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.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.The stress of the previous two years caughtup with Disney as he accepted the award from the producer David O.Selznick, and he wept openly. It was difficult for anyone to hear Disneyclearly, Daily Variety reported. He found it difficult to speak and was onlyable to say, with great emotion: I want to thank everybody here.This is avote of confidence from the whole industry. 66In the spring of 1942, work on the twelve South American themed shortswas moving forward rapidly understandably so, since the writing of all thoseshorts began before the 1941 trip did, and the people who did most of thework on them were not part of El Grupo, the studio contingent that ac-companied Disney to South America.Disney attributed to his distributor,RKO, the idea of combining four of the shorts into a sort of feature, to over-come the difficulty of selling a Brazilian-themed short in Argentina, and soon. They said, You ve got to put these together somehow.So I didn t knowhow to put em together but I had taken 16mm film of our trip.I tookthe 16mm film, blew it up to 35, used it as connections between the four sub-jects and presented it as a tour of my artists around. on a treadmi ll, 1 941 1 947 1 83 Saludos, as the forty-two-minute result was called for its release in Span-ish-speaking Latin America, included cartoons that placed familiar Disneycharacters in South American settings (Donald Duck in Bolivia and Brazil,Goofy in Argentina) and introduced new Latin-flavored characters ( José Car-ioca, a Brazilian parrot, and Pedro, an anthropomorphic mail plane).Thefilm played to enthusiastic crowds throughout Latin America.In BuenosAires, a representative of the coordinator s office reported, the sequences,particularly those dealing with Argentina, amazed the audience with theirauthenticity, their charm and their humor.There was little doubt thatthe Brazilian sequence and particularly José Carioca were considered [even]more enjoyable than the Argentine sequences and this in Buenos Aires isnews. 67 Retitled for its domestic release, Saludos Amigos opened in the UnitedStates in February 1943.It returned rentals to the studio of $623,000, morethan twice its negative cost of less than $300,000.68By the summer of 1942, the Disney studio still had only around 500 to550 employees,69 but war work was beginning to take up the slack left by thedormant feature program.That work accelerated the Disney studio s turnaway from being strictly or even mainly a cartoon producer.By 1943, abouthalf the film footage the studio produced was live action, most of it for de-fense series like Aircraft Production Methods.70 In order to get his men whowere making military films deferred, Disney brought members of draft boardsto the studio where, he said, they could not get security clearances to seesome of the most sensitive work being done.In the later months of 1942 and the early months of 1943, as war workramped up, Disney somehow found time and money (receipts from Bambino doubt helped) to make another feature, this one radically diªerent fromthose he had made before the war.Although Disney is best remembered asa train enthusiast, he loved air travel, too, and in early 1942 his South Amer-ican trip stimulated him to plan a bargain-basement feature on the historyof aviation.Instead, that plan was subsumed in a largely animated versionof Victory Through Air Power, Alexander de Seversky s 1942 book advocatinga reliance on long-range bombers to defeat the Axis powers.Disney s artists had adapted rapidly to the new demands of the militarytraining films, so far removed, both in graphics and as narrative, from any-thing they had done before.The maps and diagrams and symbols that makeup much of Victory s animation, illustrating Seversky s ideas, were a furtherchallenge, especially combined with Disney s zeal for the subject matter. Iwas confused after a meeting on the film, said Herb Ryman, whose métierwas the evocative sketch. I could only see maps.Walt followed me out of1 84 a queer, qui ck, deli ghtful gi nk [the] room
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