In 1940 Nelson Rockefeller wrote a memorandum to President Roosevelt expressing fear that the United States would lose its dominance politically and economically in the hemisphere because not enough was being done to secure interests in Latin America. Trade between Axis powers and Latin America was considerable, with platinum, copper, and cotton all being sent to Europe. There was also concern about securing the Panama Canal and its strategic link between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. In response, FDR formed the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (OCIAA), with Rockefeller at its helm, overseeing a new era of cooperation, propaganda, and securing key trade interests. The office’s work was not solely for wartime but was meant to extend far into the future.
One of the OCIAA’s earliest endeavors was to flood Latin American countries with U.S. culture, disseminating movies, magazines, and advertising, and even sending celebrities below the equator. It then tightened its grip on news sources. Newsprint was in short supply during the war, and the United States as well as countries in Latin America relied almost exclusively on imports from Canada. With most newspapers reduced in size due to rationing, the OCIAA was able to suppress unfavorable printed sentiment about the United States by supplying paper rag only to those sources friendly to its interests. Intelligence gathering also intensified, as the need for keeping abreast of political and economic changes was paramount.
Sending Walt Disney and his crew of merry artists on a tour of South America was just one facet of a many-layered plan to snatch control of the continent out of the hands of Nazi Germany. The Roosevelt administration imagined that the trip would yield new feature films celebrating Latin America, leading to closer diplomatic ties, and therefore offered not only to pay travel expenses but also to underwrite the films that resulted and even give Walt a guarantee on them: if the studio didn’t recoup its expenses after they were released, the federal government would pay for them. This was all Walt needed to hear. An escape hatch for his financial problems had magically appeared at just the right time.
Almost immediately after she resigned, Mary regretted her decision. Lee, along with a small group of artists, had been chosen to accompany Walt on his tour of South America. Mary was consumed with jealousy. If only I hadn’t quit, she thought, I could have been going on this adventure. Lee shook his head, but Mary’s father had an idea. “Well, Mary,” he said, “why don’t you get yourself fixed up and go over to the studio and make an appointment with Mr. Disney and tell him that you want to go too?” Mary liked the advice, and she walked into Walt’s office and, with genuine humility, asked if she could accompany her husband. Walt said yes, and he also put her back on the payroll; Mary left the office in raptures. She was an employee again and about to embark on her first overseas journey.
As the buses lined up for Walt and his select group of artists to leave, some loyal employees gathered outside to wave goodbye wistfully to the group. Sylvia was there, sitting on the steps as Walt came out of the building. He stopped in front of her. “Aren’t you going?” he asked.
“No, I wasn’t invited” was Sylvia’s meek reply.
“You’re not going?” Walt said, genuinely surprised. There had evidently been some mix-up, although Sylvia would never get an explanation. She watched them go, wishing she were part of their group and jealous of the travel and experiences that awaited them.
International travel was not common for Americans in the early 1940s, and so the novelty of the trip tickled their curiosity. The team consisted of eighteen people, including Walt and his wife, Lillian, and was dominated by members of the story department, among them Lee and Mary Blair. There was only one animator, Frank Thomas, and one musician, Chuck Wolcott. They were all young; even Walt was a fresh-faced thirty-nine-year-old with only a few wrinkles, perhaps from recent stress, on his smooth forehead.
In 1941, few aircraft could make an extended cross-country flight. Because of this, Walt and his artists hopped from city to city, going through Fort Worth, Nashville, and Jacksonville before landing in Miami. They left Miami in a Pan American seaplane and flew to San Juan, Puerto Rico. From there, they flew to the small town of Belém, Brazil, then on to Rio de Janeiro.
