And so the union celebrated. The ex-strikers entered the gates once again, alongside the loyalists. But the atmosphere was tense. One animator remembered it was “edgy—some people never spoke to each other again.”1
Roy attempted a diplomatic reunification. Like Abraham Lincoln to a restored nation, he addressed his employees, stressing that a change in attitude was essential to the survival of the studio.2
Personnel director Hal Adelquist approached Babbitt as the artists entered the lot. Adelquist said he was sorry the strike had happened, and he was ready to put it all behind them; the studio was still suffering, and he only wanted to complete as much work as possible. The two shook hands and agreed to move on.3
The strikers had heard a rumor that their offices had been taken by non-strikers. Now they saw it was true. The non-strikers had moved their furniture and occupied the more desirable rooms. A nonstriking, lesser animator was now sitting at Babbitt’s desk. Babbitt was assigned a new room that only had an animation desk and a drawing cupboard on a linoleum floor. It did not have carpeting, additional furniture, a personal Moviola machine, or adjacent space for an assistant. It was a trainee’s room.
Babbitt contacted Adelquist, demanding all the amenities of his old room. Adelquist promised to get him a Moviola as soon as possible. The process took days.4
In the Personnel Department, a young secretary named Marge Gummerman worked under Hal Adelquist. She was given a very curious instruction. Gummerman was to go through the pile of employee evaluations and separate the strikers from the non-strikers. Then, after each evaluation had STRIKER or NON-STRIKER written atop their photo, she was told to file the strikers separately. The STRIKER pile would be the first for layoffs.
Her task did not remain a secret for very long. Gummerman happened to be the girlfriend (and later wife) of one of the strikers.5
Due to cost-cutting, the company still had to downsize by Friday, August 15. Management assembled a nine-person committee to decide who would be laid off. The committee was headed by Hal Adelquist, and it compiled a list of 256 employees, of whom 207 were ex-strikers, including Babbitt.6
The list was submitted to the Screen Cartoonists Guild for approval. Naturally, the Guild was quick to reject it. Gunther Lessing protested, “We have a right to retain those employees of highest merit and ability. We have done that; we have not discriminated.”7
The Guild insisted that the conciliator get involved. US labor conciliator James F. Dewey was busy in Detroit. He informed Walt Disney Productions that he would need time to come up with a formula for accounting a new layoff list.
Walt Disney had other things to plan. With the strike settled, the US government gave the green light for his group’s Latin America research trip. “I marvel at Disney’s hypocrisy,” wrote Babbitt in his journal. “After violating the wages and hours law—violating the Dept. of Labor arbitration decree and soaking the Government for the South American picture—he has the gall to advertise his patriotism while he lands a juicy defense pictures program.”8
Inside the studio there was still confusion. Many artists were waiting around, shooting craps or playing poker.9
Columnist Westbrook Pegler had reached out to Walt during the strike, asking for details. Walt left Pegler’s letter sitting until the morning of his flight, on August 11. Only then did Walt respond, writing out of exhaustion, resentment, and angst: “To me, the entire situation is a catastrophe. The spirit that played such an important part in the building of the cartoon medium has been destroyed.” Walt felt that the Labor Relations Board was undemocratic and “lopsided” against him and that the press damaged his public image with “the lies, [and] the twisted half-truths.” He considered quitting the business altogether “if it were not for the loyal guys who believe in me.” In a fit of “disillusionment and discouragement,” Walt left with his bags and boarded a plane for a ten-week production trip to South America. The government’s Good Neighbor program awaited.10
With Walt away, Roy Disney didn’t take long to consider his options. He needed a new list requiring Guild approval. These layoffs would reorganize the studio. Roy took drastic action. Instead of laying off anyone on August 15, he shut down the studio and placed nearly its entire staff on unpaid leave.
“The closing of the Studio came as a great blow to our employees,” wrote one of Roy’s executives to him on August 17. The note, on behalf of many in studio management, bemoaned that the cries of “Communism” were an unfounded distraction and that Gunther Lessing was a poor advisor who should have not been involved. It called on Roy to rein in Hal Adelquist, who had allowed the Personnel Department to hunt ex-strikers. The note pleaded with Roy to lead “toward integration and reconstruction,” to “take a stand against discrimination,” and (referencing Walt’s trip) “to take care of the Good-neighbor program here at home.”11
The letter partially worked. Adelquist would eventually be removed from the Personnel Department. Some strikers were embraced by the studio again, even earning high praise throughout their long tenure. Most, however, were spurned and quit within a few years. The studio never truly healed the divide between the strikers and non-strikers.
The Guild immediately hired a new business agent named William Pomerance, previously a field examiner for the Labor Relations Board. Pomerance began working to protect the jobs of Guild animators at Disney and across Hollywood.12
Disney employees on furlough filed for government aid, nervous about the future and unsure when the studio would open again. The days turned into weeks. They were in a limbo, unable to work but unable to leave.
