[The Disney cartoonists and animators’ strike that began at a
California studio on May 29, 1941, forever changed the labor standards
of an industry — and inspired cultural workers to take greater
ownership over their labor.] [[link removed]]

80 YEARS AGO TODAY, DISNEY ANIMATION WORKERS WENT ON STRIKE  
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Paul Prescod
May 29, 2021
Jacobin
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_ The Disney cartoonists and animators’ strike that began at a
California studio on May 29, 1941, forever changed the labor standards
of an industry — and inspired cultural workers to take greater
ownership over their labor. _

Disney artists strike outside their California studio in 1941.,
Cartoon Brew

 

This wasn’t your average picket line. “It’s up to Walt to call
the halt,” read a striking worker’s picket sign beside a picture
of Mickey Mouse. Another featured an image of Pinocchio saying,
“There are no strings on me.”

Walt Disney snarled at strikers as he walked into his Burbank studio;
workers in turn hollered back. Workers that crossed the picket line
were called “finks” and “scabs,” while those on strike were
dismissed as “Commies.”

While Walt Disney’s dalliances with
[[link removed]] antisemitism
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become common knowledge in recent years, his abusive labor practices
are less widely discussed. Eighty years ago today, picket lines
destroyed the facade of the magical world of Disney. The strike by
Disney cartoonists and animators on May 29, 1941, forever changed the
labor standards of an industry — and inspired a segment of cultural
workers to take greater ownership over their labor.

“Do Something About It”

Just a few years before the strike, Walt Disney enjoyed not only
commercial success but a relatively happy workforce. _Snow White and
the Seven Dwarfs,_ which premiered in December 1937, was a box-office
smash. Disney’s work was compared to Charlie Chaplin’s in terms of
its importance for American culture.

Disney artists were among the best paid and enjoyed a familial, if
paternalistic, work environment. Disney made it a practice to share 20
percent of his profits with employees as bonuses. The studio even had
an internal art school to train its own animators. Most Disney
animators viewed themselves as a class above the rest in their field.

World War II dramatically changed the situation. In 1937, Disney
started constructing a studio in Burbank, California, financed on
credit with the assumption of continuous success. But the war
destroyed the European market for his
films. _Pinocchio _and _Fantasia _were box-office failures in
1940, and Disney was soon $4.5 million in debt.

Fantasia (1940). (Disney Animation)

He sought to recoup these losses through ramping up pressure on his
workers. The intimate, familial environment was quickly gone from the
studio in Burbank. Strict hierarchies were established, with most
benefits only going to the highest-paid and more established artists.
Most new artists did routine dull tasks and received $20 per week,
while the senior artists got to do more creative work and could make
up to $250 per week.

Workers were also forced to sign documents claiming they only worked
forty hours a week, when they in fact worked much more. And
cartoonists wanted professional screen credits for their art, as they
claimed Disney often took credit for their work.

In a 1991 interview_,_ animator Willis Pyle said of the time, “I
felt that the union was necessary because there was no rhyme or reason
as to the way the guys were paid. You might be sitting next to a guy
doing the same thing as you and you might be getting $20 a week more
or less than him.”

In January 1941, the Screen Cartoonists Guild (SCG), led by Herb
Sorrell, began meeting regularly at the Hollywood Hotel to gather
grievances and plan an organizing drive. SCG organizers felt that
organizing Disney would also help force the hand of other studio union
holdouts like MGM. Oblivious to the depths of the workers’
discontent, Walt Disney’s response only further strengthened the
unions’ position.

In February, all studio workers were called to an auditorium by
Disney. He explained that due to his debts, he couldn’t increase
wages. His artists would need to work quicker to increase their
output. This was accompanied by a condescending reminder that his
workers still had it good, as he offered training, vacations, and paid
sick time. Many of the newer employees left the meeting calling the
speech a “sob story.”

By this time, Art Babbitt, one of Disney’s top animators, was
playing a leading role in the union drive. He was responsible for
iconic Disney characters like Goofy, the evil stepmother in _Snow
White, _and Geppetto in _Pinocchio._ Previously he had been an
executive in Disney’s sham company union, the Federation of Screen
Cartoonists. Company unions such as these were often used by employers
to co-opt worker discontent and falsely claim to represent them.

Babbitt became frustrated at the inability to make change from that
position. As a more senior artist, many of the grievances didn’t
personally affect him, but he was driven by loyalty to his coworkers
and a sense of principle. Walt viewed Babbitt’s union activity as a
personal betrayal.

Art Babbitt leads a picket at the premier of The Reluctant Dragon.
(Cartoon Brew)

As the union drive gathered steam, Disney assembled all his workers
again for another lecture. He remained intransigent and reiterated his
position that anyone who wanted to advance at the company had every
opportunity to do so.

“Put your own house in order. You can’t accomplish a damn thing by
sitting around and waiting to be told everything. If you’re not
progressing as you should, instead of grumbling and growling, do
something about it,” Disney told them. Workers yet again left the
meeting furious — and even more motivated to join the Screen
Cartoonists Guild.

The last straw came when Disney fired Art Babbitt and twenty-three
other cartoonists. Union leader Herb Sorrell wanted to lay the
groundwork with more organizing before calling a strike, but the
enraged workers didn’t want to wait. The strike began on May 29,
during the production of _Dumbo_.

