by Bob Thomas
Afterward, he seemed to bear no bitterness toward most of the strikers, and some of them achieved important positions in the company in later years. But Walt could not forgive the animator who had mouthed inflammatory remarks through the loudspeaker. The government said the man had to be reinstated, but Walt refused to talk to him, and the striker left the studio after a couple of years.
The 1941 strike had a profound effect on Walt, shading his attitude toward politics and his relations with his employees. He was pushed further toward conservatism and anti-communism. And he suffered disillusion in his plan to make the Disney studio a worker’s paradise. The noonday volleyball games continued, but the snack shop in the Animation Building was closed. Workers now had to sign in and out on a timeclock. Never again would the studio’s creative people know the same free, intimate relationship with Walt that had existed in the studio during its formative years.
The South American trip had been suggested by John Hay (Jock) Whitney, director of the motion-picture division for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Nelson Rockefeller. Whitney had argued that the government’s Good Neighbor Policy could be furthered if Walt Disney and his artists visited South America to demonstrate the artistic side of the United States culture. The need was urgent, said Whitney. Many Germans and Italians had settled in South America, and there was strong sentiment for the Axis powers. Although the United States was not at war in mid-1941, it supported the Allies and feared the spread of Nazi and Fascist sentiment in countries of the western hemisphere.
“A goodwill tour?” said Walt. “I’m no good at that. I can’t do it.”
“Then would you go down there and make some pictures?” Whitney asked.
“Well, yes, I’d like to do that,” Walt replied. “I’d feel better about going to really do something, instead of just shaking hands.”
But the decision wasn’t entirely his own. With the Disney company’s finances in straitened circumstances, the Bank of America exercised a benevolent, supervisory influence on major decisions. Starting in 1936, the bank established a revolving line of credit with Walt Disney Productions, lending money on need and receiving in return all revenues from RKO’s distribution of the Disney films (all receipts from licensing of cartoon characters went directly to the company). By 1940, Disney had borrowed $2,000,000 in 5-percent demand notes from the Bank of America. In 1941, the total had reached $3,400,000, hence the bankers were eyeing Walt’s future projects with greater care.
“How do we know Walt can make anything out of South America?” asked one of the bankers. “How do we know that it might not turn out to be one of those propaganda things that won’t make a dime in the theaters?”
The U.S. government made up for the bankers’ reluctance. Jock Whitney reported to Walt that the government would underwrite the tour expenses up to $70,000 and would guarantee him $50,000 apiece for at least four, perhaps five, films based on the South American trip, the moneys to be returned if the films made a profit in theatrical release. With the studio strike dragging on into the summer of 1941, Walt decided to go.
He picked his traveling staff with care, asking each person individually and then assembling the entire group in his office and designating duties like a field general before battle. Norm Ferguson would be the producer-director. Webb Smith, Bill Cottrell and Ted Sears would develop stories. Jack Miller, Jimmy Bodrero and a married couple, Lee and Mary Blair, would help conceive the characters. Chuck Wolcott was in charge of music. Herb Ryman, an artist formerly with MGM, would study the landscapes, buildings, people. Larry and Janet Lansburgh would work on animals and characterizations. Frank Thomas would collaborate with Fergie on animation. Jack Cutting, who had traveled in South America, would check on authenticity and advise on the foreign-language versions. John Rose would handle administrative matters.
The expedition of seventeen—Bill Cottrell and Walt were accompanied by their wives—left Los Angeles on August 17, 1941. They flew across the country on a DC-3, which stopped for fuel and press conferences in Fort Worth, Nashville and Jacksonville. The plane lacked air conditioning, and at each stop cold air was pumped into the cabin. It soon dissipated after takeoff, and the passengers sweltered until the plane reached a cooler altitude. The cross-country trip to Miami required twenty-four hours, and the company stopped overnight at a resort hotel, then flew across the Caribbean in a Pan American Stratocruiser. The travelers realized the closeness of the war when the plane landed at British islands during nighttime; the cabin’s curtains had to be drawn, and the runways were unlighted. Luggage was carefully examined at each airport.
