On the cracked pavement of Hyperion Avenue, the tall gates of the old Disney studio still loomed, though the interior was mostly empty. Dust collected on the vacant linoleum floors. On January 4 and 5, 1940, the animators had boxed up their belongings.1 The camera operators and a few managers stayed behind to complete postproduction.
The new Burbank studio lot had been carefully designed. All the structures were built to precision and laid out on a grid. The new animation building was built opposite the studio theater, which could fit hundreds of employees at a time. But Walt also provided amenities unheard of anywhere else. The lot had an auto service station, and a coffee shop that delivered milkshakes to order at the artists’ desks. There was a gymnasium for top employees on the upper floor of the animation building. Every structure on the lot was cooled by industrial air-conditioning—a rare luxury in 1940.
The interior of the new studio was stylishly designed in a mid-century modern motif, and every room had original, custom-made furniture of polished wood and leather. The animators’ desks had an adjustable lever and new light disk, surrounded by three levels of shelves for paper. Around the edge of each shelf was a thin metal rim for the animators’ cigarettes to rest lest they burn the wood. Along either side were drawers and cabinets for their materials. The animators discovered that the curved handles of the drawers doubled as beer bottle openers, and the lower cabinets were the perfect height for a fifth of scotch.2
“You can’t imagine what fun it was to work at Disney’s,” wrote one artist in September 1941. “There was a university atmosphere about the place, a youth and eagerness as of a high school, as if the grounds were a campus and the workrooms were study halls. Every day was a ‘new’ day. If you had an idea you could shout ‘Eureka’ down the halls and you’d be listened to and get paid for your idea. . . . Walt had the habit of sudden firing. But by heavens, you weed a garden, don’t you?”3
Indeed, Walt had ultimate power on the lot, and his mood was inconsistent. Even his admirers called him many-faced, a “beloved benefactor Mr. Nice Guy” one minute and “Ebeneezer Scrooge” the next.4
Babbitt’s animation room was a comfortable workspace at the end of a hall. He had a full-sized animation desk, wall-to-wall carpet, and his own Moviola for pencil tests. Babbitt liked his room, and Walt liked his animators knowing how prized they were.
But Babbitt made an unsettling discovery. While all full-fledged animators had wall-to-wall carpeting, animation assistants had carpet that fell short of the wall by a few feet. Animation trainees had no carpet at all. In Babbitt’s estimation, Walt had delineated a class system, which Babbitt had loathed since his boyhood in Sioux City. He also discovered that the company athletic club, called the Penthouse Club, was only open to male artists earning $100 or more per week. Walt no doubt saw the Penthouse Club as an incentive, and asked Babbitt why he wouldn’t become a member. “As soon as you make it accessible to everyone,” Babbitt said, “I’d be happy to join.”5
Babbitt and the rest of the Federation met that month. Janofsky helped revise a contract, and the negotiating committee delivered it to the management. Again, it was ignored.6
Nonetheless, Babbitt worked as hard as ever. After driving back to the house that he shared with Marge, he retreated to his personal workspace and his own animation desk and continued to animate. Marge watched him sit at his desk night after night as she sat in the house alone.7 He was now thirty-two, and asked Marge to start a family with him. Marge had trained her whole life to be a dancer, and she was not ready to trade her dream for the life of a housewife. She hammered her point home by accepting a touring vaudeville show, with herself billed as the model for Snow White. The show would also include tap dancers, the Three Stooges, and musical humorist Cliff “Ukelele Ike” Edwards, fresh off his gig voicing Jiminy Cricket. The tour started in January and would run for eight weeks.8
As Marge’s show travelled from Chicago to Buffalo, her hotel rooms were bombarded with messages from Art asking her to come home. He called and wrote letters constantly, until he asked her if they should divorce.9
The tour was cut from eight weeks to three. When it was over, Marge bought a one-way ticket to New York City and stayed.
Theatergoers were eager for the latest animated feature by Walt Disney. After waiting two years for a follow-up to Snow White, they crammed into their seats to see Gulliver’s Travels.10
Of course, this was not a film by Disney but by the Fleischer studio—the same studio that had created Betty Boop and Popeye. The Fleischers had not only borrowed the European fantasy format from Disney but also used several of his former artists (including story man and voice actor Pinto Colvig).11
While this confusion likely helped the Fleischers’ ticket sales, it hurt Disney’s. Audiences for Gulliver’s Travels were underwhelmed. The Fleischers had some technical advances up their sleeves, like the occasional three-dimensional rotating background, but most of the characters lacked personality. With Gulliver still in theaters, Disney’s Pinocchio was released on February 23, 1940. Critics were excited about the film, but moviegoers disheartened by Gulliver’s Travels did not flock to Pinocchio the way they had to Snow White.
