May 28th marked the 70th anniversary of the start of the Disney strike by members of the Screen Cartoon Guild (later the Screen Cartoonist Guild). The nine-week walkout, precipitated by the firing of Art Babbitt, the head of the Guild’s Disney’s unit, is a legendary event whose full story has yet to be told. Though I may someday finish my history of the beginnings of the union movement in American animation, I’m obviously not going to do it here. Rather, I thought I would say a few words about the strike’s place in the history of the labor movement within the film industry and a bit about how it affected animation itself.

The strike was, in a sense, was the closing event of the Hollywood labor wars of the 1930s and seemed to end the Chicago mob’s control over The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE), the industry’s largest union. Specifically, the Disney strike was the last stand for the mob’s man in Hollywood, Willie Bioff, who tried to prevent being sent to prison by (unsuccessfully) trying to settle the strike on Disney’s behalf.

The unions which supported the strike, under the leadership of Herb Sorrell, the charismatic leader of the studio local of the Painters and Paperhangers Union (under whose aegis the Guild operated) subsequently formed the Conference of Studio Unions. The Conference, after the war, became involved in a series of strikes, including the Battle of Warner Bros. (which I wrote about here), which led to the blacklist, the ouster of the Guild from the major studios and the rise of Ronald Reagan.

As for animation industry, the strike marked the end of Disney’s Golden Age. And like the Fleischer strike four years earlier, it caused an almost indelible  rift between strikers and nonstrikers. It also led to a heated discussion, especially among strikers and Guild members, about the artistic direction animation was going. This discussion laid the groundwork for the formation of UPA, the studio which changed the face of animation in the 1940s and 1950s.

Images: The drawing on the top is from a mimeographed “Strike Summary” published three weeks into the walkout. The second is from the June 5th issue of On the Line, the daily mimeographed newsletter the Guild’s Disney Unit issued during the strike. Both were copied from originals in the Urban Archives Center of California State University, Northridge’s Oviatt Library. The last image is the last panel of a Guild comic strip version of Three Little Pigs published in a newspaper during the strike which I have seemed to have gotten from a posting at Shaneglines.net.

P.S.: July 7th, 2011.The cartoon from the Disney strike newsletter, On the Line, was probably done by Dan Noonan, a junior animator who did story sketch work on the side; Noonan’s struggles to get by when he first came to Disney helped the Guild’s organizing drive. The newsletter itself was edited by Phil Eastman, best known today as children’s book author P.D. Eastman.

Being that it is Christmas time, I thought I would post Hugh Harman’s Peace on Earth, especially as this is the 70th anniversary of its release (7 December 1939); the film’s pacifist theme resonated with the American public in the wake of the outbreak of the World War II in Europe and Harman said it was his favorite film “because it has some meaning and a serious theme.” Peace on Earth, which has some echoes of William Cameron Menzies’ version of H.G. Wells’ Things to Come (1936), earned an Oscar nomination and, according to Harman, a Nobel Peace Prize nomination. The film’s success was not entirely welcomed by the powers that be at MGM, as producer Fred Quimby subsequently scotched Harman’s plans to do a version of his favorite poem, Thomas Gray’s “Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard.”

(Incidentally, this week also marks the 70th anniversary of Dave Fleischer’s Gulliver’s Travels (22 December 1939), which like Peace on Earth also had a pacifist theme — though it was not so blunt in its message.)

Being Christmas, I thought I should also post Paul Driessen’s An Old Box (1975), which the great Dutch-Canadian filmmaker made for the National Film Board of Canada, with music by Normand Roger.

Dumbo, directed by Ben Sharpsteen and written by Dick Huemer and Joe Grant, one of the most beloved of early Disney movies, is still dogged by accusations of racism. Not only do I think it racist, but I would even argue that the film is anti-racist in somewhat the same way as earlier proto-civil rights films like John Stahl’s Imitation of Life (1934) and James Whale’s Show Boat (1936); Dumbo’s point of view regarding race not only seems to underscore much of the film’s storyline, but also seems relevant to film’s patriotic ending, which in turn is tied into the fact that the character of Dumbo even shows characteristics of being a superhero.

