December 2016 marked the 75th anniversary of the United States entering World War II. It seemed inappropriate to me to dim the holiday festivities by exploring that historic milestone, but I wanted to explore the Disney Studios contribution to that conflict.
Walt Disney was too young to enlist in World War I and, ironically, too old to enlist in World War II. However, in both cases he found ways to serve his country.
Walt was hugely patriotic. He sincerely appreciated, respected and supported those who served America and did what he could to help.
During a speech on February 22, 1963, when presented with the George Washington Medal of Honor from the Freedoms Foundation at Valley Forge, he said, “Actually, if you could see close in my eyes, the American flag is waving in both of them, and up my spine is growing this red, white and blue stripe. I'm very proud and very honored.”
Just before World War II, the Disney Studios was at the peak of its popularity, both financially and critically, and had relocated to a brand new expensive studio in Burbank, California. It was preparing for the release of multiple feature length animated cartoons to capitalize on the unprecedented success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) that was still hugely popular.
Disney films were distributed to 55 different countries and the future looked bright. With the outbreak of war, many countries closed their doors to showing Disney films, resulting in disappointing foreign revenue returns for films like Pinocchio (1940) and Fantasia (1940) and the cessation of other planned feature films including Peter Pan, Cinderella, and so many others.
On December 8, 1941, one day after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the United States entering the war, 500 anti-aircraft troops moved in to take residence at the Disney Studio and would remain there for nearly eight months. Three-million rounds of ammunition were stored in the Disney Studios parking lot.
Donald Duck and the other Disney characters joined the war effort after Pearl Harbor.
They were there in case of a feared Japanese attack on the Pacific Coast and in particular vital defense production plants like the nearby Disney Studios neighbor, Lockheed Aircraft Corporation.
Lockheed was expanding rapidly and many of its personnel were moved into offices at the Disney Studios, as well.
The Disney Studios soundstage was used for working on military vehicles and anti-aircraft guns.
“They had 14 trucks on this sound stage because they could close the stage and work in a blackout,” Walt said. “That's where they were repairing all of the optical systems of the anti-aircraft guns. They had these guns all over the hills…because of the aircraft factories.
“They were sleeping in every room [at the Studios]. I had to double my artists up in rooms so that an officer could have a place to sleep,” he said. “They had their sleeping bags down on the floor. They set up their own mess kitchen.”
On Dec. 8 at 6 p.m., Walt received a call from the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts, Navy Department, to produce 20 training films on aircraft and warship identification. Each film was to run approximately 1,000 feet and, instead of the hundreds of dollars per foot of film that was the price standard for a Disney short cartoon at the time, Walt agreed to do the films for $4.50 per foot.
These films were known as the WEFT series (Wings, Engine, Fuselage and Tail – the four main points used to identify a questioned aircraft).
The Disney Studios committed to turning out three times its usual footage in only six months. The Navy made the films available to naval bases and personnel at no cost, but gave the Disney Studios a priority rating in obtaining the material needed to make them on an accelerated schedule.
The Disney Studios had already produced five short films for the National Film Board of Canada that were war related from promoting the sales of war bonds to instructions on how to use an anti-tank rifle.
In addition, Walt had convinced the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation to allow him to make an employee instructional film for them titled Four Methods of Flush Riveting as early as 1940, as he anticipated the coming need for such films. This film showed what the Disney Studios could do with this type of technical subject.
The Navy was probably the Disney Studios biggest client throughout the war, but the success of the initial films being produced so quickly resulted in the Army Signal Corps, the Army Air Force, the Air Transport Command, and other service branches utilizing the Disney talents. The Disney Studios was given a confidential clearance and top-secret rating and was formally classified as a war plant.
The studio had restricted access areas, special identification badges, armed guards, and even a U.S. Army searchlight battery unit set up in the Animation Building.
Walt Disney's identification badge is on display at the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. He donated blood to the Red Cross as well as gave a personal check for $7,300 to the organization as well as donations to other war efforts.
Walt was even able to arrange that some personnel at the studio get deferments from the draft because of the work they were doing and the cost and time of training others to take over that work. It was shown that the classified work they were doing was more vital than any role they might be assigned if inducted.
