Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out (8 page)

Mouse’s Monastery, and . . . anything less than circumspect behavior while appearing on the lot would result in instant dismissal. You did not carouse, raise your voice off the set, look lecherously at a member of the opposite sex, or, in fact, indulge in any kind of hanky-panky at Disney.76

In all ways, it seemed that Disney and his studio had created a specific, carefully circumscribed concept of sexual decorum, one that upheld the American bourgeois heterosexual norm.

This is not to say that the attempt to construct this image amongst the employees at the studio always proceeded smoothly apace. In specifically mandating only one type of proper behavior for its employees, the studio was inadvertently highlighting those practices that were not to be condoned. And, in so doing, it was inevitable that various incidents would occur to challenge the image that the studio was publicly advertising. One of the earliest examples of a rebellion against this new era for the Disney studio among employees is also one of the best known. When Walt hired art school teacher Don Graham to teach animators (including some who had worked in the industry for decades) a new way to draw, many of them resented the changes and resisted. Possibly understanding that this new “illusion of life” concept was somehow tied to the crackdown on sexual humor in Disney’s car-M I C K E Y ’ S M O N A S T E RY

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toons, some animators who grumbled at being forced to take these sketching classes used their new skills to anonymously protest. Biographer Bob Thomas describes that “Scornful cartoons appeared on the studio bulletin boards, depicting Mickey Mouse with an anatomically detailed pelvis.”77 Although these drawings were only momentary, they made explicit what was being changed at the studio with this new style of animation.

A more potentially disruptive event happened later in the 1930s: One of the animators who had thrown away his glasses as a result of a new therapy involving eye exercises began approaching girls around the studio who wore spectacles. . . . He enticed a number of the girls to do the eye exercises with him and explained that a prerequisite of the routine was that they must first relax by taking off their clothes. . . .

One girl panicked . . . and rushed home to tell her parents; they demanded the immediate arrest [of the man]. . . . [The studio] compen-sated the girl for her embarrassment . . . [and] the animator . . . was summarily dismissed.78

This event gains importance when examining how Walt and the few other employees who knew about the incident handled it. “Walt told

[studio lawyer Gunther] Lessing to keep it a secret, . . . [to keep quiet]

that the Disney studio could be just like the rest of Hollywood.”79 Such a statement presupposes that Walt and his assistants were quite aware of what small-town America thought of “the rest of Hollywood” and had already actively attempted to distance themselves from this image.

One other incident from the 1930s amply displays the constructedness of propriety at the studio.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
(1937), the studio’s first feature-length animated cartoon, was a project that pushed every employee to the brink through long hours, impossible deadlines and a constant push for perfection. After the film’s phenomenally successful release, Walt decided to show his thanks by inviting the entire studio employee roster (and their spouses) to join him and his wife in a weekend getaway at the Narconian Hotel resort at Lake Narco.

The group of young men and women (most of the company’s employees were 35 or younger, like Disney himself) quickly turned the vacation into precisely the carnivalesque free-for-all that had become taboo at the studio and in their films:

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One of the animators who was there said, “By the end of the first evening, something snapped. All the animators and assistant animators and inkers, who had always been so staid and contained at the studio, suddenly let go. Nobody worried here whether your shorts fit or not, because everybody’s were suddenly slipping. Playsuits flew out of the windows. There were naked swim parties in the pool. Inhibitions, respectability, and tensions vanished with each new bottle of champagne, and all those circumspect characters who had damped down their lecherous instincts around the studio for years were suddenly reaching out and grabbing someone. Everybody got drunk. It developed into what was practically an orgy, with animators reeling around tipsily and staggering off to sleep with whomsoever took their fancy, which was more likely to be that demure little inker from desk number 17 rather than the mother of their children. You’d be surprised who woke up with whom next morning.”80

Walt and his wife quickly left the resort the next day, and the incident was not spoken of at the studio for a number of years. Yet, the explosion of rampant uninhibited sexuality exemplifies how much of a conscious construction Disney’s “happy little family” was.

Of course, these events were never reported by the mainstream press—which was quite happy to help Walt and his brother Roy maintain the image of their studio as a happy leisurely family-oriented studio and even played down the extremely divisive strike that erupted at the studio in 1941.81 This is not to say that behind the studio’s calm fa-cade was a cauldron seething with passion and scandal that rivaled the rest of Hollywood. The studio was probably no more open than any other studio in the ways male and female employees expressed their sexuality. What marked Disney as different from other studios was the constant publicity about the “family” atmosphere at the studio, the wholesomeness of the environment (complete with pictures of Walt standing on the studio lawn benevolently watching over employees picnicking their lunch) and how such a climate supposedly transferred into the films the studio was making.82 After the enforcement of the Code’s restrictions in 1934, other studios would also attempt at various points to portray themselves as big families led by benevolent fatherly figures (most notably MGM’s Louis B. Mayer and his roster of young contractees, such as Freddie Bartholomew, Jackie Cooper, Mickey M I C K E Y ’ S M O N A S T E RY

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Rooney and Judy Garland), but Walt had been there earlier and with greater frequency.

By the end of the 1930s, it seemed that Disney’s successful climb to economic prosperity and artistic independence had been achieved. A new distribution contract with the RKO studio resulted in the studio receiving more revenue from box-office returns than ever. Walt and his animators took the lessons that they learned (technical and otherwise) in making the Mickeys and the
Sillies
and applied them to creating animated feature-length films. The combination of moral-driven narrative and “illusion of life” character-based animation was used in all of the features of Disney’s “Golden Age”:
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
(1937),
Pinocchio
(1940),
Fantasia
(1940),
Dumbo
(1941) and
Bambi
(1942).83 The release of
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
was successful beyond almost everyone’s expectations, becoming for a short time the most popular film in the history of American cinema.84 The Disney studio seemed to have solidified its formula for success.

