Chicago Review Press
“The average age was less than 25,” said Herb Sorrell in 1948. “They became the most enthusiastic strikers I have ever seen in my life.” Some strikers leaped atop the car bumpers; other rocked the cars side to side. Once through the gates, the cars were greeted by the nonstriking inkers and painters clapping and cheering — a welcoming committee.
The strikers had each been given two- or three-hour shifts, ensuring a twenty-four-hour picket line. They were mostly comprised of inbetweeners, animation assistants, inkers, and painters, but among them were also story artists, effects artists, background painters, and animators. Bill Tytla and Art Babbitt stood out as the highest paid on strike.
The previous night, the Guild voted to include supervising animators among its membership. This made not only Babbitt and Tytla eligible to strike but also all other top animators. Babbitt was on his feet rallying alongside the other strikers, shouting to non-strikers by name, including Ward Kimball. “I felt terrible,” Kimball journaled that day. “Friends on the inside waving to me to come in. Friends on the outside pleading with me to stay out; Jeezus. I was on the spot!”
Inside the studio, the loyalists were worried. “How the hell can Walt run a studio without us?” asked Norm Ferguson. On their way inside, the strikers warned them that once the union won, it would fine them the amount equal to their salary, plus $5 per day, plus a $100 penalty. Ferguson told his fellow non-strikers, “Any agreement made will have to involve protection for you guys or Walt wouldn’t sign, so stay on and receive your salary!” With nearly all the assistants and inbetweeners outside, the animators pitched in to do those jobs for each other. If the films weren’t completed, the Bank of America might foreclose. Right now, everything was riding on Dumbo, the studio’s B picture.
Relationships were severed. It was the end of Babbitt’s friendships with nonstriking animators Les Clark and Fred Moore. He was also dating a blonde secretary named Nora Cochran before the strike; she unsympathetically stayed in.
The strike took its toll on those who couldn’t choose a side. Novice animator Walt Kelly (future creator of the comic strip Pogo) had friends on both sides, and he packed up and left altogether. He claimed it was to care for his ill sister, but privately he left his friends this note:
For years I have reached for the moon
But the business now is in roon
So I don’t hesitate
To state that my fate
Is to take a fug of a scroon!
After 10:00 am, the strikers dispersed to the adjacent eucalyptus knoll. Sorrell recalled that “from 10 to 11 or 11:30, we would talk to them on a loud speaker system, and of course they could hear in Disney’s what we were saying across the street.”
Every emphatic slur and enthusiastic cheer that erupted from the PA system echoed in the Burbank studio. Yet, Walt was seen smiling at lunchtime. “I’m going to see this to the end,” he said. “I told ’em I’m willing to hold an election, but they refuse, it’s their funeral!”
Jake S. Friedman is an author and animation historian. This article is edited and excerpted from Friedman’s The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age (Chicago Review Press, July 5), which uses never-before-seen research from previously lost records, including conversation transcripts from within the studio walls to illuminate the labor dispute that changed animation.