Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1079787
50 KEYFRAME F I N A L N O T E Looking back, inker Sadie Friedlander Bodin called herself "a little nobody" when she inadvertently became a footnote in animation history for picketing New York's Van Beuren Studios in 1935 to protest being fired for union activity. Today, your right to participate in a union is legally protected but, at the time, Bodin was risking her future livelihood in claiming that right under the new National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Picketing began at lunchtime on Wednesday, April 17, and was part of the Animated Motion Picture Workers Union (AMPWU)'s effort to publicize her situation prior to a hearing before the Board. The protest, which was repeated twice more, called for a boycott of theaters showing Van Beuren's Tattletale and Rainbow Parade cartoons. Van Beuren itself had been plagued by chaotic management that, among other things, resulted in frequent unpaid overtime. Burt Gillett, director of Disney's enormously successful Three Little Pigs, was put in charge, but he proved even more erratic than his predecessors, probably due to his alcoholism. Laying off all the men in ink and paint followed Disney practice, but there was also a pattern of capriciously hiring and firing artists in all departments. Efforts to unionize animation workers were fairly common in the mid-thirties. These were usually amateur efforts, done in secret lest management fire those involved. And Bodin, before joining the AMPWU and becoming its recording secretary, even tried to form a union on her own. The NLRB, set up as part of the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) of 1933, aimed to make it easier for workers to organize and to settle disputes such as Bodin's. Bodin's efforts ended when the Supreme Court declared the NIRA unconstitutional. Records indicate the Board did not view her case favorably, though they considered charging the studio with unfair labor practices. (The NLRB was quickly revived by the Wagner Act in July 1935.) The AMPWU faded away, but its efforts eventually bore fruit in 1937 when the Fleischer strike resulted in the industry's first union contract. After her firing, Bodin left animation to raise a family, returning after the war. She helped crack the glass ceiling for women by becoming first a background artist and then an animation coordinator, helping to set up a number of commercial houses in New York. Not bad for a little nobody. – Harvey Deneroff SADIE BODIN AND THE FIRST PICKET LINE