The first stop on the South American continent was Belem, at the mouth of the Amazon, where the group visited a zoo and stayed overnight. Then on to Rio de Janeiro, where the work began. Walt told the American ambassador that he and his people were in Brazil to work and he wanted to limit the social events.
Jock Whitney had arrived in Rio to help with the arrangements, and the Disney group was entertained by President Vargas at a lavish dinner. The days were full, with visits to farms, zoos, schools, art galleries and beaches to absorb the color and customs. Then to night clubs and festivals to see the dancing and hear the native music. After three weeks, the troupe moved on to Buenos Aires, where Whitney again assisted in relations with the government. Disney headquarters were established in the Alvear Palace Hotel, and a miniature studio was set up in the roof garden.
In Argentina as in Brazil, Walt Disney was lionized. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck were immensely popular, and crowds followed Walt wherever he went. He was invited to an asado, or barbecue, at a huge estancia, and the guests were outfitted in gaucho costumes. With his black hair and mustache and olive skin, Walt looked the perfect gaucho, and the Argentines were delighted.
After a month in Buenos Aires, El Groupo, as the travelers called themselves, flew over the Andes to Chile. They spent a week in there, then split up for the return home. Ryman, Miller and the Blairs flew on to visit Bolivia, Peru and Mexico; the rest took a fifteen-day boat trip back to the United States. The work of compiling the sketches, paintings, stories and music into storyboards was begun in a glassed-in section on the boat’s deck. The liner made several stops, including one at a small Colombian town where Walt and others took a steamer ride thirty miles up a river and into a rain forest. That might have been the inspiration, his companions later suspected, for Walt’s Jungle Cruise fifteen years later at Disneyland.
Walt and his party continued through the Panama Canal and landed at New York, arriving in time for the premiere of Dumbo. Then the Disneys flew home to Los Angeles for a joyful reunion with Diane and Sharon, whom they hadn’t seen in twelve weeks. Walt’s homecoming was also marked by sorrow. During his absence, Elias Disney had died. He was eighty-two years old, and he had never fully recovered from the loss of his beloved Flora. When he heard in South America the news of his father’s passing, Walt commented to a companion, “I only wish that Roy and I could have had success sooner, so we could have done more for my mother and father.”
On his return to the studio, Walt began work on the South American subjects, which were planned as a series of shorts. As the material developed, he realized that it could be developed into a feature. To the cartoons he added live-action footage of the troupe’s travels, much of it photographed by Walt himself with a 16mm camera.
The trip had proved an enormous success. The South Americans, who had been subjected to the visits of speechmaking politicians and diplomats, now realized that the United States also had people who were young and creative and down-to-earth. The Latin Americans were further complimented by the two films that resulted from the trip, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. (Walt took a staff to Mexico to research Mexican portions of the latter film.) A New York critic called Saludos Amigos “at once a potent piece of propaganda and a brilliant job of picture-making.” The films were successes in both the Americas, and, as Walt pointed out later, “the government never lost a nickel on them—we paid
for our own trip and the pictures, too.”
ON the afternoon of December 7, 1941, Walt Disney answered the telephone at his Los Feliz home. The studio manager told him, “Walt, the studio police just phoned me; the Army is moving in on us.”
Still shocked by the news that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor, Walt asked what he meant. “The Army—five hundred soldiers,” said the manager. “They told me they’re moving in.”
“What did you tell them?” Walt asked.
“I said I’d have to call you.”
“What did they say to that?”
“They said, ‘Go ahead and call him—we’re moving in, anyway.’”
