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The Disney revolt : the great labor war of animation's golden age / Jake S. Friedman.

by Friedman, Jake S., author.

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Chicago, Illinois : Chicago Review Press, [2022]

Disney, Walt, 1901-1966.

Babbitt, Art, 1907-1992.

Walt Disney Company.

Walt Disney Productions -- History.

Walt Disney Productions -- Employees.

Animators -- Labor unions -- California -- Los Angeles -- History.

Strikes and lockouts -- Motion picture industry -- California -- Los Angeles.

Animators -- Labor unions -- United States -- History.

Animators -- United States.

9781641607193 (hardcover)

164160719X (hardcover)

xii, 322 pages ; illustrations, map ; 23 cm

Part I: Innovation -- My father was a socialist -- Poor and starving -- The value of loyalty -- Arthur Babbitt: Heil-raiser -- Fighting for his salary -- You can't draw your ass -- The Disney art school -- Three little pigs -- Enter Bioffsky -- The cult of personality -- A feature-length cartoon -- Bioff stakes his claim -- A drunken mouse -- Disney's folly -- Defense against the enemy -- Part II: Turmoil -- A growing divide -- The norconian -- A wooden boy and a world war -- Dreams shattered -- Hilberman, Sorrell, and Bioff -- The federation versus the guild -- The guild and Babbitt -- Disney versus the labor board -- The final strike vote -- Strike! -- The big stick -- The 21 club -- Willie Bioff and Walt Disney -- The guild and the CIO -- Not the drawing -- The final goodbye -- And they lived.

Soon after the birth of Mickey Mouse, one animator raised the Disney Studio far beyond Walt's expectations. That animator also led a union war that almost destroyed it. Art Babbitt animated for the Disney studio throughout the 1930s and through 1941, years in which he and Walt were jointly driven to elevate animation as an art form, up through Snow White, Pinocchio, and Fantasia. But as America prepared for World War II, labor unions spread across Hollywood. Disney fought the unions while Babbitt embraced them. Soon, angry Disney cartoon characters graced picket signs as hundreds of animation artists went out on strike. Adding fuel to the fire was Willie Bioff, one of Al Capone's wiseguys who was seizing control of Hollywood workers and vied for the animators' union. Using never-before-seen research from previously lost records, including conversation transcriptions from within the studio walls, author and historian Jake S. Friedman reveals the details behind the labor dispute that changed animation and Hollywood forever.

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