In a 1997 interview I did with Disney Legend Bill Justice, we discussed what he did at the Disney Studios during World War II:
“During the war, I worked on doing animation on shorts like Der Fuerher's Face, Reason and Emotion, and The New Spirit. I also did work on dozens of those training films the studio made which was the most boring thing in the world for an animator who had just finished drawing Bambi. It was all so technical and dry and you had to be very precise.
“Hank Porter got swamped on doing insignias for the military so I did maybe thirty or so of those. Hank did hundreds or thousands. I could draw just about every Disney character so I was asked to help whenever I could. I liked doing it and wish I could have done more.
“I was in good shape and expected to be drafted at any minute but never did. I think Walt had something to do with some of us staying at the studio rather than going into the service but nobody ever told me. I had volunteered as a combat artist and thought I had the training to be valuable but they never took me.
“I visited military hospitals and did charcoal portraits of the service men there. They seemed to like that. There were eight of us who were part of that group and doing that work taught me a lot.
“Portraits just always interested me because one of the hardest things an artist can do is make a portrait that looks like you. It was quite a challenge. We always felt you can't tell if a tree looks like the tree or not but you can sure tell if a portrait looks like you.
“I studied to be a portrait artist but it was a lousy way to make a living. I was fortunate enough to do a few of them before I went to Disney. It is a great satisfaction doing a portrait.
“We did some 'camp shows' for some military installations in Southern California to entertain the troops. Ward Kimball had a band, not the later Firehouse Five but something like the Huggajeedy 8, that played and we also performed this real corny melodrama called Curse You, Jack Dalton! that always got laughs.
“I did an act where I was billed as 'The World's Fastest Sketch Artist' and drew 10 or 15 sketches of Disney characters while Kimball's band played two or three numbers.
“I was always a fast artist. The big finale was this live girl dancing on stage and I was drawing her life size on this six foot tall easel and pretending to measure her various body parts as I was drawing. Another girl would run in and pin a pair of panties on my drawing in the appropriate area. It was a lot of fun and very corny but the audience loved it.
“I also did sketches of their favorite Disney characters for the men.”
The field of training films had been little explored before the war, but Disney developed them into an ideal and important tool that Walt intended to use further in peacetime. Some of the films were so effective that they were used for years after their completion. Unlike live-action, animation rarely became outdated.
The films communicated the necessary information clearly and accurately. Animation could be used to show things that could never be easily seen in live action like cut-away views of how a rivet enters the metal or what might be encountered in an actual specific strategic mission using top secret reconnaissance reports as reference to create the models.
“We learned a great deal during the war years when we were making instruction and technological films in which abstract and obscure things had to be made plain and quickly and exactly applicable to the men in the military services. These explorations and efficiencies of our cartoon medium must not be unused in today's entertainment,” said Walt shortly after the war.
Disney producer Bill Anderson remembered: “There was a great pressure within the services of trying to get everything out. The Navy wanted their thing given priority. The Army wanted their thing. The Air Force had projects. The Marines had projects. So there was competition, and each branch of the service was fighting to get theirs done first.
“Walt was getting calls almost daily. 'Can you handle this project? Can you do this for us?' and Walt would always say, 'Hell, yes, we can do it for you. We'll find a way to do it,'” he said.
Of course, the pressure at the studio was tremendous. Walt only charged the military for the actual cost of making the films, at no profit and no covered overhead costs as it had done on its own films prior to the war so it put a strain on the company's resources. Often these films were on a rush basis with Walt giving a rough estimate over the phone, but even when that estimate was much too low, the government held him to that initial estimate for the finished film.
By the end of 1942, the company had a total deficit of $1,216,909. Even under these “no profit” terms, it was wise to get as many government contracts as possible because it kept the remaining staff at the Disney Studios active, kept the name of Disney visible, and allowed for some experimentation that could be used once the war was over.
However, the Disney Studios didn't just do training films but also made morale boosting incentive shorts, educational films, countless posters, insignias and other artwork to support the war effort as well as troop entertainment. Walt even produced a short film for the Treasury Department with Donald Duck titled The New Spirit (1942) that encouraged Americans to pay their taxes to help the war effort since even the new simplified forms were confusing.