I never thought much about Dumbo until I taught a continuing education class for high school teachers on Movies, TV and Families for the University of San Diego in 1993. In discussing racism in movies, I brought up the “When I See an Elephant Fly” number when several African-American students, who saw the film when it came out, objected to it being called racist; in fact, they remembered it being well received in their community.

More recently, I began showing the film to my classes in Media Theory, where I often start by asking students to analyze a classic Disney movie for its social and political meaning. (This sort of analysis, unfortunately, tends to be secondary among some animation students, who may reflexively analyze the quality of a film’s animation before anything else.)  And it was when I started to analyze the film for my students in this context that I began to see how the issue of race permeated the film.

Before I explain myself, I think it useful to discuss the background against which the film was made. After the enormous success of Snow White, the studio’s two subsequent movies — Pinocchio and especially Fantasia (both 1940) — failed at the box office.  This was due, in part, to the onset of World War II in Europe, which cut off a significant source of revenue. (Frank Thomas once told me that he felt the war also made the American public less receptive to the type of film the studio was turning out.) Thus, Disney could no longer afford the extravagant budgets and loose production schedules that had become the norm.

In this context, Dumbo was put into production as a relatively low-budget effort that could be turned out quickly, without all the second guessing Walt Disney was prone to, which tended to destroy any sense of budget discipline. Conventional wisdom also has it that Disney had little to do with the film, though John Canemaker argues in his DVD commentary that Walt may not have been as hands off as is often thought. (However, I should note that the film’s thematic thrust does seem different from other Disney features of the time.)

The studio’s financial problems eventually led, in 1941, to large-scale layoffs. In an interview with Gene Hamm, union activist Steve Bosustow (who worked on Dumbo) said one of the reasons for the 1941 Disney strike was to make sure these layoffs were done fairly. And one can’t help thinking that the increasing tension between labor and management that culminated in the May 1941 walkout might have also affected the tenor of the film itself. (Animation on the film was essentially finished by the time of the strike. Though it obviously proves little, it is interesting to note a number of union activists, including strike leader Art Babbitt, made significant contributions to Dumbo; also, Ward Kimball, who was largely responsible for the “When I See an Elephant Fly” sequence, told me he was sympathetic to the union cause, even though he did join the picket line. )

During the film’s production, the country went through a hard fought presidential campaign in which Franklin Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term against Wendell Willkie, who had accused Roosevelt of being a warmonger who wanted to drag America into World War II (which was not really far from the truth). Hollywood, though sympathetic to the Allied cause, with the exception of Warner Bros.’ Confessions of a Nazi Spy (Anatole Litvak, 1939), cautiously avoided taking sides.  If anything, some important animated films took a pacifist tone: Hugh Harmon’s Peace on Earth (1939) (which was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize) and Dave Fleischer’s Gulliver’s Travels (1939); also, Bambi (1942), which had been in the works before Dumbo got started, seems to me decidedly isolationist. Dumbo, by dint of its rousing, somewhat flag-waving ending, hints at a decidedly different tack. Perhaps given that Dumbo was released less than two months before Pearl Harbor, the difference may be understandable, though isolationist sentiment in the US was still very strong.

The issue of race is first evident in the remarkable “Song of the Roustabouts” number in which an explicit parallel is made between the faceless African-American roustabouts and the elephants, as they work in tandem to put up the circus tent.  The linkage is done using parallel editing, where first the African-American laborers do an arduous task followed by a similar action by the elephants. Here are some sample frame grabs to show my point:

While this sort of associative editing  goes back to the early days of filmmaking (e.g., D.W. Griffith’s A Corner in Wheat [1909] and Intolerance [1916]), the way it is used in sequence probably derives from the Soviet montage films of Sergei Eisenstein and V.I. Pudovkin. (Disney, it should be remembered, befriended Eisenstein when he came to Hollywood in the early 1930s and studied his theoretical writings on montage; also, as John Canemaker points out in his commentary, the Disney studio regularly screened live-action films for their artists so they could study, among other things, editing.)

