When Walt Disney cheated his animators, their strike changed the world

Writers Guild of America has been striking for just over a month, and there is no end in sight. WGA strikes are a response to a failed negotiation with Hollywood studios regarding pensions, residuals compensations for streaming, health care and writers’ rooms protections in light of AI. in the words of writer-comedian Adam Conover, “for the survival of television and film writing as a sustainable career.”

It’s not the first time that monopolized power and the collective labor have clashed. Given how inevitable those conflicts are, it’s worth looking back at how important they’ve been as well, in terms of shaping the current entertainment landscape. This week marks 82nd year of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ game-changing strikes, which sent shockwaves through Hollywood and helped shape the American animation business as it is today.

The Disney animators’ strike of 1941 wasn’t the first strike of its kind: The Fleischer Studios strike of 1937 produced the industry’s first union contracts. However, the Disney strike marked a turning point in American labor history. In 1941, Warner Bros., MGM and all other major studios had effectively joined the union. Walt Disney Animation Studios’ holdout was one of the less flattering and lesser-known ways the company stood apart from Hollywood orthodoxy.

The strike may have been part of the spirit of the times, but it’s just as attributable to the company’s workplace culture throughout the 1930s, and to one event in particular. Ironically, it’s the same event that transformed Disney from a popular animated-shorts house into a cultural powerhouse: the production and theatrical release of 1937’s Snow White & the Seven Dwarfs.

Image: Walt Disney Pictures

The seeds of dissent at Disney were planted as early as spring of 1934, when studio founder Walt Disney first announced plans for his company’s most ambitious and challenging undertaking to date. Inspired by a formative experience as a kid in Kansas City, watching J. Searle Dawley’s 1916 film Snow White in theaters, Walt set out to produce the world’s first full-length cel-animated feature film, in color and with accompanying sound.

Three-year production is Snow White and Seven DwarfsThe Walt Disney Family Museum states that the project was massive, with 32 animators needed, as well as 1,032 assistants. Also, there were 107 inbetweeners and many other production workers who are not credited. The movie suffered significant delays: Its first completed animation was submitted to Disney’s ink and paint department on Jan. 4, 1937, less than a year before its premiere date.

In total, Snow White required 250,000 drawings to be animated, inked on celluloid animation frames, painted, and photographed — and that’s not counting the completed sequences Walt ultimately chose to cut from the final film. The inkers had to do a minimum amount of cels per day while the painter’s task was to produce 17 cels. The production staff were informed in October 1937 that the deadline for 1938 was approaching. Snow WhiteTo be ready for the premiere, they would have to extend their work days from 9 hours, 5 days per week to 10 and a half hour, 6 days a weeks, without being paid any overtime. Disney animators weren’t properly compensated for overtime work until the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 federally mandated overtime pay for employees working over 40 hours per week.

In the months prior to the premiere of the film, tensions and financial stakes were at an all-time high. Snow White’s production, initially budgeted at $250,000 (around $5.5 million in 2023) ballooned to $1.5 million (around $33 million in 2023), with Walt himself mortgaging his home to finance the film, according to Michael Barrier’s 1999 book Hollywood Cartoons – American Animation at its Golden Age. The situation was so dire that Hollywood executives and trade papers nicknamed the film “Disney’s Folly.” Before its release, it had a reputation as an overpriced vanity project that seemed destined to flop. In an attempt to ameliorate the tensions and keep morale up, Disney verbally promised the production staff that 20% of the film’s total profits would be divided up among the film’s creators, proportionate to their contributions and unpaid overtime hours. It turned out that this was a false promise.

Cartoon Brew

Snow White and Seven DwarfsIt premiered Dec. 21, and then expanded nationwide in February of 1938. The film was a commercial and critical success, earning more than $2,000 (in 1937 dollar) at the end of summer. It received praise from stars such as Charlie Chaplin. Battleship PotemkinSergei Eisenstein credited this film as one of most outstanding works of cinema at the time. Jake S. Friedman, an animation historian writes in The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age, “The Snow WhiteThe film was a huge success around the world, and the artists waited patiently for their profit share bonuses. Walt and Roy had enough money in May to buy the movie. Snow WhiteTo pay off their bank loan. For the first time in two years, the studio was out of debt.”

While trade papers at the time reported that Disney’s studio was going to distribute an estimated 20% of Snow White’s earnings among the studio’s 800 employees, the actual bonuses those artists received were equal to or less than what they had previously received for the studio’s short films. Some Snow WhiteArt Babbitt was among the animators who did not get any bonus for their work.

Babbitt, a former commercial artist, joined Disney as an assistant animator in 1932. He was promoted quickly to animator due to his talent and ability to deliver on deadlines. By 1941, Babbitt was highly regarded as one of the studio’s top artists, credited with defining Disney’s signature brand of personality-driven animation through his work on the character Goofy, and for his work animating the likes of the Wicked Queen in Snow White, Geppetto in Pinocchio. and Mr. Stork Dumbo.