On September 9, Dewey handed down his “second arbitration settlement”—a formula for a new and equitable layoff list. It had a specific ratio of strikers to non-strikers in each department in production and how many of each the management was permitted to lay off.
The Disney managers were at the mercy of the Labor Relations Board; they were forced to add names of artists who hadn’t gone on strike. They drew up a new list that balanced strikers with non-strikers, and the Guild accepted it. The studio reopened on Wednesday, September 17, minus 263 employees.13 This time, Babbitt was designated to stay. It would not last long.
Things were very different around the studio. There were about seven hundred total employees now, compared to twelve hundred a year before.14 The artists now had to punch a time clock. Police officers directed everyone to their buildings.15
Babbitt sat at his desk, waiting for his first animation assignments. But the assignments did not come, and Babbitt was left idle. He contacted Hal Adelquist. Aside from being personnel director, Adelquist was also the “casting director,” distributing scenes to each animator as per that animator’s ability. The second week, Adelquist delivered three scenes to Babbitt for a new Goofy cartoon, How to Fish. The scenes had been animated already (by John Sibley) but were not satisfactory. Babbitt was tasked to redo those scenes.
Shortly thereafter, Babbitt again found himself idle. Again, he contacted Adelquist and waited several days before Adelquist delivered. Babbitt received thirteen scenes of Ben Buzzard in a Donald Duck cartoon, The Flying Jalopy.
Director Dick Lundy had handed those scenes over to Adelquist reluctantly.16 All the loyalists had seen how deeply Babbitt had gotten under Walt’s skin, and many stayed as far away from Babbitt as possible. Old-timers like Lundy may have done it out of self-preservation. Art-school graduates like Milt Kahl may have considered the strike irreconcilable. Kahl encountered Babbitt at the building’s Coca-Cola dispensary, laughing and saying, “I’m not supposed to talk to you,” and nearly got into a fistfight.17 Gunther Lessing refused to sit in a meeting with Babbitt, shouting, “I’ll be god-damned if I will have that son-of-a-bitch come up here!”18
The non-strikers gathered at the Guild headquarters on September 29 to pledge the oath of membership. Many did it begrudgingly. Fred Moore garbled nonsense words with a random “son-of-a-bitch” thrown in.19
They returned to the studio anxious to complete the next Disney feature. Bambi was moving to completion, so more animators were reassigned to the two other features in development—the “Mickey Feature” and The Wind in the Willows.
On October 9, Roy Disney returned from meeting with the company’s distribution agents in New York with unhappy news. The studio, he said, would have to “drastically curtail its feature production” and shelve The Wind in the Willows and the “Mickey Feature.” They would join the growing pile of discontinued projects, including Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, The Little Mermaid, new Fantasia segments, and what would be Lady and the Tramp. For now, the studio could only focus on short cartoons starring their staple characters.20
When Walt returned from Latin America in late October,21 much had changed. The layoffs had put a dent in the studio. The amenities like the studio coffee shop and auto shop were nowhere to be seen. What’s more, Walt no longer had final say in a lot of studio policy. The Guild’s presence was tangible.
But the Guild had changed too. All the Disney artists were now Guild members. New elections were held for Guild stewards, and the Disney artists voted for nearly all non-strikers. Babbitt didn’t even win a nomination. Animator Eric Larson became the new president, and animator Ward Kimball the new vice president.22
The Personnel Department compiled another layoff list, this one with ninety-eight names, including Babbitt’s. It was submitted to the Disney unit of the Screen Cartoonists Guild for approval. This time, under the auspices of Larson and Kimball, the Guild approved the list. On the afternoon of November 24, ninety-eight Disney artists received the memo for their immediate termination. All layoff grievances could be taken to Disney’s director of labor relations, Anthony O’Rourke—still a member of Disney management.
Babbitt simply sat at his desk and penned a letter to the company. “I consider my status as an employee of your company unchanged,” he wrote. “I shall expect payment of my regular weekly salary whether or not you wish to avail yourself of my services.”23
The move was bold, but ineffective. Babbitt unwillingly left the Disney lot yet again. The company had already tried to fire him in May and in August. Babbitt doubted the third time would be any more successful.
Babbitt filed two lawsuits against Disney. The first, for unpaid bonuses, officially called a “complaint for breach of contract and for accounting,” was filed on December 19.24 The second, for wrongful termination, involved the Labor Relations Board and would need more time to prepare.
The United States had officially entered the Second World War. Over the next few days, Babbitt drove cross-country to New York, visited friends and family, and met up with Marge and her new partner.25 From Manhattan he sailed to Buenos Aries to meet Argentine cartoonist Dante Quinterno. Together they collaborated on a short cartoon and discussed possible employment in South America.
