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Witness History

Disney animators' strike

Witness History

BBC

History, Personal Journals, Society & Culture

4.41.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 October 2022

⏱️ 9 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Walt Disney cartoonists went on strike for nine weeks in 1941. They were led by Art Babbitt, Disney’s top animator who created Goofy. The picket line was remarkable for its colourful artwork and support from Hollywood actors. The confrontation was rooted in the paranoia of the day – the infiltration of communism into American life, as Art Babbitt explains in BBC archive recordings presented by Josephine McDermott. (Photo: Art Babbitt leads Disney animators holding placards with cartoon characters at a film premiere. Credit: Kosti Ruohomaa, a former Disney worker, courtesy of Cowan-Fouts Collection)

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, this is the witness history podcast from the BBC World Service, with me, Josephine

0:10.6

McDermott. This week we're bringing you moments in history where workers have demanded

0:15.8

better rights. This programme is about the Walt Disney Animators' strike in Hollywood

0:21.2

in 1941. Disney's top cartoonist, Art Babbitt, led the fight for better pay and was interviewed

0:28.1

about it by the BBC in 1984. It was a dispute that would put him on a collision course with

0:34.5

one of the most famous men of the 20th century and change the animation industry.

0:40.5

Walt Disney was from a poor Midwestern family. He created Mickey Mouse in 1923, the character

0:50.5

that would change his life, and he built up his company with his brother Roy. In 1941,

0:58.1

Art Babbitt was Disney's top animator. He created Goofy and drew the queen in slow

1:04.4

white. Disney was revered at the studio. He liked to think of his firm as one big family

1:11.4

and the artists as his boys. It was a time when there was a national paranoia about communism

1:19.0

and the threat it posed to American law and order. Babbitt described a conversation he had

1:24.5

with Disney. Disney was an America firster. This is 150% American. You know, you cannot be

1:33.8

more patriotic and he found a communist under every bush. He called me in his office one

1:39.7

day and he says, Art, you know, my father was a socialist. I said, well, that's fine.

1:47.9

So is Mussolini and so is Hitler. In 1937, Disney released the first full-length animated

1:55.0

feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. It was a huge commercial success. It had

2:01.8

taken more than 750 artists three years to make. But the financial rewards of the film did

2:08.6

not make their way to all the workers. Tensions built, particularly among those artists who

2:14.3

were not big names, but were essential in the painstaking work where long hours were

2:19.4

required tracing and painting on celluloid sheets. Babbitt, who was one of Disney's highest-paid

2:26.4

employees, saw the work his assistant did and wanted him to have more money. I had tried

...

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