Globalization had not yet shrunk the world and so everything they encountered was new to them. They had never tasted the sweet tartness of the guava fruit or the rich heartiness of feijoada, a black bean stew. They had never seen fashion like that worn in Brazil, with its bright colors and beaded jewelry. Yet of all these experiences, it was the music that mesmerized them the most. In Rio, the artists heard a live samba for the first time. Its pulse-like rhythm, with origins in Angola and the West African slave trade, was part of the Brazilian cultural identity. Mary Blair wore an orchid behind her ear as she moved to the claves and drums pounding out the rhythm, her exhilaration building as she twirled around the floor. The samba held so much energy that the group stayed up all night dancing, heading back to their hotel only as the stars faded into the brightening sky.
Walt stayed at the opulent Copacabana Palace, its pearly stone façade mere steps from its namesake white-sand beach, while the rest of the artists stayed at the Hotel Gloria, located in a middle-class neighborhood of the city. The place suited them well, for while Walt visited with President Getúlio Vargas and assorted foreign dignitaries, his days packed with parties and dinners, the artists were free to explore. They spent their time strolling the streets of curved mosaic tile, sitting at outdoor cafés, and sketching the sharp profile of Sugarloaf Mountain against Guanabara Bay. The country was energetic and vibrant, and their sketches were inspired by the heartbeat-like tempo of the samba, colors exploding across their landscapes. Mary felt unprecedented freedom in her sketching, painting a macaw parrot in contrasting vertical stripes of bright pink and yellow, a bow tie around its neck.
One night the group sat around the lobby in their formal dinner attire, and a steward called out, “El Grupo… El Grupo Disney.” They all laughed at the moniker that described them so well and insisted on using the name for the rest of their trip. That evening they were ushered to the Cassino da Urca, a luxurious casino where Carmen Miranda had performed before she left for fame on Broadway and in Hollywood. Tonight the ballroom was decorated with items from Fantasia, and the stage glittered as musicians and dancers gave the audience a taste of Carnaval, the largest pre-Lent celebration in the world.
Contrasting with the cultural delights and raw beauty of Brazil was the news coming from home. Without access to newspapers in English, the group had become somewhat insulated—a welcome respite. Still, letters and telegrams told them that the studio had been completely shut down due to the strike. As of this moment, the members of El Grupo were Walt’s only working artists, and they were far from home. Back in Burbank, the beautiful new offices, filled with hundreds of desks, stood empty and silent.
Walt and El Grupo closed their eyes to the studio’s miseries as they flew to their next stop, Buenos Aires, Argentina, where they would spend a month of their three-month trip. This time they stayed together at the Alvear Palace Hotel and converted a large penthouse space there into a miniature studio filled with storyboards, a Moviola, and easels with sketchbooks. On an adjoining open terrace, they hosted folk dancing and folk music, with Walt delighting in the malambo, a rhythmic step dance originated by gauchos, South American cowboys.
With the studio closed in Burbank, some of the travelers felt that, artistically, nothing was waiting for them back home. They dreaded returning to their workplace and its troubles. A dawning realization that their futures might very well lie in the success of their current endeavor spurred them to embrace the culture surrounding them. They explored the city and countryside, making new friends and creating art.
One morning they drove two hours to a ranch in the small town of El Carmen, Argentina, where long tables were set up in the center of a blossoming peach orchard in preparation for an asado, or outdoor barbecue. Mary drank cocktails in the early afternoon with the rest of El Grupo as they wait
ed for Walt to emerge in traditional gaucho clothing, complete from esporas, spurs, on his boots to a bright red lenço, a scarf, tied around his neck. The afternoon was relaxed as they listened to live music and later watched Walt riding a horse in front of a spirited crowd of Argentine artists. There was a dreamy, unreal quality to the afternoon that seeped into the sketches Mary later drew of gauchos and horses, the colors of her paintings often at odds with reality.
As happens to many travelers, Mary discovered her own sense of self in South America. The trip completely altered the course of her artistic life. She found her palette while traveling, creating shades and contrasting colors that would forever become part of her identity and her art. Before Mary left on the goodwill tour, her watercolors had occasionally been confused with those of her husband, Lee. After she returned, her work was never again mistaken for another artist’s.
