So, today on the podcast, we have a stand-alone episode, a self-contained story that also relates

to our ongoing series about Mary Blair. Last week in part six of our series on Mary Blair,

we looked at the Disney Strike, a pivotal event that deeply changed the studio and many of those

who worked there.

To understand the development of the Disney studio in the 1930s and 1940s, I would say that

there are four key events to keep in mind.

The Great Depression, the War, the shift from a privately owned company to a public company

with stock, and the animator's strike of 1941.

Mary Blair wasn't deeply involved in the strike, as we talked about last time.

She had been at the Disney studio for just over a year when it began.

Also, she neither deeply involved herself with the union nor

with those opposed to the strike. So in terms of the life story of Mary Blair, we didn't

deeply explore the strike in our series about her, as it wasn't a large factor of her professional

or personal development.

She quit the studio in June two weeks after the strike started, only to be rehired near the end of the summer.

But I did want to touch down a little more on the strike, as it is a key event that defines the studio during the lifetime of Walt.

Back when I was writing the biography of animator Ward Kimball,

I also created four standalone narrative articles about substantial events in Ward's life,

particularly cold from the material that I was arranging for that book.

In some ways, the articles were slightly different from the material in the book, but also

there is some overlap.

Some of those articles were published, one was published and then republished two more times,

...