This image from the 1944 Disney short How to Play Golf was not directly part of the studio’s overtly anti-Axis World War II propaganda, but it was released during that era and included subtle war-related imagery (David Taffet/Dallas Voice)
DAVID TAFFET | Senior Staff Writer
Taffet@DallasVoice.com
When Walt Disney got word that his studio lot in Burbank was taken over by an anti-aircraft artillery battalion to protect a neighboring Lockheed facility, his reaction was not what you’d expect — at least not what you’d expect in today’s world. But it was exactly what you’d hope it would have been following the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941.
Disney pledged to support the war effort and said his company would do whatever it could without profit. The studio was generally reimbursed for the cost of producing the material, which allowed it to keep its employees on the payroll.
And through four years of war, more than 90 percent of the studio’s output was devoted to producing training, propaganda, entertainment and educational films, creating insignia, cartoons and print media.
On exhibit at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum through Sept. 10 are 500 artifacts from the era that explain just how the Disney studios creatively supported the war effort. The exhibit is organized by The Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. The family, along with the studio, collected and preserved this piece of history.
World War II was probably the last time the entire country worked together and sacrificed for the cause, suggested Museum Director Mary Pat Higgins.
Women became an important part of the Disney workforce at that time, after the studio lost a large number of its male artists who joined the military. Before the war, women at the studio were either secretaries or they inked cartoon cels. But the studio found itself short of talented artists and began filling those positions with women.
By 1945, 81 women were working in every position in the Animation Building.
Among the training films produced was the very un-Disney title High Level Precision Bombing: The Bombing Computers. The two-part, four-hour film taught the technical steps to operate the very complicated device in the nose of the aircraft that released bombs automatically to drop them accurately on targets. Because the information in the film was top-secret, the animation for the film was produced in two separate units. Neither unit knew then what the other was doing.
Disney cartoons had been appearing in print in Good Housekeeping magazine since 1934. Later in the 1930s, the focus of these comics shifted to war-related topics such as buying war bonds and patriotism. Disney is credited with more people paying their income tax on time, something the museum says was not common at the time.
(David Taffet/Dallas Voice)
But a lot of what Disney became known for during the war was boosting morale. One popular way of doing that was by producing insignia that were pasted on planes. A 1939 letter to Disney from an aviation cadet is thought to have sparked what became a massive production of insignia.
Requests for insignia came from all branches of the military and resulted in creation of an insignia team. They pledged to design an insignia for any troops that asked, resulting in 1,200 designs for 1,300 military units.
Few requests came from women’s units, but 15 designs feature female characters. An insignia known as the Fifinella Gremlin was created for a training detachment in Houston.
They merged with another squadron to form the Women Airforce Service Pilots or WASPs, based in Sweetwater, Texas. The gremlin design was featured on the main gate.
The exhibit features dozens of these colorful and whimsical insignia. On display are some of the letters, some typed, others handwritten, requesting insignia. Each request was fulfilled.
Among the many artifacts are cartoons with patriotic slogans such as “Planes need gasoline. Share your car for your country.” Comic books feature Donald Duck buying war bonds and Mickey Mouse, Donald and Snow White and the dwarves waving an American flag. Other cartoons encourage people to plant victory gardens to expand the food supply.
Between the attack on Pearl Harbor and Victory over Japan Day, the studio released 55 short entertainment films. The stories were kept intentionally vague, so they’d play after the war as well.
Only two of the shorts featured Mickey Mouse. Donald Duck, Goofy and Pluto were in the majority of these films, because, Disney thought, their personalities were more suited to war-related stories.
Plenty of videos are interspersed with cels, sketches and other drawings. And this being the week after the Academy Awards, there’s even an Oscar on display.
“We didn’t come out of the war smelling like a rose, but we had acquired a wonderful education and a determination to diversify our entertainment product,” Walt Disney said after the war. Among those things Disney began working on soon after the war were films delayed by the war such as Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953), the studio’s first completely live-action films, television and, of course, Disneyland (1955).