The song itself (by Frank Churchill, Oliver Wallace and Ned Washington) has echoes of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein’s “Old Man River” from Show Boat. For instance, take these Ned Washington lyrics from the “Roustabouts” song:

Muscles achin’
Back near breaking
Eggs and bacon what we need (Yes, sir!)
Boss man houndin’
Keep on poundin’
For your bed and feed
There ain’t no let up
Must get set up
Pull that canvas! Drive that stake!
Want to doze off
Get them clothes off
But must keep awake

And Oscar Hammerstein’s from “Old Man River”:

You an’ me, we sweat an’ strain,
Body all achin’ an’ racket wid pain,
Tote dat barge!
Lif’ dat bale!
Git a little drunk
An’ you land in jail.

Both are protest songs about the plight of African-American laborers and generally serve the same purpose in both Dumbo and Show Boat. Again, given the labor unrest at Disney, one cannot help but speculate about the relevance the “Song of the Roustabouts” to it. (I also wonder whether the sequence had any influence on George Pal’s John Henry and the Inky Poo [1946], whose African-American theme also has a decidedly pro-labor bias.)

One of the faceless circus workers in Dumbo.

The characterization of the elephants as part of a racial underclass serves to underscore the plight of Dumbo as a pariah and later his mother when she is locked up for defending him against the cruelty of human children. In fact, the film is full of class distinctions. Not only are the roustabouts faceless, so are other circus workers (again a possible commentary on the faceless minions of the Disney studio). (The lack of detail in the film has been commented on elsewhere as being been linked to the film’s budgetary restraints.)

Eventually, Dumbo is relegated to being a clown, which is about as low as you can be for an elephant. As for the human clowns, they also are essentially faceless, as we never see what’s beneath their masks.

In the end, the only ones who help Dumbo are Timothy Q. Mouse and the crows, who are obviously African American (one [seen above], voiced by Cliff Edwards, is named Jim in the printed credits, but not in the film itself). Both represent people on the lower end of society’s pecking order, and they alone allow Dumbo to fulfill his true potential. And that potential includes fully using his unique powers, or should we say superpowers.

Dumbo was produced in the wake of enormous popularity of the Superman comic books, which inspired both a popular radio show and the Fleischer cartoon series; and it’s interesting to note that the first Superman cartoon was released a month before Dumbo opened.

In the end, Dumbo becomes a international celebrity, much like Superman, who seems to unite America in a world at war. (Note the headline on the left about Britain at war.) And, in a sense, as a representative of America’s minorities, he becomes something of a symbol for unity and reconciliation.

I’m a bit late on this, but I think it important to take note of Fatenah, the new Palestinian animated documentary, which Erika Solomon at Reuters described on July 3rd as:

The true story of a young Gazan woman’s futile battle against breast cancer has been commemorated in the first-ever Palestinian animated commercial film. “Fatenah” debuted last night in the West Bank city of Ramallah, at the Al-Kasabah Theater, and was received by a large and enthusiastic audience [as seen in the above video]. …

The film, only 30-minutes long, draws inspiration from a true story of a woman who died in the midst of trying to get treatment for breast cancer. Her story was documented by the Israeli branch of Physicians for Human Rights.

Director and animator Ahmad Habash says the piece, which is being funded by the World Health Organization in the occupied Palestinian territories, tries not to portray either side—Israeli or Palestinian—as sheer good or evil. “That’s the reality,” he said. “There were doctors that tricked the girl and those that helped her on the Palestinian side. And on the Israeli side there were people who helped her, and those who didn’t”.

An Associated Press story notes the film had a $60,000 budget and is schedule to make the international festival circuit. The publicity accorded the film only goes to confirm that the recent trend towards high profile animated documentaries, exemplified in recent years by Persopolis and Waltz With Bashir; interestingly, all three essentially come out of the political caldron that is the Middle East.

In following the events that are happening in Iran, it occurred to me that Marjane Satrapi, the creator of Persopolis, would certainly not be shy about speaking out on the situation. A quick search found that she, along with filmmaker Mohsen Makhmalbaf (Kandahar), a representative for opposition candidate Mir Hossein Mousavi abroad, spoke out in front of the European Parliament on June 16th,  seen above YouTube video. A report on the presentation posted on Adnkronos International can be found here.

