Acquired
02:10:23 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[02:10:23] S0: I'm leaving for ten weeks. Do your best. [02:10:26] S1: Yep. So while Walt is gone in Latin America, Roy does settle the strike after federal mediation. Disney ends up recognizing the Screen Cartoonist Guild Union. They raise salaries for the remaining employees, and they agree to a negotiated layoff of over 500 employees. So taking total headcount before the strike down from 1,200 to under 700. These are the layoffs, Ben, that you referred to. The studio would never fully recover from this. Certainly, not under Walt and not for many, many years afterwards. Really not at all in the period of classical animation before computer animation comes along. [02:11:16] S0: And sorta equally as importantly, Walt would never recover from this as it pertains to his relationship with the company Walt Disney Productions. [02:11:26] S1: Yes. [02:11:26] S0: It no longer feels like his family. It feels like a creation he's made that has sort of run away from his control. [02:11:34] S1: Yep. He ultimately does decide that the company Disney and he, Walt Disney, have a creative and business future. But, yeah, he never has the same relationship to the studio or animation after this. [02:11:48] S0: Yep. He apparently, according to Don Lusk, who was an animator there, made a list of everyone who went out on strike and said that, everyone on this list isn't true to Disney and one day will not be here.
02:11:48 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[02:11:48] S0: Yep. He apparently, according to Don Lusk, who was an animator there, made a list of everyone who went out on strike and said that, everyone on this list isn't true to Disney and one day will not be here. [02:12:02] S1: Yep. So, Ben, you mentioned, Walt's sort of anti communist streak that comes out of this. Yeah. For the rest of his life, he would blame all of this on communist influences in Hollywood. He would actually testify after World War two in front of the House on American Activities Committee, you know, HUAC, as a friendly witness corroborating communist infiltration in Hollywood. [02:12:28] S0: He named names of people who he said were communists Yep. Based on things he had heard about them, like no even proof. And you've got, like, a major figurehead of a big US corporation testifying. There's all this video of it of him saying, I believe so and so is a communist. [02:12:43] S1: Yeah. And, of course, this would lead to the famous Hollywood blacklist and, you know, all the terrible stuff that comes out of that. One thing later sort of by association with this, people would accuse Walt of being anti Semitic since much of the communist movement in in The US and especially in Hollywood was in the Jewish community. Gabler investigates this pretty thoroughly in his book and concludes that there's not any evidence that Walt ever really was anti Semitic. I turned over every stone I possibly could [02:13:12] S0: on this company, and we spent, I don't know, the better part of the year so far researching this, and I found zero evidence of that.
02:13:12 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[02:13:12] S0: on this company, and we spent, I don't know, the better part of the year so far researching this, and I found zero evidence of that. [02:13:19] S1: Yeah. Same. Definitely anti communist, for sure. Yep. But, anyway, so speaking of the war By [02:13:28] S0: the way, this is like four giant blows to the company in a row. You've got Europe dropping even before The US enters the war. You've got the the European distribution falling off. There's a thing we didn't talk about, which was Fantasia tried to make this giant bet in a new type of sound for movies called Fantasound. Alone almost killed the company. The budget for Fantasia was 50% bigger than Snow White. And in the first run at the box office, they tried to use Fanta sound, this new sound technology they had invented, and distributors didn't pick it [02:14:03] S1: up Yes. [02:14:03] S0: To do, like, a real first run. And so out of the $2,300,000 budget in that first year it came out in 1941, they recouped 325,000. Wow. That is a giant loss on Fantasia. I think Disney was also funding the development and and distribution of Fantasound. So you've got those two, then the strike. Now The US enters the war. [02:14:27] S1: Yeah. One more note on Fantasia, though, before we talk about the impact of The US entering the war. Do you know what ultimately ended up happening with Fantasia? [02:14:37] S0: They made Fantasia two thousand sixty years later? No?
02:14:37 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[02:14:37] S0: They made Fantasia two thousand sixty years later? No? [02:14:41] S1: Yes. The, that is true, but that is not what I was getting at. So, yeah, the initial release of Fantasia, as you said, was a total flop. They couldn't exhibit it anywhere, lost tons and tons of money. Later, it has this huge resurgence. I mean, I remember when I was growing up as a kid, my parents loved Fantasia. [02:15:01] S0: Yeah. I actually thought Fantasia was a modern movie. It's crazy to me that it was Disney's second. [02:15:04] S1: Right. Right. Right. I think it was, like, the sixties and the hippies that thought, like, oh, this is, like, the coolest thing. So Fantasia, if you look today at the list of inflation adjusted top films in history, by box office gross inflation adjusted, Fantasia is the twenty fourth highest grossing film in Hollywood history. Unbelievable. So it has [02:15:30] S0: And our whole second kinda timeless. [02:15:33] S1: Totally. It's an amazing, amazing production. I mean, the music, the symphonies, the sound. It's watch Fantasia if you've never seen it. It is well worth your time. [02:15:43] S0: And now a hard cut over to World War two.
02:15:43 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[02:15:43] S0: And now a hard cut over to World War two. [02:15:45] S1: Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So back to 1941, no sooner does Roy settle the strike than Pearl Harbor happens, and The US now enters World War two. And unlike many of the other great American companies of that era that we've covered on this show before where World War two was great for their business like Coca Cola or Mars or Lockheed, World War two is a disaster for Disney. Nothing of value gets built for Disney during the war. It basically breaks every single node in the flywheel. And on top of the strike, it just completely grinds to a halt all new core IP production for the studio. [02:16:36] S0: Yeah. So the first thing that happens is within hours and then days of Pearl Harbor getting bombed, the US military moves into the studio. Yes. They look at Burbank, and they think this is a great asset. And so Do you know why? Hundreds of troops, there are two reasons, that set up shop using the sound stages to work on all the optical systems for antiaircraft. Sound systems are awesome. There's no windows. It's a giant room. The I mean, like, it's it's the the thing you would want for stuff like this. The second reason that I suspect you're hinting at, David, is it is real close to Lockheed.
02:16:36 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[02:16:36] S0: Yeah. So the first thing that happens is within hours and then days of Pearl Harbor getting bombed, the US military moves into the studio. Yes. They look at Burbank, and they think this is a great asset. And so Do you know why? Hundreds of troops, there are two reasons, that set up shop using the sound stages to work on all the optical systems for antiaircraft. Sound systems are awesome. There's no windows. It's a giant room. The I mean, like, it's it's the the thing you would want for stuff like this. The second reason that I suspect you're hinting at, David, is it is real close to Lockheed. [02:17:12] S1: Yes. Real close specifically to Lockheed Skunk Works department, which is in Burbank. The secret Lockheed Skunk Works airplane hangars and and department was in Burbank because Burbank was the sticks back then, and Disney is right next door. So that's probably the bigger reason why the military requisitions the Disney lot is to protect skunkworks. Fascinating. [02:17:40] S0: Yeah. So you've got that happening. You've got a whole bunch of the animators getting drafted. Yep. I mean, so you're you're you're down manpower. You're just coming out of the strike. You have these huge failures in Pinocchio, Fantasia, and also Bambi. Again, you've lost European distribution. [02:17:55] S1: Yep.