Bambi,
possibly more than any of the features from this era, functions as the acme of the studio’s changes in attitude towards sexuality and the body. Critics and film analysts often point to
Bambi
as the high point of Disney’s push towards a “realistic” style in animation. Deer and other animals were brought to the studio for animators to study and sketch, and test footage was shot of various species in motion so that animators could isolate the body movements. As R. D. Feild, writing in 1942, described, “it was decided that the animals must be allowed to tell their own story as far as it was possible! The continuity must be based not upon what man has read into nature but upon what man can learn from nature.”85 The emphasis on rendering the illusion of animal figures in motion has consequently been criticized for negating the purposes of animation—to do what live-action film cannot. This is not entirely true, for the characters are not necessarily drawn realistically. The young Bambi is only vaguely related to what a true fawn looks like. Furthermore, the background paintings are often very impressionistic in their design, and certain sequences (Bambi’s dream of love, his fight with the rival buck) approach a type of surrealism.

The criticism that
Bambi
is
too
realistic does not recognize that the animation creates an
illusion
of realism, thus allowing Disney and his animators to naturalize (possibly more than ever before) messages about sexuality and the body. Just as in
The Flying Mouse,
a cycle of time 30

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is used to make the lessons of the film’s narrative seem logical and inevitable. Bambi is born in the spring, reaches his lowest emotional and physical point during the barren winter months and emerges tri-umphant in the following spring. During this period, the film promotes a patriarchal order (Bambi is “the young Prince” who will eventually take over his father’s position as “King of the Forest” and is forced to shed his dependence on his mother when she is killed halfway through the film) and asserts that all animal species engage in bourgeois heterosexual courtship that leads to a serene family life for all. Possibly more effectively than anything that the studio had previously done,
Bambi
used the “illusion of life” style to tell a moral-driven narrative that essentializes messages about sexuality and the body by animating a story told “in nature.”

DISNEY AT WAR: FEDERALLY SPONSORED

EDUCATION (1942–1949)

In the 1940s, the studio came into greater contact with the United States government and armed forces. These ties started for the studio another evolution in representing sexuality and the body, a change stressing more than ever before the pedagogical nature of these representations by trying to teach servicemen (and others) federal guidelines on hygiene and body maintenance. While still working to provide entertainment, these films first and foremost were produced and screened as

“educational” films, attempting to specifically regulate, prohibit and generate an approved discourse of proper sexual conduct and control of the body. Although initially speaking to the military services, Disney’s move into educational films soon spread to ordinary citizens, both in the United States and beyond.

The government was able to influence Disney’s output so greatly because, as scholars agree, Disney’s ties to the federal government during World War II saved the studio from bankruptcy.86 It might seem surprising to find that, so quickly after the huge success of
Snow
White
, the studio was on the brink of collapse. The studio poured the profits from its first feature into its next two,
Pinocchio
and
Fantasia.

Neither came close to matching
Snow White
’s box-office. With the books in the red, the studio was also crippled by animators striking for union representation. Due to the long and (at times) ugly strike, M I C K E Y ’ S M O N A S T E RY

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production at the studio on
Bambi
was delayed for months, and the studio was forced to shut down completely for a while. According to Douglas Gomery, “Through 1941 and 1942 the Disney company lost a total of one million dollars.”87

In early 1941, Disney held a meeting with various representatives from industry and the United States and Canadian governments to discuss the possible use of animation in education and propaganda. Disney had already made a training film called
Four Methods of Flush Riveting
(1940) for Lockheed and presented this as an example of how films could help train engineers and military personnel. Canada, already at war, contracted Disney to make both instructional films and a series of four short trailers using various Disney characters (the Three Pigs, the Seven Dwarves, Donald Duck, etc.) to promote the sale of Canadian war bonds.88

The United States government was not far behind Canada in seeking out Disney’s help. Even before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Disney was negotiating with the government to make educational films for the armed forces.89 After December 7, 1941, the armed forces made their presence felt at the studio in a number of palpable ways. Beyond the dozens of military training films that the studio cranked out with amazing alacrity (and amazingly low budgets) over the next four years, armed forces personnel set up camp within the studio. Offices at the studio were vacated for use by Lockheed personnel. Because of the presence of Lockheed employees, anti-aircraft troops also moved into the studio and most were quartered within its confines. With the soldiers came three million rounds of ammunition that were stored in the studio’s parking lot.

Beyond the training films, Disney worked on a series of animated shorts for a number of different governmental departments, such as
The
New Spirit
(1942), made in coordination with the Treasury Department to help explain and promote the country’s new tax laws. Most famously, Disney worked with the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA), which was created to strengthen the ties between the United States and Latin America, in order to keep South and Central America from becoming allied to Nazi Germany. In 1940, even before Disney began to work on training films, the CIAA had contacted Walt personally to make a goodwill tour of South America, with the possibility of gaining material for films that would promote what was soon being called the “Good Neighbor Policy.” Walt complied, taking a crew 32

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of animators with him, and two feature films resulted—
Saludos Amigos
(1942) and
The Three Caballeros
(1945).

In continuing to make business for Disney, the federal government helped keep the studio afloat for the duration of the war. The government also cleared the path for the studio to obtain access to chemicals to make film stock—a valuable commodity since the same chemicals were essential for making weapons and were, hence, in very short supply.90