At one time seen as one of Walt Disney’s most valued and trusted animators, Babbitt also became one of the strike’s key organizers. Unfulfilled promises, unpaid wages and lingering anger over the strike. Snow White’s production were a sticking point for workers like Babbitt. Walt Disney would not address in good faith the pay disparities among his employees or other workplace issues.

In the period between, tensions continued to rise between managers and artists. Snow White and Seven Dwarfs’ release and the months before the strike. The money Walt promised to distribute among the workers instead went to the construction of a new Burbank campus for the studio, complete with lavish accoutrements such as industrial air-conditioning, custom-made furniture, a coffee shop that delivered milkshakes to order, and a “Penthouse Club” athletics building, restricted to employees with a salary of $100 or more a week.

Babbitt, who had a large, comfortable office with carpeting on the walls and an animation desk of a suitable size, noticed the disparity in the sizes of offices for animators and assistants. This created a caste-like system that was built into the very foundations of the studio. According to Friedman, when Walt asked why Babbitt wouldn’t join the Penthouse Club even though he met the minimum salary requirement, he replied, “As soon as you make it accessible to everyone, I’d be happy to join.”

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The commercial failure of Walt Disney Productions’ next two features — 1940’s PinocchioThe following are some examples of how to get started: Fantasia — put significant financial strain on the company and took a toll on the workers’ morale. With World War II limiting the demand for animation overseas, Disney Animation’s future was uncertain. While the creation of the Burbank campus was intended as a long-term investment in the studio’s future, the overzealous expense of both building it and financing the company’s productions during the war forced Disney to make hard and unpopular choices, including several rounds of layoffs that put the studio’s entire staff on edge, emphasizing just how little job security they had.

Assessing the situation, Babbitt and Screen Cartoonist’s Guild president Bill Littlejohn met with Walt Disney to demand recognition of the membership of Disney animators within the guild and to negotiate a contract recognizing their collective concerns. Walt refused, claiming the guild couldn’t be a union representing Disney’s workforce, on the grounds that they were already represented by the Federation of Screen Cartoonists — a “loosely knit social organization” posing as a union. The Federation was devised by Disney’s vice president and head lawyer Gunther Lessing to rebuff attempts by outside organizations to unionize the studio.

On May 27, 1941, 315 Disney animators who had chosen to be represented by the Screen Cartoonist’s Guild voted in favor of striking. Babbitt, who had been an influential force in organizing the push to unionize with the guild, was fired that same day, on the grounds that he had “disturbed the morale of the employees [and] seriously interrupted and disturbed production operations.” The next day, the Disney animators’ strike began, and it lasted nearly four months.

The strike drew attention across the industry, damaging Walt Disney’s then-immaculate public image. Strikers and nonstrikers fought, with Disney and Babbitt shouting at each other on the Burbank campus.

In the end, the striking workers won. Walt faced nationwide protests against him, as did the federal mediators verdict, his brother Roy Disney’s counsel, and their inner-circle of financiers. He agreed to recognize the Screen Cartoonist’s Guild and concede to the striking animators’ demands. Staff received increases, overtime and weekly hours were standardised, Art Babbitt became a rehired employee, and the company was officially protected against any discriminatory or retaliatory actions.

Cartoon Brew

Resumption of work on DumboThe atmosphere of the studio and the workplace culture were irrevocably altered. Friendships that had existed between co-workers split into strikers and non-strikers. They then deteriorated to sectarian rivalries. Babbitt (responsible of animating Chernabog the demon in Fantasia), Frank Tashlin (who worked in Disney’s story department, and later on Warner Bros. Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts), and other artists left the studio one by one to join Disney’s competitors, including Terrytoons and MGM’s cartoon studio, among others.

The Disney animators’ strike of 1941 stands as one of the most consequential milestones in the history of American animation. If not for the strike, United Productions of America — the American studio behind projects like Ted Parmelee’s 1953 adaptation of Tell-Tale Heart and Robert Cannon and John Hubley’s Gerald McBoing Boing (both preserved in the National Film Registry) — would never have existed. UPA’s pioneering modernist animation would never have inspired celebrated contemporary animators like Powerpuff Girls creator Craig McCracken and Dexter’s Laboratory creator Genndy Tartakovsky. Maurice Noble, the art director best recognized today for his work on Chuck Jones’ 1957 short film What’s Opera, Doc?Warner Bros. would not have been able to hire him if he had never left Disney.

The fight for unionization in the American animation industry continues to this day, with The Animation Guild IATSE Local 839 — the modern successor to the Screen Cartoonist’s Guild — having successfully campaigned to unionize and represent production workers across multiple animation studios, including Titmouse (The Venture Bros.), Nickelodeon, ShadowMachine (Guillermo del Toro’s PinocchioGreen Portal ProductionsRick and Morty). In the midst of the ongoing WGA strike, it’s important for both fans and working professionals to remember what can be gained through collective action — and for studios to remember the perils of depending on creative people to drive the profits, all while taking them for granted.