Walt Disney by The Editors of New Word City

Author:The Editors of New Word City [The Editors of New Word City]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HISTORY / General
ISBN: 9781612305615
Publisher: New Word City, LLC
Published: 2013-03-11T16:00:00+00:00

Strike One

After the disappointments of Pinocchio and Fantasia, Disney needed an infusion of cash. Walt also put his fourth animated feature, Dumbo, into production. It told the relatively simple story of a circus elephant who can fly and was intended to be a low-budget way for the studio to regain its financial footing. Instead, it sparked a conflict that forever changed both Disney and his studio.

During the 1930s, the American labor movement had grown enormously, and the film industry, like all industries, was a target. In 1938, the Screen Cartoonists’ Guild was formed, and most animation studios quickly signed agreements with the union. Disney was a holdout; he believed he treated his animators well and paid them fairly. This position was far from unanimous.

Though his public persona was the warm, beaming Uncle Walt, Disney was a perfectionist with a temper who was known to reduce people to cinders. His demeanor could veer suddenly from camaraderie to disdain, and he insisted on having the last word on almost everything. As one artist complained, “By the time you got your ideas back from Walt, you wouldn’t recognize them as your own. He absorbed and digested everything. In the end, the production was all his.” Animator Ward Kimball painted a softer portrait of Disney, saying, “In all honesty, I think he was so wrapped up in his work he didn’t realize he was pissing people off and embarrassing them.”

Salaries and bonuses were decided at Disney’s whim, and there were wide disparities in pay among people with similar jobs. In addition, animators got little or no public recognition for their work. Even Ub Iwerks was so frustrated by the lack of credit and Disney’s autocratic management style that he quit to start his own studio (he later returned to the Disney fold).

Against all this evidence, Disney continued to present himself as a paternalistic, benevolent leader who ran his business as a haven for creativity and innovation. “It’s my nature to be democratic,” he told his employees just before his labor problems ignited. “I want to be just a guy working in this plant - which I am. When I meet people in the hall, I want to be able to speak to them and have them speak to me and say ‘hello’ with a smile. I can’t work under any other conditions . . . And, fellows, I take my hat off to results only.”

Many of Disney’s most talented animators joined the Screen Cartoonists’ Guild, including Art Babbitt, who became its in-house leader. Disney accused Babbitt of rallying his staff against him, called him “a troublemaker and a Bolshevik,” and fired him.

The next day - May 29, 1941 – Disney’s animators went on strike. Production on Dumbo came to a near halt as both sides clung to their positions. Disney refused to negotiate and, in a fit of pique, ordered the remaining Dumbo animators to caricature the strikers as circus clowns who try to “hit the big boss for a raise.” Infuriated by the strike, Disney’s already conservative political views took a sharp turn to the right.

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