The same month of Pinocchio’s release, Babbitt received a contract renewal. It was for $200 a week—the same salary he had been earning since December 1936. This contract was also one page shorter; it excluded the clause about a bonus system.
Trade papers reported that Snow White had grossed $8 million.12 But Disney was also now going to trade shares publicly, and this was promulgated with Wall Street–style finesse. “Walter Elias Disney is about to become ‘big business,’ turning from his 17 years of self and private financing . . . to public financing to the tune of some $3,800,000 of, probably, a six per cent preferred stock convertible into common stock on a share-to-share basis,” reported the Motion Picture Herald. “The investment bankers are on the way in at this very minute.”13
Within the studio, while the lower-level animators continued on the shorts, the top animators worked on Fantasia. Babbitt’s pièces de résistance in the film were from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite: the Russian Trepak and the Chinese Dance. Both were designed in pastel by artist Elmer Plummer. Plummer had painted thistles and orchids for the Russian Trepak, and short, plump mushrooms with wide rice-farmer-style caps for the Chinese Dance.14
The sequences in Fantasia’s Nutcracker Suite were conceived to be artistic explorations of gradation, repetition, unity, contrast, and harmony. However, Babbitt turned the Chinese Dance into something more. He created a tiny mushroom child whose personality jumped off the screen.
Babbitt would describe the littlest mushroom (later given the name Hop Low by the studio when the character proved popular) like a latent self-portrait. “It was the story of one character who was constantly out of step with all the others,” he explained, “and he never did quite get into the crowd. Except there was one occasion—I think it was the scene where he marches toward the camera, and then on back, as if he were reviewing his troops—which gives you an indication of the little guy’s cocky character.” He blithely added, “He is not aware—or refuses to accept—that he is at fault; that there is something wrong with him.”15
It was at this time that a feud between Plummer and Babbitt began. Babbitt ignored Plummer’s model sheets that uniformly turned the mushroom caps into rice-farmer hats and instead varied the sizes and shapes of the mushrooms.16 Disgruntled, Plummer told Babbitt’s assistant Bill Hurtz, “These old-timers are on their way out. They’re not keeping up with the times.” Hurtz was left to shuttle the drawings to and from Babbitt’s and Plummer’s rooms as each corrected the other’s artwork.17 The animated result became a bizarre morphing of mushroom shapes that lasted for a solid minute. The inconsistency even passed Walt’s critical eye. In the sweatbox, Walt only gave one note: instead of the little guy bowing on the final beat, have him miss the beat and bow after. Babbitt made the change, keeping the littlest mushroom out of step through to the end.18
On March 18 the studio utilized their big new theater and screened a work-in-progress reel of Fantasia. Babbitt’s mushroom scene received high praise from the other animators. “He deserves it,” remarked a witness. The next day, the animators were still talking about the scene. Babbitt responded glibly, “Well now maybe Walt won’t fire me!”19
Work on Bambi was still moving through the pipeline. It was going to be a tour de force of animation and Disney’s “A” picture.
The “B” picture, Dumbo, was significantly cheaper. Whereas Pinocchio cost $2.6 million20 and Fantasia was costing $2 million, Dumbo would cost less than $650,000.21 It would run just sixty-four minutes and be animated in a loose, cartoony style that was more facile. The title character wouldn’t even speak.
In March the Disney studio animators attended an initial lunch meeting for Dumbo. Lead animators would have included Babbitt, Bill Tytla, and art-school grads Ward Kimball and Woolie Reitherman.
Fred Moore, once the studio’s star animator, was not invited. In his room, he yelled and drank from his whiskey stash. His assignments had gotten smaller as the features grew more sophisticated. His drinking had also gotten worse. His friends in the studio often saw him curse himself at his desk and drink throughout the day.22
On March 25 Walt pulled up to his studio to see the operators of his air-conditioning system on strike, wielding picket signs reading ENGINEER ON STRIKE and UNFAIR TO ENGINEERS. Police officers patrolled the gate, each armed with two pistols and tear gas bombs.
Walt called one of the officers over. “What the hell are those guys doing out there?” he demanded.
“They’re on strike, Walt,” said the officer.
“For Christ’s sake,” said Walt, “tell ’em to get back to work; we’ll have a meeting tonight!” He drove through the gate, and the striking engineers returned to work.23
Back at the original Disney lot on Hyperion Avenue, the cameramen also had grievances. Gunther Lessing called the five members of the Federation’s negotiating committee—including Babbitt and Bill Roberts—to settle the issue. The committee had not met in several months, having voted to not put pressure on the management. Now they were being asked to placate the cameramen.