Only about half of the one thousand cartoonists walked out. Still, on
day one, Disney took pictures of the picket line and enlarged the
photos for workers who came into the studio. He made sure they knew
that he was aware of every individual striker and would be able to
know those that joined them in the future. Seemingly unmoved by the
workers’ escalation, he continued asserting that the workers were
already fairly represented by the company union.

Many of the workers had no experience in the labor movement and simply
didn’t understand how intense the conflict would become. Animator
Jack Kinney remembers, “those of us who crossed the picket line were
in shock. We were naive, having never been exposed to the workings of
capital and labor.”

Outside the studio building, the picket lines assumed a carnivalesque
character [[link removed]]. Cartoonists
poured their creative energy into making signs and anti-Disney puns.
Sorrell recalled in the _PM _newspaper, “It was particularly
picturesque because these artists insisted on depicting everything in
their picket lines . . . it was their duty when off the picket line to
make gags and signs.”

Picketers carry a mock guillotine, which they use to behead a Walt
Disney mannequin. (Cartoon Brew)

Solidarity poured in from other unions in the entertainment industry.
The Society of Motion Picture Film Editors supported the strike by
refusing to process Disney films at the Technicolor, Williams, and
Pathé labs. Supporting organizations such as the League of Women
Shoppers and Film Audiences for Democracy picketed theaters showing
Disney films. Cartoonists returned the solidarity to other unions, for
example making picket signs for the United Auto Workers North American
Aviation strike in Los Angeles.

As the strike wore on, Disney became increasingly bitter and viewed
the whole event as a personal assault. Despite there being very few
leftists in the SCG, Disney published a letter in _Variety _claiming
that “Communist agitation, leadership, and activities have brought
about this strike.”

An opportunity to remove himself from the strike arose when the
Rockefeller Commission for the Development of Cultural Relations with
South America made Disney a “Goodwill Ambassador,” taking him on a
tour throughout the continent. But his troubles continued. SCG
business agent Bill Pomerance reached out to the National Maritime
Union and was given contacts of all union leaders in the cities Disney
was scheduled to visit.

Pomerance sent a telegram to the US State Department saying, “Labor
organizations in South America are being contacted and arrangements
are being made to picket the Disney tour and his pictures. . . . The
State Department should insist that the Disney company comply with
American standards of fair treatment of labor . . . before permitting
Disney to represent the United States as a goodwill ambassador in
South America.”

This move forced the hand of the government’s Labor Conciliation
Service, which stepped in and called both sides to Washington, DC, to
work out an agreement. The settlement was an overall victory for the
union and included the permanent reinstatement of the twenty-four
employees fired before the strike, equalization of pay, a clear system
of salaries and classifications, and a grievance procedure.

The 1941 strike forever changed the labor standards of the animation
industry. For many of the younger artists, their salaries doubled
overnight, and a forty-hour workweek was established. From then on,
animators received screen credits for their work as well as pensions
and health insurance benefits.

Red Animators

The strike also opened up new horizons for the organization of
cultural workers and the social impact of cartoon animation. In the
wake of the strike, George Sorrell formed the Conference of Studio
Unions, which challenged the status quo of Hollywood labor by uniting
workers of various crafts.

The young animators who participated in the strike were of the
generation molded by the Great Depression. They viewed their art
through the lens of class consciousness and advancing a broader social
vision. Some of them had come together in the late 1930s in a small
Communist Party cartoonists’ group.

These radical cartoonists were heavily influenced by Soviet modernism.
David Hilberman, a Disney layout artist, studied at the Leningrad
State Theater in 1932. Left-wing John Hubley recalled in an interview,
“A Russian cartoon showed up on the Disney lot one day, brought by
Frank Lloyd Wright. It was very modern, with flat backgrounds, highly
stylized characters, modern music. It was very exciting and had a big
influence on me.”

Still from The Tale of the Czar Durandai (1934), the film that Frank
Lloyd Wright introduced to John Hubley.

Hubley outlined his ideas for radical animation at the UCLA Writers’
Congress in 1943. He proposed that animation should follow the path of
Charlie Chaplin, who “utilized essentially the same abstract
symbolism that cartoons have continually used,” but whose “stories
have been written in terms of human behavior and broad social
caricature.”

These same cartoonists mobilized as cultural workers for both the war
effort and the New Deal coalition, forming the United Productions of
America studio in 1943. In 1944, Hubley was contacted by the United
Auto Workers Education Department about producing an animated campaign
film for the 1944 presidential election. The result was _Hell-Bent
for Election_ [[link removed]]_, _which
one UAW local education director described as “very powerful . . .
in organizing and effectively working toward the re-election of
President Roosevelt.”

In preparation for Operation Dixie, the labor movement’s ambitious
push to organize the South, the UAW tapped Hubley again to work on the
fascinating animated short_ __Brotherhood of Man_
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educate working people about race as a social construct.

These initiatives were reflective of an age when upsurges in
industrial unionism imbued artistic workers with a greater sense of
their own power and social responsibility. As the culture industries
increasingly dominate everyday life under neoliberalism, this
perspective is needed now more than ever.

_PAUL PRESCOD is a high school social studies teacher and member of
the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers._

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