It’s Memorial Day in the United States as we pause to remember those who have lost their lives in the armed services and reflect upon the sacrifices they made.
I was recently discussing with my Mom, my paternal Grandfather, Bill, who served in the Navy aboard the USS Gettysburg and USS Saratoga. He was stationed throughout the world serving as a ham radio operator and spent time in Trinidad, where he and my grandmother had my Father, and the South Pole amongst other stations during the Vietnam War. He was one of my early childhood animation influences, memorably winning me a large Foghorn Leghorn stuffed animal at a family auction when I was quite little and we miss him.
Donald Duck Joins Up
A look at The Walt Disney Studio During WWII by Richard Shale
The Disney Studio famously became an extension of the American wartime effort in World War II creating educational and propaganda films for domestic and foreign distribution. In 1982, Richard Shale would publish an in-depth account for the productions made during the war effort in, “Donald Duck Joins Up: The Walt Disney Studio During World War II”.
Shale opens the book with a brief history of animation leading up to WWII, noting that Walt Disney was the catalyst for the development of the art form notably for both for sound, then Technicolor’s application. The success of early Disney shorts and “Snow White” allowed for Walt to became the public face of the development of the animation and in so doing secured himself as a trustworthy individual in the eyes of the public.
Leading up the war, the Disney Company was struggling. The war caused foreign markets to collapse leading to the loss of not only potential revenue, but already made investments in those now nonexistent markets. These problems, in addition to a costly strike – both in terms of lost personnel, cash, and ego – didn’t make the situation any easier.
While Walt had some experience with educational films back in Kansas, only as anti-Nazi sentiment began influencing Hollywood would Walt turn to The Lockheed Aircraft Corporation to co-produce Four Methods of Flush Riveting (1942) an educational film about the process of riveting. As the opening text scroll of the film lays out, “The following film uses a simplified technique developed by the Walt Disney Studio to demonstrate the quickest & cheapest method whereby the animation medium can be applied to national defense training.”
With film in hand, Walt Disney would meet with Canada’s National Film Board founder, John Grierson, who understood what Walt was attempting to accomplish. The two worked out a contract for four short films promoting audiences to invest in war bonds using The Seven Dwarves, The Three Little Pigs, and Donald Duck.
Shale describes the most widely seen film from this era as Donald’s The New Spirit (1942) in which Donald shows audiences how income taxes are paid and effect the war effort. This film was a product of the Walt Disney Studio and the US Treasury Department. Throughout the book, between correspondences between bookkeeper and brother, Roy Disney, we see a resistance to ensure that when dealing with the government to ensure that payroll was nearly and squarely no for profit. However, the use of any public taxes for any type of film became a subsequent public political squabble that resulted in much political fuss and hang wrong but littlensubstance. Regardless of any blowback that occurred it didn’t deter the US Secretary of Agriculture to enquire and develop a film about the importance of farmer for the war effort, and the Navy requesting their own educational films thereafter that.
A whole chapter is devoted to Disney’s trip to South America for a sponsored peace trip with the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, which serves as a fantastic primer to Ted Thomas, J.B. Kaufman and Didier Ghez’ Walt Disney & El Grupo in Latin America. Shale later discusses how this trip resulted in the successful Three Caballeros in 1944.
Shale discusses at length both Alexander Procofieff de Seversky’s book, Victory Through Air Power, and its influence over public discourse about the means to end the war, and also the uniqueness of Walt Disney adaptation of the book to film. Even amongst the pantheon of Disney adaptations it still stands out for it’s timeliness of its adaptation from print to film.
A further chapter talks on the challenges in attempting to develop a Gremlins film based off the first book by renowned writer Roald Dahl, which is wonderfully chronicled in Gremlin Trouble!: The Cursed Roald Dahl Film Disney Never Made by the late, Jim Korkis. The Disney Studios work designing various military branches insignia is also briefly touched on, but relative to the labor involved in animation, production history is summarized in a page or two.
The tenth and last chapter reflects on the unique position that the Disney Studio and the US Government served during the war and the financial stability that granted the studio to whether through the war and their prior financial woes. Time is also taken to analyze why the propaganda stands out amongst Disney’s peers, especially what was being produced at Warner Bros.
If there is one complaint about this book it’s that there is only one chapter dedicated to the titular topic, but the ongoing wartime output of theatrical shorts was, like the book points out, the least of concerns happening at the studio.
If you can track down a copy of this fairly difficult to find book, it’s worth it. The above review only covers the first half as the second half is full of footnotes, sources cited, filmographies of films published for public and military distribution, and a bibliographical reference for further study.
Please dive in and enjoy the complete Animation History Bibliography section of the Cartoon Research website. See you next month with another round up of animation book news and reviews!
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