But deep anxiety festered within, for which he blamed the company. He journaled, “Little pangs of common sense keep pricking me—telling me that I should be home working—reestablishing myself and facing realities again.” He lamented “the uncertainty of starting again in a profession that I love so much—but which (thanks to Disney and Lessing) has brought me so much unhappiness.”26
But below the surface, Babbitt blamed himself. On the steamship he wrote about a graphic nightmare in which he mistakenly and violently murdered a friend with his bare hands. Subconsciously, he feared his own inadvertent destructiveness.27
When Babbitt returned from South America in April, he signed up for the US Marine Corps reserves. Without clear explanation, the Marine Corps canceled his enlistment. Babbitt called upon his colleagues for letters of recommendation. Bill Tytla wrote an attestation to Babbitt’s industriousness and ambitiousness.28 Ex-production manager Herb Lamb did as well, adding, “I always found him to be a man of intelligence and high moral character.” Babbitt’s enlistment was accepted again.29
On May 25, 1942, the Labor Relations Board filed Babbitt’s unfair labor practice lawsuit against Disney. Both his trials would dovetail, the civil suit and the Labor Relations Board suit occurring back-to-back in October. Until then, Babbitt worked at the Warner Bros. animation studio under director Bob Clampett. He was offered a handsome salary, but he refused to work for anything more than scale minimum. The earnings would count against his Disney settlement, were he to win. And he wanted Disney to pay as much as possible.30
He worked at Warner Bros. right up to his civil suit trial, held the week of October 5. In court Babbitt testified that he was owed between $2,000 and $17,00031 in bonuses for Pinocchio, Fantasia, and several shorts. Gunther Lessing argued on behalf of Disney management that the bonus amounts were always at the behest of the company. The only clearly defined compensation was the salary stipulated in his contract. This argument was strikingly similar to Lessing’s tactic in 1917 against Eugene Ives, a case Lessing had won. Lessing countered that Babbitt owed the company around $200 from unsettled loans he borrowed in 1939.
The civil suit trial adjourned on Wednesday, October 7, 1942. The labor suit trial began on Thursday, October 8. Babbitt set out to prove that he was a highly valued worker and that his termination was purely discriminatory.
Babbitt was composed and well-spoken as he sat in the witness stand. He testified continuously for the first two and a half days as his attorney questioned him. He recounted how he and Lessing built the Federation on company time and resources. He described his valued status within the studio. He argued that he was more valued than many of the animators who had not been fired. When Lessing objected to the lack of evidence, Babbitt laughed out loud.
Gunther Lessing countered, explaining that the strikers, including Babbitt, went on strike because they were subpar and sought job security.
Following Babbitt on the witness stand were Dave Hilberman and other Guild chairpersons. Warner Bros. cartoon directors Bob Clampett, Frank Tashlin, and Chuck Jones testified to Babbitt’s skill. “Among animators and directors, there is a ranking,” said Jones, “and we know who is at the top of the heap.”32
On the fourth day, the Disney company presented its case. Its chief witness was Hal Adelquist, who testified for nearly an entire day. Of Babbitt’s termination, he said simply that there was a lack of work for him. During cross-examination, when Adelquist testified not knowing Babbitt’s skill level, Babbitt nearly interrupted him, jumping out of his chair and emphatically shaking his head.
A slew of Disney directors testified against Babbitt, including Bill Roberts, Dick Lundy, Wilfred Jackson, Dave Hand, and Jack Kinney.
The company’s final witness was Walt Disney himself. Walt was visibly shaken and out of his element. When he described how the drop in the foreign market caused the 1940 layoffs, he broke down in tears.
At last he collected himself and began to describe his experience working with Babbitt throughout the 1930s. “At the time, he was doing a good job,” said Walt, “but the business progressed, moved up, and standards changed. . . . Other things crept into [his work]—little subtleties. It is not the drawing. It is not the drawing.”
Walt said that Babbitt had lost his confidence. This made his animation stiffer, which made him even more self-conscious. “Mr. Babbitt had developed a terrific persecution complex,” Walt testified. “For some reason he thought that everybody in the studio was against him. And I talked to Babbitt about it and I told him that he was carrying a chip on his shoulder, [that] the attitude that he had had always been argumentative with people that he worked with, and [that] he was ‘building a fence around himself.’”33
There appeared to be no bitterness in Walt that day. He had spent the past ten years seeing his studio transform. He had watched as the old guard animators who built the studio were slowly overshadowed by the newer ones. What Walt observed when he looked at Babbitt was accurate, whether Babbitt liked it or not.
After the day’s closing arguments, Babbitt walked out of the courtroom. In less than a month he entered active duty in the US Marines. There was another war to fight.