The posting by Google of digitized images from the vaults of Life magazine has led to a number of bloggers (including myself) to mine it for all sorts of wonderful images. I thought I would add to the feeding frenzy with a series of postings, starting with some pictures from the fabled Battle of Warner Bros., a key event in Hollywood labor history, which had ramifications far beyond movie industry.

"Warner Bros. strike — Tear gas bombing out picketers."

"Warner Bros. police spraying a fire hose at a resisting [picketer]."

Both photos (by Bob Landry) were taken on Monday, October 8, 1945, known as The Battle of Warner Bros. On that date, according to Wikipedia (which identifies the event as Black Friday and mistakenly identifies the day as Friday, October 5, 1945):

a six month strike by the set decorators represented by the Conference of Studio Unions (CSU) boiled over into a bloody riot at the gates of Warner Brothers’ studios in Burbank, California. The strikes helped the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 and led to the eventual break up of the CSU and reorganization of the then rival International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employes (IATSE) leadership.

The CSU was established in 1941 by film industry unions that had supported the Screen Cartoonists Guild (SCG) during their strike against Disney, which the IA (then under the waning control of the Chicago mob) officially opposed. As Larry Ceplair and Steven Englund wrote in The Inquisition in Hollywood: Politics in the Film Community, 1930-1960:

Without allies, and with the strike dragging on, [CSU head Herb] Sorrell decided to single out one studio — Warner Brothers — and, by putting maximum pressure on it, to break a link in the studios’ chain of resistance. On October 5 a mass picket was thrown up around the studio. Three days later the studio’s police and fire departments, equipped with fire hoses and tear gas, and a vigilante squad of one thousand IATSE thugs, led by IA officials and equipped with chains, rubber hoses, blackjacks, and metal cables, attacked the CSU picket lines. In the melee that followed, many injuries were sustained, but the strikers held their lines. (220)

Sorrell, the charismatic leader of the studio local of the Painters and Paperhangers Union, had earlier taken the SCG under his wing and enabled it to organize the animation industry in the early 1940s. The Guild did not participate in the CSU strikes, but did lend support. The IA, under Roy Brewer (shown here in an October 1946 Life photo by Peter Stackpole), working with the studios eventually prevailed, leading to the downfall of the CSU and to Sorrell’s departure from the labor movement. With Sorrell gone, the Cartoonists Guild left the umbrella of the Painters and Paperhangers, which gave Brewer, working in conjunction with Walt Disney, an opening to set up a rival union, IA Local 839 (today’s Animation Guild), which eventually supplanted the SCG in 1951. Brewer, who ran the Hollywood Blacklist, promptly extended the blacklist to the animation industry, and UPA in particular (leaving to the departure of John Hubley, among others).

The postwar labor wars also set the stage for the future political career of Ronald Reagan, who as President of the Screen Actors Guild, threw his support to the anti-CSU forces.

The election of Barak Obama was received with an understandable mixture of joy and relief both here and abroad. And even nominally nonpolitical bloggers have joined in the celebration. It seems rather improbable that Obama can fulfill all what is expected of him, but we can still savor the moment. And one of the best summations of what this moment means is provided by Henry Louis Gates Jr. on TheRoots.com, who puts it in a convincing historical context.

Of special interest is his unearthing of a 1958 prediction by Jacob K. Javits, the liberal Republican senator from New York, who said America would have a black black president  by the year 2000. In an article in Esquire, Javits wrote:

What manner of man will this be, this possible Negro Presidential candidate of 2000? Undoubtedly, he will be well-educated. He will be well-traveled and have a keen grasp of his country’s role in the world and its relationships. He will be a dedicated internationalist with working comprehension of the intricacies of foreign aid, technical assistance and reciprocal trade. … Assuredly, though, despite his other characteristics, he will have developed the fortitude to withstand the vicious smear attacks that came his way as he fought to the top in government and politics … those in the vanguard may expect to be the targets for scurrilous attacks, as the hate mongers, in the last ditch efforts, spew their verbal and written poison.

I usually avoided political statements here, but given the current state of the nation, I really need to speak up and urge my fellow Americans to vote for Barak Obama and Democratic congressional candidates. I have no illusions that Obama is the second coming of FDR, but given the nightmare that the Bush administration has become, his election offers at least the hope of fresh leadership and new ideas.