The Magic Kingdom by Steven Watts

Author:Steven Watts
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Missouri Press

Part IV

Disney and the American Century

15

Cold War Fantasies

I LIVE WITH A GENIUS,” Lillian Disney's warm description of domestic life with her famous husband, was advertised on the cover of McCall's in February 1953. Right next to it sat another blaring headline, which created a neat ideological tableau. The dramatic title of the second article, “Stalin and His Three Wives: A Private-Life Expose,” promised a lurid account of the evil Communist dictator's private licentiousness. This vivid juxtaposition of the American icon of decency and the immoral Russian dictator highlighted the backdrop for Disney's revitalized cultural role—the long, intense confrontation with communism during the Cold War.1

Hints of this international atmosphere cropped up repeatedly in Disney Studio productions and activities during the 1950s. At the apocalyptic ending of Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1954), for example, a rolling mushroom cloud marked the mad Captain Nemo's explosive destruction of his island headquarters. In The Shaggy Dog, a goofy comedy released late in the decade, the plot revolved around the misadventures of atomic spies out to steal government missile plans. That same year, 1959, a circular movie theater developed by Walt Disney stood as an important part of an exhibition of American consumer goods in Moscow—the scene of the famous “kitchen debate” between Vice President Richard Nixon and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev.2

Disney himself had provided clear evidence of a Cold War preoccupation some years earlier. In the autumn of 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee went to Hollywood to hold hearings on Communist influence in moviemaking. This controversial maneuver was a culmination of the Hollywood red scare that had welled up in the aftermath of World War II, fully backed (perhaps even instigated) by the influential conservative group the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals. A parade of friendly witnesses—they included Sam Wood, Adolphe Menjou, Robert Montgomery, Gary Cooper, and Ronald Reagan—testified before HUAC about their knowledge of Communist influence in the production of movies. The last cooperative witness appeared on the afternoon of October 24. It was Walt Disney.3

His testimony proved revealing. Speaking as a producer and studio chief, he assured HUAC that although everyone in his organization was now “100 percent American,” that had not always been the case. The 1941 strike at his studio had been inspired by Communists and supported by “Commie front organizations,” while “throughout the world all of the Commie groups began smear campaigns against me and my pictures.” Communism, he told HUAC, had proved to be “an un-American thing” whose unscrupulous agents infiltrated well-meaning groups of “100 percent Americans” and subverted them. As he concluded passionately, “I feel that they really ought to be smoked out and shown up for what they are.”4

Thus the Cold War, with its powerful national and international pressures, provided a compelling context for Disney's 1950s productions. Early in the decade, a great revival saw animated movies, live-action films, nature documentaries, and amusement parks pour out of the Burbank studio to be embraced by an enthusiastic public. While the Cold

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