Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1488780
Disney picketers in 1941 (above and preceding page). P H OT O S : ' T H E D I S N E Y R E V O LT ' 68 C I N E M O N T A G E B O O K R E V I E W The family atmosphere of Disney morphed into paternalism. Zelda. Solomon Babitsky was disabled in a work accident in 1923, and the family moved to New York, where it was forced to be increasingly dependent on Zelda's fam- ily. Art rejected his father's strict religious doctrines, and by fiercely standing up for his rights as an employee, found success as an advertising artist. Walt felt that his father, known as a "churchy" man, was a gullible pacifist, misused by a disreputable socialist farmers' cooperative. At age 16, when a bomb attributed to the IWW exploded close to him in the Chicago Federal Building, Walt decisively turned against Elias and joined the war effort as an ambulance driver. These facts, and a great deal of other information presented in the f irst f ive chapters of "The Disney Revolt," may make it appear that psychological analysis will dominate the book, but this is not the case. While Friedman does refer to the possible emotional states of some of those involved in the strike and sets their careers within the context of their personal lives, he fortunately does not wander into fanciful supposition. The book avoids specious speculation, an approach that creates trust in its authenticity. Even so, readers would have benefitted from a pictorial timeline that clarified the complicated events. A simplified explanation of the strike is that the close-knit family atmosphere that characterized the earliest days of Disney cartoons morphed into a kindly paternal- istic organization as Mickey Mouse and his pals rose to fame. Then as the studio moved from Hyperion Avenue in Hollywood to grand new facilities in Burbank and was riding high on the success of Hollywood's first animated feature film, "Snow White," the hiring of hundreds of workers, mount- ing debt, grueling production schedules, broken promises, low pay and hard-nosed bureaucracy drove star animators like Babbitt to feel increasingly sidelined and u n d e r a p p r e c i a t e d . B a b b i t t w a s h e l d in high esteem by the creative community for animating classic characters like Goofy, the evil stepmother in "Snow White," the Chinese Dance in "Fantasia," and Geppetto in "Pinocchio." He developed a technique with his personal camera for filming "action analysis," in which the actual movements of people were transferred to cartoon characters, giving them unique dimension and personality. A l t h o u g h B a b b i t t w a s t h e s t u d i o's highest-paid animator, he was passionate