‘Uncle Walt’ Disney provoked 1941 strike

Bill Knight column for Thurs., Fri., or Sat., Dec. 28, 29 or 30

After Walt Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” opened 80 years ago this month, the box-office hit encouraged Disney to build a $2 million studio in Burbank, Calif., but before moving into the new facility in 1940, many of the 800-some animators who’d drawn more than 130,000 individual celluloid frames for “Snow White” became angry at their wages, hours and working conditions.

The “Magic Kingdom” was Disney’s kingdom; any feeling of magic escaped animators, some of whom worked for $12 a week, lousy pay even then.

“The fantasy lands animators create bear little resemblance to the conditions under which these artists worked,” wrote Tom Sito, author of “Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson.”

“Anonymous animators routinely toiled in dark, cramped working environments for long hours and low pay,” said Sito, the former president of the Hollywood Animation Guild whose 2006 book is considered the best account of the 1941 Disney strike.

Technological advances in the 1930s moved animation from the obscure to the ordinary, but labor relations hadn’t progressed at Disney. In that decade, the American Art Union struck Fleischer (makers of Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons), which led to the formation of the Screen Cartoonists Guild. It then negotiated contracts with MGM, Screen Gems, Walter Lantz, Terrytoons and George Pal. Warner Brothers’ Leon Schlesinger Productions (makers of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes cartoons) tried to break the union in a lockout, but that company also settled after workers didn’t cross picket lines and work stopped.

Disney set up his own company-controlled “union” and named chief animator Art Babbitt its president.

“It didn’t take long for Babbitt to realize that the Disney Federation of Screen Cartoonists was designed to keep workers from getting involved with industry-wide unionism,” said Kenneth and Mark Bergfeld in Jacobin magazine. “After one of the inkers fainted because she couldn’t afford to buy lunch, Babbitt joined [the] Screen Cartoonist’s Guild, a local of the Painters union.”

The biggest complaint was how Disney set pay.

“He played favorites, stole credit from workers, and paid different wages for the same job,” the Bergfelds said. “Wages ranged from $12 to $300 a week.”

In February of 1941, Disney addressed his work force, pleading for understanding, given personal sacrifices he said he’d made, adding, “If you're not progressing as you should, instead of grumbling and growling, do something about it.”

Workers resented that, and soon 400 out of 560 eligible animators signed union cards and voted to strike that May. In retaliation, Disney laid off dozens of workers and fired Babbitt for union activities. Hundreds walked off the job, interrupting work on the next scheduled feature, “Dumbo.” Disney refused to negotiate.

Outside Disney’s studios, animators set up “Camp Cartoonist” as strike headquarters, where picket lines were based along with a soup kitchen for strikers.

“The Disney Company's activities in disregard of National Labor Relations Board decisions, together with the other facts, make it clear that you had no other recourse than to strike your rights to bargain,” Screen Actor Magazine commented that June.

Strikers blocked trucks going to Disney and leafletted theaters. The Los Angeles Central Labor Council initiated a nationwide boycott, and animators launched a campaign that got Technicolor and British Pathe to refuse to process film and RKO to stop distributing Disney movies.

By July, the NLRB sent in a mediator.

Disney went on a “good-will mission” to Latin America, his absence let some tensions fade, and the work stoppage ended July 29 after the mediator agreed with strikers. Animators won substantial raises, back pay for strikers, reinstatement of discharged workers, recognition of the union, and a management-labor committee to decide future layoffs.

But for years a divide remained between strikers and the company.

“Disney was not a benevolent leader but a domineering control freak who demanded to have things his way or the workers would pay the price,” wrote Rhode Island College scholar Lisa Johnson. “This is truly how animators viewed Walt.”