“I found that it was a matter of salaries and that the fellows weren’t getting raises,” said Roberts in 1942. Subsequently, Roberts went to the Camera Department representative and acquired a salary schedule for their future raises. He took the schedule to production control manager Herb Lamb and production engineer Bill Garity, who agreed to put the salary schedule into effect. “However,” said Roberts, “the union wasn’t very active, and none of us were very active in pushing the thing.” Soon, the cameramen’s grievance was forgotten.24
One of Walt’s proudest claims was that his company never had to answer to stockholders.25 That changed at the start of April. To compensate for a newly growing debt, 755,000 shares of Disney stock were sold publicly, raising $3.5 million.26 The sum roughly amounted to the cost of the Burbank studio. Roy could be overheard grumbling, “Christ, that bastard never owned anything in his life. Just when he’d about get ready to make the 18th payment on his car, he’d buy another. Now he’s bought a new studio.”27
Meanwhile, the war in Europe was obliterating movie ticket sales there. On April 9, the Nazis invaded Denmark and Norway. The allied resistance of France and Britain braced to halt a larger German invasion, just as they had in the Great War.
By mid-April, Pinocchio was still far from breaking even. “‘Pinocchio’ I hear, is laying a financial egg, may be lucky to meet production cost,” wrote national columnist Walter Winchell.28 Walt Disney Productions was once again sinking in debt. Production work on Bambi slowed. Babbitt joined Fred Moore, Wilfred Jackson, Ward Kimball, and Norm Ferguson for lunch. They talked about bad story ideas and the issuance of Disney stock, but everybody seemed to be worried about the fate of the studio.29
Cuts had to be made, and employees started to be laid off. On April 23, the animators learned that Johnny Cannon’s contract was not being renewed. Cannon had been one of Disney’s first animators, predating them all. It was sobering news, especially for those who were questioning their own job security.30
On May 9 the Nazis invaded the Netherlands and, on May 16, Belgium. German tanks proceeded unhindered through the Ardennes Forest at the Belgium-Luxembourg border. The invasion of Western Europe had begun.
Only another quick, inexpensive film could keep the studio afloat. In mid-May, Walt desperately pitched to his story team a Jack and the Beanstalk feature starring Mickey Mouse: “The main idea is that we are trying to get a feature out of here in a hell of a hurry . . . our European market is shot—which you’re all aware of, and we have to get something out of here that can go out and make some money on just the American market alone.”31 Walt calculated that the war was cutting the studio’s profits by 40 to 45 percent, and he told his artists that to avoid further layoffs everyone would have to cut corners.32
“I felt responsible to every one of them,” said Walt in 1942, breaking down in tears. “In the spring of 1940 I was about going crazy—”33
At the time, the company employed nearly twelve hundred people. Walt met with the bank and board of directors. “It was obvious that the representatives and stockholders demanded that I reduce my staff to less than half immediately . . .” he said. “I tried to find another way. I tried to increase my output of short subjects. . . . I fought as long as I could to keep these people there.”34
Then the mass layoffs began. From May through June, employees were let go by the hundreds.
“Our personnel is to be cut, between 300 and 400 people, in the next few weeks,” wrote one artist on May 26. “It has begun already, and last week the axe fell on about 25, and this Saturday 50 people were released. What makes it nerve-wracking is that the people who are being canned are simply those who are not working on anything vital at the moment, more or less regardless of ability. . . . And every other studio will be in the same position, so that there will be practically no chance of finding another artist’s job.”35
“We are all fighting mental battles now,” wrote another artist on June 4.36
By mid-June, Herb Lamb told the staff that the studio was still over budget.37 In lieu of more layoffs, the Disney staff accepted a company-wide pay cut.
On June 17, 1940, the French military surrendered to Germany, and the Nazis marched through Paris. As Washington raced to prepare for war, US citizens began to experience rising prices of food, gas, and other basic expenses. Income taxes were scheduled to increase. Compounded with the Disney pay cuts, it was nearly impossible for the average employee to save money.38
Babbitt had even more to contend with. He filed for divorce from Marge on June 21.39
That summer, Babbitt and Woolie Reitherman animated sky-bound Goofy in Goofy’s Glider (directed by Jack Kinney).40 In Europe, the summer-long Battle of Britain was fought in the sky, as the Royal Air Force defended the United Kingdom from German warplanes.