hedda Hopper, “Walt Disney Back in Stride,” Los Angeles Times, June 30, 1946, said that How Dear to My Heart would be “about 90 per cent live action. In that one, Walt will resort to cartoons only when nature can’t provide his needs,” AMPAS. According to David R. Smith of the Walt Disney Archives, a script dated December 28, 1945, seems not to allow for animation, but other scripts, from October 1945 and March 9, 1946, clearly do provide for animated inserts, and a budget for the film dated February 25, 1946, includes cartoon sequences. Smith to author, e-mail, October 25, 2005.
13. The contract, dated June 24, 1946, does not mention So Dear to My Heart by name, referring only to “four (4) feature length, colored motion pictures,” but it is clear from 1946 correspondence between RKO and Roy Disney that So Dear to My Heart was always envisioned as one of the four, RKO.
14. Card Walker, interview with Hubler, July 2, 1968, BU/RH.
15. Leonard Maltin, The Disney Films (New York, 1973), 89. Live-action filming for So Dear to My Heart began on April 30, 1946, and continued until August 23, 1946. It resumed on February 5, 1947, and continued until March 28, 1947. Filming was at the studio April 30–May 23 and August 6–23, 1946, and in 1947. The rest of the film was shot on location, primarily at Porterville. David R. Smith to author, e-mail, July 26, 2006.
16. Bob Thomas, “Disney Talks of Plans,” Los Angeles Herald-Express, September 16, 1955, AMPAS.
17. Those negotiations were reflected in the RKO file labeled “Disney/Special Negotiations” as of 1988, RKO. Bob Thomas, Walt Disney, 239 (see ch. 1, n. 40), says that “Hughes tired of running the film company and offered to give it outright to the Disneys, along with a $10,000,000 bank-credit line, but there was a catch: RKO had incurred heavy liabilities during its decline. After a meeting with Hughes to discuss the offer, Walt told Roy, ‘We’ve already got a studio—why do we need another one?’ ” There was no record of such an offer in RKO’s Disney-related files in 1988.
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