The soldiers commandeered the Disney sound stage, ordered the film equipment removed, and installed gear for repairing trucks and anti-aircraft guns. An officer remarked that the stage was ideal because it could be used during a blackout. Next the Army claimed the employee parking sheds and used them for storing three million rounds of ammunition. Military police were posted at each gate, and all Disney workers, including Walt and Roy, were fingerprinted and given identification badges to wear at all times. Artists doubled up in rooms of the Animation Building so the soldiers would have places to sleep.
The Army unit, which supported anti-aircraft installations in the mountains around Los Angeles, remained at the studio for eight months. It moved out when fears of a Japanese attack on the mainland were over, but other military personnel moved in. The Disney studio had converted to war.
The studio had already been preparing for its wartime role before Pearl Harbor. Walt wanted to prove that he could make training films, and in March 1941 he enlisted the help of a project method engineer from nearby Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, George W. Papen. Working in his free time, Papen assisted in preparing a film, Four Methods of Flush Riveting. It was so effective that Lockheed used it to instruct the flood of new aircraft workers. Canadian officials studied it and were convinced that Disney could help their war effort. The studio was commissioned to supply four shorts to promote sales of war savings certificates and stamps and another to instruct recruits on use of the Boys’ anti-tank gun.
Shortly after the United States entered the war, Walt received a telephone call from the Navy Bureau of Aeronautics in Washington. The officer said the Navy wanted twenty short films on aircraft identification, the first ones to be delivered in ninety days, the remainder within six months. “The budget is eighty thousand dollars,” he said. “Can you do it?” Walt said he thought he could. “Okay, Mr. Disney, if you consider this a contract, we have a recording of this conversation. Go right ahead. We will send a man out in three weeks.”
When Walt hung up the telephone, he realized that he had no recording of the conversation to give him evidence of the contract. But he went ahead with the project, gathering all the information he could find on aircraft identification. When the adviser arrived from Washington, he was surprised to see the studio had prepared exactly what was needed. The twenty films were completed at a cost of $72,000—$8,000 under the allotment, but not enough to take care of contingencies and to provide a profit.
More orders for films came to the Disney studio: from the Navy for Aircraft Carrier Landing Signals; from the Agriculture Department for Food Will Win the War; from the Army for a film to indoctrinate airplane spotters in the WEFT system (wings, engine, fusilage, tail). The studio produced Chicken Little, an anti-Nazi film showing the evils of mass hysteria; Education for Death, depicting how German youth were converted into Nazis; and Defense Against Invasion, promoting immunization against disease. The orders came in such volume that Walt and Roy were forced to reconsider the direction of the company. With the market for cartoon features at its lowest point and the studio staff facing depletion by the draft, it seemed prudent to cut back on features, except for Bambi, which was still making tedious progress. Walt abandoned preparations for Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan and shut down animation on Wind in the Willows. A favorite studio legend concerns the animator who was assigned to Wind in the Willows, departed to serve in the Army, then returned four years later to resume animating the same sequence in the same film.
Walt was stimulated by the challenge of interpreting complex subjects in a compelling and enlightening way. He applied his skill to explaining bombsights and factory methods with the same zeal that he had to recounting the exploits of Mickey Mouse and Snow White. His technique was demonstrated in story-conference notes of May 24, 1942, for a subject to be called The Winged Scourge. The film was being made for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Nelson Rockefeller, and the storyboard showed a lecturer on malaria prevention being interrupted by the Seven Dwarfs.
The film is basically to tell people how to get rid of mosquitoes. The only reason to bring the dwarfs in is to add a little interest; when you get into gags and impossible things, you’re not accomplishing the job we’re supposed to do—show in a simple way how to get rid of mosquitoes.
The idea as I saw it was we’d talk the picture and after you’ve explained everything and emphasized the importance of getting rid of the mosquito—it’s a serious thing—then, to get relief a bit, we’d go into the operation of the thing, pep up the ending by taking seven ordinary citizens. The narrator says, “It’s not a difficult task—we’re selecting seven people at random.” Then we show them it’s the dwarfs…we take each dwarf and he goes about his work, does it as it’s supposed to be done. Maybe it’s Dopey spreading the oil…let him be cute, but don’t go into these gags.
