The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life

4. Disney and the Depression: Sentimental Populism

4 Disney ana the Depression: Sentimental Populism ROy E. DISNEY, Walt's nephew, once asked Bill Peet, a longtime Disney employee, how the studio managed to secure and keep so many talented artists in the 1930S. The irascible old story man gave him a mischievous look, narrowed his eyes, and growled a one-word answer: "Poverty." Animator Marc Davis told a similar tale. He recalled that like other young people with sketchpads and pencils, he was lucky to find employment, art training, and meal tickets at the Disney Studio in the days when "there was no place a young artist could go to work." Even Walt Disney admitted that hard times had nourished his early success. While having lunch with a group of his leading animators and reminiscing about the old days, he looked around the table and remarked, "Gee, you know, if it hadn't been for the Depression, I wouldn't have had any of these guyS:'l Many of Disney's animated shorts contained interesting commentaries on the influence of economic disaster in the 1930S. Mickey's Orphans (1931), for instance, opened with a mysterious hooded feline figure leaving a basket of kittens on the protagonist's porch. Similarly, Mickey's Good Deed (1932) based its plot on the mouse's desperate sale of his beloved pet, Pluto, to raise cash for a penniless mother and her children. Moving Day (1936) followed the adventures of Disney's animated characters when they were evicted from their home by the sheriff because of nonpayment of rent. While such films 64 I The Disney Golden Age put smiles on the faces of their audiences with gags and happy endings, the laughter often arrived through the tears of an unhappy situation. These fragments of story and film lore recall something often forgotten - that Disney's spectacular ascendancy in the American entertainment field corresponded almost exactly to the unfolding of the Great Depression. Just as Mickey Mouse began to take off in 1929, the stock market crashed, triggering one of the greatest social and economic disasters in American history. Over the next few years, while millions of Americans lost their jobs and homes, stood in lines at soup kitchens, and suffered the private agonies of failure, Disney's animated films steadily attracted mass audiences, and a swelling volume of box office receipts filled the company's coffers. Admittedly, Disney, his people, and his films seldom faced the Depression directly. Nonetheless, the prolonged trauma of the 1930S had a powerful impact on his entertainment enterprise. It silently affected themes and plots, inspired the construction of story backdrops and settings, nudged satire in certain directions, and shaped the personalities of Disney's growing pantheon of popular animated characters. Such influence tended to surface indirectly and circuitously. More important, however, the Great Depression provoked a shadowy but potent political sensibility emphasizing the dignity of "the little guy:' the nobility ofhis struggle for survival against powerful forces in a hostile world, and his embodiment of the intrinsic goodness of the American "folk:' More visceral than programmatic, this broad cultural politics derived partly from pressing social circumstances and partly from crucial elements in Disney's own midwestern, rural, working-class past. Assuming a populist shape, it offered an important clue to his great appeal. But the ideological sensibility of Disney's Depression-era films was easily lost in the hubbub of publicity that accompanied the spectacular rise of the company's fortunes. By the early 1930S, Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphonies had carried the young producer to fame; a burst of innovative work over the next decade took him to heights that were truly dizzying. 1. Triumph Amid Travail In 1932 Walt Disney established another benchmark in his work: color animation. He had been intrigued with this idea for some time, and when Technicolor developed a three-color system appropriate for cartoons, he negotiated an exclusive right for the use of this process. A new Silly Symphony , Flowers and Trees, caused a sensation when it premiered on July 30 at Grauman's Chinese Theater. The story of woodland plants dancing and romancing to the music by Mendelssohn and Schubert was attractive enough, but the entranced audience spent most of their time exclaiming over the real star of the show - the film's radiant colors. Booking requests Disney and the Depression: Sentimental Populism I 65 soared, and at year's end Disney received the first...