Mary perceived her role at the studio differently as well. She was no longer an outsider, allowed through the studio doors only because of her husband. The trip had made her one of Walt’s inner circle and given her a higher appreciation for the artistry that drove their animation. As the studio’s value was rising in her opinion, Walt was gaining new appreciation for Mary. The colors and sketches she developed on the trip were like nothing he had seen before. She would brazenly place reds and pinks next to one another, then throw in eccentric patterns that few other artists would dare combine. Her portraits were moving, especially those that captured the sweet innocence of children. Walt was transfixed. He had a new favorite artist.
Lee watched Walt’s increasing partiality to his wife with a wary eye. This, after all, was supposed to be his trip; Mary had had to plead to come along. Jealousy welled within him. It was uncommon for a wife’s talent to be prized over her husband’s, and the experience made Lee feel slighted, even though he continued to adore Mary.
From Argentina, the group split up—some people took a plane across the Andes to La Paz, Bolivia, others traveled to northern Argentina, and those individuals who feared altitude sickness headed west to Santiago, Chile. The plane that flew to La Paz, passing over the snow-covered mountains at eighteen thousand feet, was not pressurized, so the artists were surprised to learn that not only could they not smoke, but they had to be prepared to use the red tubes positioned in front of their seats for oxygen intake if they became woozy.
After the plane landed in La Paz, Mary suffered from altitude sickness, but she didn’t want to waste time resting. Instead, she explored her surroundings armed with pencils and a sketchbook before embarking on a bumpy llama ride. Next they were off on a boat trip across the wide blue waters of Lake Titicaca. The adventures were exhausting, but Mary had no intention of slowing down.
Walt and his wife took the SS Santa Clara back to New York, but Mary, Lee, and several of the other artists kept going. They toured small towns in Peru and then made their way to the capital city of Lima. After that, they flew to Mexico City, where they attended a bullfight, and then finally hopped planes back to California. The world they were returning home to, however, would feel as foreign as the countries they had just traveled through.
Chapter 8
You’re in the Army Now
The strike lasted all summer. Sylvia, who was not part of the group that went to South America during the shutdown, bore the scars of the experience. In July, she learned that the arbitrators negotiating with studio executives would increase pay only for those employees striking; those remaining loyal to the company would receive no salary increase. It was difficult to even talk about the situation with her colleagues. A memo sent by Roy Disney on July 24, 1941, stated, “Any discussions of union activities or infractions of established company rules on company property during working hours will be considered cause for immediate dismissal.” Sylvia doodled unhappily on the back of the pink memo, feeling wary and tense about her future.
Tumult continued both inside and outside the studio walls in late July as the remaining employees hatched a plan to stage their own walkout. Soon, however, negotiations fell apart once again. Sylvia kept working, and despite the tension, she found moments of creative freedom. Her former director on Fantasia had long been a thorn in her side, taking credit for her work, trying to keep her away from Walt, and editing her sketches with a heavy hand. Now, the strike had carried him away, and Sylvia felt relief at his absence.
Before Walt left for his South American tour, he had called Sylvia into his office and charged her with writing her own script. It was a sign that she was advancing rapidly and might soon be given even more responsibility. While she might have preferred the excitement of the goodwill tour, her adaptation of The Little Mermaid was providing plenty of interesting challenges. Like much of the studio’s original source material, the tale was dark. In it, the youngest daughter of the widowed sea king falls in love with a prince. Longing to be human, she makes a deal with an evil sea witch, trading her voice and tongue for a pair of legs. In the original story, the legs she receives are incredibly painful. Each step she takes with them is as excruciating as stepping on the blade of a knife and has a similar effect, as her magical appendages bleed. The ending is not a happy one. The prince marries a neighboring princess, and the little mermaid must choose between slitting his throat or evaporating into the oblivion of sea foam. Ultimately she spares the prince’s life and dies. However, instead of becoming sea foam, she ends up in purgatory, which she can escape if she performs good deeds for three hundred years. Only then can she earn a spot in the kingdom of heaven among the humans.