Where you’d get your interest—we’d throw it to the music. Digging the ditch…with a scythe he’s butting the weeds….Dopey’s getting the crankcase oil, he goes up and gets this old oil and comes on off and sprays it over the thing, just doing the business, but he’s doing it in rhythm. Nothing they’ll laugh at to beat hell, but something to listen to. It’s a serious problem, but we are showing how simple it is. Even Dopey can do it….
The demand for war films continued, and the Disney studio, which had previously been averaging 30,000 feet of completed film a year, now was producing 300,000 feet a year. The greatly increased volume was accomplished by a smaller staff working longer hours. Walt wrote to a friend: “For some time now, the studio has been working on a six-day basis with two nights of overtime each week. However, I have learned that if this is continued over a certain period of time, the efficiency of the personnel is impaired, so we have set a limit of fifty-four hours per week. A mental fatigue results in this particular type of work and although we are doing our best to combat it, we must get our Government films out as needed.”
The draft had taken one-third of Walt’s artists, and he worried whether he could continue his output with a depleted staff. Navy and Army officers attached to the studio offered to make representations to draft boards. Walt suggested: “Let’s bring the draft-board members over here. They think we’re just making Mickey Mouse. We’ll show them what else we’re doing.” When draft-board members discovered they had to be cleared by Army and Navy intelligence as well as the FBI, and then could not enter certain areas because of top-security work, their attitudes changed. So vital was the Disney war work that drafted employees were sent back to the studio in uniform to resume their work.
Some of the Disney workers chose to stay at the studio, others did not. One of those who left was Card Walker, who had come up through the ranks and in early 1942 was a unit manager in cost control on the short subjects. Walker visited Walt’s office and told of his intention to join the Navy. At first Walt argued that the young man possessed valuable knowledge that was essential to the studio’s war work. “Well, Walt,” said Walker, “I feel very emotional about it; I just want to get into the war.” Walt paused and admitted that he envied Walker. Walt reminisced about his own experience with the ambulance corps in France, and he concluded, “You’re a lucky guy; I’d like to go myself.”
It wasn’t easy for Walt to adjust to sharing his studio with outsiders. Not only did the armed forces and federal offi
cials have the run of the place; Lockheed Aircraft also occupied space for manufacturing. The wartime invasion extended even to Walt’s private office. An admiral requested a rush project, a film about Rules of the Nautical Road. The admiral didn’t have authorization as yet, but the film was urgently needed to instruct new navigators. The author of a book on navigation, a Navy commander, arrived at the Disney studio. Since the commander had no place to stay, Walt volunteered his own small bedroom off his studio office. The commander stayed for months, washing and hanging up his laundry in Walt’s bathroom. The film was completed before the Navy came through with an appropriation.
Walt made frequent trips to Washington for dealings with the government. When he couldn’t get a hotel reservation, he sat through several performances in a movie house in order to get some rest. During one of the Washington trips, he met with Frank Capra, the director who had convinced Harry Cohn that Columbia Pictures should release Mickey Mouse. Capra had joined the Army Signal Corps, and he complained to Walt, “I’ve got to get out of Washington. I can’t make pictures here. Have you got any room at the studio?” Walt agreed to give him space, and Capra moved in, assembled a staff and borrowed artists and facilities from the studio to prepare the series called Why We Fight. The Capra unit was not funded until later.
Business relations between the Disney studio and the government were chaotic. At the beginning of the war, the Disney board of directors voted to donate the studio’s services at cost, as its contribution to the war effort. Government bookkeepers could neither understand nor permit this, and they insisted on paying cost plus a small profit, thus permitting the government to question all expenditures. The accountants couldn’t fathom the workings of the movie business. They demanded to know why a crew should be paid for standing by between projects. Walt tried to explain that he had to maintain his staff so he could undertake a new project when it appeared. Wrangles over financing continued more than two years after the war.