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.If you stopped messing around in other people s business andstopped carrying the torch for a bunch of guys who don t deserve to be foughtfor in the first place, you would be a hell of a lot better oª. Disney said ofShaw: Well, if he doesn t like it here he can go work in a service station. 57Babbitt also described a confrontation in a corridor of the animation build-ing on the morning of May 5, 1941, with Disney again boiling with anger:on a treadmi ll, 1 941 1 947 1 81 If you don t cut out organizing my employees you are going to get yourselfinto trouble.I don t care if you keep your goddamn nose glued to theboard all day or how much work you turn out or what kind of work it is, ifyou don t stop organizing my employees I am going to throw you right thehell out of the front gate. 58Babbitt s accounts, even if not word for word accurate, certainly reflectedthe hostility to the union, and to Babbitt in particular, that Disney voiced onother occasions.A few weeks after Disney returned to the studio, Babbitt swork started to dry up.He spoke of trying desperately to get some work forabout ten days, until finally he was laid oª on November 24, 1941.59 Babbittimmediately challenged his dismissal as unjustified.A year later, a trial examinerfor the NLRB agreed.Babbitt himself wrote to a friend around that time thatDisney had lost his halo and tinsle [sic] as far as I m concerned.I think he sa confused mixture of a country bumpkin and a 1st degree fascist. 60Disney s intense dislike for Babbitt, and for Dave Hilberman, the otherleader of the strike, is one source of the persistent claims that he was anti-Semitic.(Although Babbitt questioned the characterization, both he andHilberman were Jewish.) There is simply no persuasive evidence that WaltDisney was ever in thrall to such prejudices.Roy Disney expressed some won-der at his brother s tolerance in an interview with Richard Hubler not longafter Walt s death: For an artist that had delivered, Walt didn t care how hecombed his hair, or how he lived his life or what color he was or anything.A good artist to Walt was just a good artist and invaluable. 61Whatever the exact motives for Babbitt s layoª, it was not an isolated event.The Disney studio announced the same day that it was laying oª a total oftwo hundred employees, shrinking its staª to 530, less than half the prestriketotal.62 Although Dumbo was doing well and Bambi was all but ready for re-lease, the studio s most substantial work on hand was the short cartoons onSouth American themes.Then, on December 7, the Japanese attacked PearlHarbor, and everything changed.The army moved hundreds of troops Disney put the figure at more thanseven hundred into the studio. These soldiers were part of the anti-aircraftforce that were stationed all around, Disney said. They had these guns allover the hills everywhere, because of the aircraft factories and things Bur-bank was home to Lockheed Aircraft.Disney remembered that soldiers be-gan arriving uninvited on December 7, but Variety reported that troops didnot move into the animation building until a week after Pearl Harbor, at thestudio s invitation.63 The army also occupied the studio s sound stage, Dis-ney said, because they could close the stage up and work in a blackout. 1 82 a queer, qui ck, deli ghtful gi nk This impromptu conversion of part of the lot lasted for what Disney saidwas eight months, but his involvement with the war eªort lasted much longer.Disney had begun seeking defense-related work in March 1941, but not tooeagerly, and with only limited success.His most important commissions camefrom the National Film Board of Canada, which ordered four cartoons, allusing old animation, to promote the sale of war bonds, as well as a trainingfilm on the Boys MK-1 antitank rifle.Production of those five films beganon May 28, 1941, and continued until early in 1942,64 by which time Dis-ney s war work for his own government had increased dramatically.As soon as the United States entered the war, the navy moved swiftly, com-missioning Disney to make twenty films to help sailors identify enemy aircraftand ships.So closely did the navy and Disney work together that CaptainRaymond F.Farwell, author of Rules of the Nautical Road (translated intofilm by the Disney artists), lived in Disney s office suite for months. He didhis washing in there and everything, Disney recalled.With much of the Burbank studio empty, Disney leased space to Lock-heed for use by production illustrators.As Robert Perine, who was one ofthem, later wrote, Rows of animators were simply replaced by rows of tech-nical artists, turning out complicated, two- and three-point perspective draw-ings of aircraft parts. 65In February 1942, at the annual Academy Awards ceremony, Disney re-ceived the Irving Thalberg Award, given not for a particular film but for aconsistently high level of quality
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