Peeling away the ominous elements of the story, Sylvia recognized its raw potential. She had begun the adaptation while Walt was still in town, but in his absence she delved further into the mix of tragedy and romance. Her storyboard and script focused on the plight of the little mermaid, who is nameless in the original story and who Sylvia believed deserved a happier ending. Right from the beginning she felt strongly that music would be essential to the film. She proposed that the opening scenes be choreographed to a symphony that would lead the camera deeper and deeper into the sea, past fish and sea creatures, straight to the sea king’s majestic palace.
The thrill that these moments of inspiration gave Sylvia were not to last. On August 15, 1941, without being given any notice or pay, Sylvia learned that the studio was shut down. She drove to the studio anyway and stood openmouthed as she looked at the empty parking lot where a thousand cars had once lined up in neat rows. She was filled with despair. Her children depended on her and she felt as though her life was a constant struggle to give them the stability they needed. But no matter how hard she worked and despite the progress she had seemed to be making, everything kept falling apart. She had finally had the freedom to write a script, had shaken off an annoying director, and even received a raise. Now it was all gone.
Perhaps most frustrating to her was the studio’s inability to explain to its employees what was happening. She was released from employment in the shutdown, but she had no idea what that would mean and whether she’d be able to return to work. She knew only that no paycheck was coming her way.
On September 12, 1941, although Walt was still in South America, a settlement was finally reached. A full-time employee would receive a doubled salary, and the studio would take a more equitable approach to screen credits. These benefits, however, came at a cost. As part of the agreement with union leaders, the majority of studio employees would be laid off; half of the laid-off employees would be strikers and half non-strikers. Sylvia felt the injustice keenly. She waited, hoping she would be one of the lucky ones brought back inside the studio walls.
Walt was no longer truly in charge. Because the studio was so deeply in debt to Bank of America, the bankers were pulling the strings. Dumbo was completed and Bambi nearly there. The non-striking studio employees had been working long hours in Walt’s absence to finish the films. Walt could not afford to start production on another feature—apart from the South American projects, which were subsidized by th
e government—particularly in the midst of war. Yet he might have kept some staff on to work on future projects, anticipating the need for scripts and storyboards in the years ahead. Instead, in the changed atmosphere, the studio chose to keep only a skeleton crew of 288 artists to work on the South American features and shorts. The other 1,200 artists were told they were temporarily laid off, but they were given no guarantees of future employment.
The beautiful Burbank studio was altered as well. Half the animation building was closed, its spacious interior unnecessary for the small number of artists remaining. The rest of the studio was handed over to the Lockheed Corporation, an American aircraft manufacturer preparing for the country’s seemingly inevitable involvement in the global conflict. The paths, trees, and lawns, once a lush landscape in which employees could stop and rest, were now blocked off by barbed wire and security guards.
Sylvia had not been one of the small crew of artists kept on at the studio. As the weeks turned into months, she gave up hope of ever returning to the work she loved. She needed money and could no longer wait for a job that might be permanently gone. Even with her experience and skill, however, Sylvia couldn’t find a job at another studio. There were more than a thousand animation employees freshly on the market, all of them looking for work. And most studios in town were uninterested in hiring women for story and animation departments, no matter the women’s qualifications. For Sylvia, the well of opportunity had run dry.
She found a job at the Desert Sun School in Idyllwild, California, an elite preparatory school for grades one through nine. Offering a resort-like campus and a wealth of activities, the school attracted the children of celebrities; over the years, Frank Sinatra, Peter Sellers, Fred Astaire, and the Lockheed family all sent their children to the educational institution. Sylvia’s employment there had an added benefit: her children could attend at a reduced rate.
The Queens of Animation Page 14