Before the war, the studio's highest output in a year was 37,000 feet of film. From 1942-1943, it was conservatively estimated that the output was 204,000 feet. The camera department operated 20 hours a day (four hours a day were set aside for repairs and maintenance), six days a week.
The Disney Studios had more than one-third or approximately 165 of its employees (both men and women) actively serving in various Armed Forces branches. In addition, those employees still at the studio worked part time in volunteer positions from serving as air raid wardens to firemen to first-aid functions for the Red Cross. They also supplied on their own time illustrations for manuals, posters, maps and more.
By 1943, roughly 94 percent of all footage produced at the Disney Studios was done under government contract.
Eleven of the 13 commercial entertainment shorts released that year by the studio featured topical references to the war, in addition to the release of the war-oriented feature Victory Through Air Power that lost nearly a half-million dollars and was never re-released because of the content that was geared to that specific moment in time. Other animation studios got by with far less than the Disney Studio and were not criticized for any lack of patriotism so Walt could easily have done the same.
By 1944, more than 80 percent of the revenue for the non-government Disney films was generated by only the United States, Canada, and England (where the funds were “frozen” so that they could only be used in the country itself to help with rebuilding after the war).
However, even the storm clouds of war could not dim the unique humor of the Disney animators. As Disney producer Harry Tytle recounted, “During the period when fear of Japanese bombing of the California coast was at its peak, someone suggested that, in order to spare the enemy the embarrassment of missing a nearby aircraft plant (and, incidentally, to save our own hides), we paint a sign on our studio roof, complete with the appropriate arrow – 'Lockheed, three miles that way!”
The gag was never shared with the military personnel, especially the highest-ranking ones who seemed to have little sense of humor.
Tytle also recalled that Walt wanted him to find out how the training films were being received by their intended audience. The studio had just completed a film on torpedo tactics for the Navy and Tytle found out it was being used at the Naval base in San Diego.
Through the proper channels, Tytle requested permission for the director of the film and himself to visit one of the Naval base classrooms to get a chance to gauge the audience reaction. He was informed in no uncertain terms that the film was classified and restricted so it was impossible to arrange for civilians to view it, even if they had made it themselves.
In 1945, Disney was approached to do some of the famous SNAFU animated films that had been done by Warner Brothers animation. As Tytle remembered, “Walt said we should have nothing to do with it. The reason was that the Army originally brought the SNAFU picture in to us. We made our best unit available to them and then they took the series somewhere else. We offered to do them for $20,000 apiece (half the going price for a short subject and well below our usual costs). Walt saw no reason why we should get into that again.”
In Thornton Delehanty's article “The Disney Studio at War” published in the January 1943 Theatre Arts magazine, it was noted: “The government in Washington looks to (Walt Disney) more than it does to any other studio chief as a factor in building public morale, providing training and instruction to soldiers and sailors, and utilizing animated graphic art in expediting the intelligent mobilization of fighting men and civilians.”
Walt never sought any credit for his many sacrifices. He always spent more than the limited budget allotted to him for his military productions in order to provide the highest quality that he could. It was just Walt's nature, but it placed the Disney Studios in financial jeopardy and it took many years to recover.
Walt felt frustrated that the films had to be done so quickly and simply that he was unable to take the time to add his famous showmanship touch. He had to resort to limited animation techniques and other shortcuts but he still produced outstanding product.
On a radio broadcast that aired on Saturday March 1, 1941 on the NBC Blue Network of the Metropolitan Opera, Walt gave a speech at the intermission titled “Our American Culture.”
Here is a short excerpt:
“Tomorrow will be better for as long as America keeps alive the ideals of freedom and a better life. What I will say now is just what most of us are probably thinking every day. I thank God and America for the right to live and raise my family under the flag of tolerance, democracy, and freedom.
“Recently, I was invited to see a show on America, and as I sat there watching and listening I felt both proud and thrilled; thrilled with the voices, thrilled with the sounds, proud of the group of one hundred talented young Americans singing about our country. The songs that make me proud of being an American.”
Next time: Walt Goes to War Part Two, where I will list and give summaries of the shorts the Disney Studio produced during World War II.
