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Walt's Story: Episode 10
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WWII Insignia
During the war, the Disney Studio created hundreds of insignia for various military units

When Pearl Harbor was bombed and the United States was drawn into the Second World War, the nation was in a state of near panic. Americans sat glued to their radio sets to hear the news. Would there be more bombings? Was California safe? That night, Walt's phone rang. It was his studio manager. "Walt," he said, "The army is moving in on us. I said I'd have to call you. And they said 'Call him. But we're moving in anyway.'" Hours later, some 700 soldiers had, in fact, seized the Disney Studio. Their purpose was to help protect the nearby Lockheed aircraft plant -- an installation that was vital to the nation's security. The next day President Franklin Delano Roosevelt declared war. And for the next eight months, until other provisions could be made, soldiers ate, trained, and lived in Walt's studio.
 
At the time, Walt was working on "Bambi" -- and beginning other projects including "Peter Pan" and "Alice in Wonderland." He dropped work on almost everything except "Bambi," which was released on August 21, 1942, a great artistic success. Instead of fairy tales, Walt's studio made dozens of films for the military. As animation historian Charles Solomon writes, "Prior to the war, the largest annual output of the studio had been 37,000 feet of film; during fiscal year 1942-43 alone, Disney turned out more than five times that amount -- 204,000 feet of film, 95% of it for government contracts." Walt made animated training films and a variety of other civic projects. Notable was "The New Spirit," a cartoon aimed at convincing Americans that it was their responsibility to pay income taxes. Sixty million people saw the film; a Gallup poll indicated that 37% of them were more willing to pay taxes afterward.
Bambi
"Bambi": A great artistic success
 
Major Alexander de Seversky
Major Alexander de Seversky, author of "Victory Through Air Power"
Other cartoons "combined propaganda with entertainment," writes Solomon. For example, in "Der Fuehrer's Face," Donald Duck appears as a misbegotten, hungry soul stuck in Nazi Germany. Luckily for the duck, it turns out that the whole thing was only a dream. "Victory Through Air Power" was based on a controversial book by Major Alexander de Seversky. It used powerful images to form a persuasive argument that aircraft would change the nature of war, a concept that was far from generally accepted at the time. It features a powerful finale in which an evil octopus, representing the Japanese empire, is destroyed by a soaring eagle that represents American air power. Though government contracts certainly brought money into the studio, Walt was hardly getting rich from this work. Some of it was done at cost. All of it was pretty expensive. "Victory Through Air Power" lost almost $500,000 at the box office.
 
After the war, the studio was deep in debt. Walt wanted to try bold new projects. Roy wanted to be more cautious. The two fought often. Nothing seemed to go right. Though "Song of the South," released in 1946, has been praised in subsequent years, it wasn't warmly received by critics when it opened. It was also accused of being racist. For the next couple of years, Walt and Roy compromised by producing films with little in the way of plot that were nothing more than packages of occasionally well-done short pieces. But Walt wasn't one to be caught in the doldrums for long. "Let's do anything to get some action," he said. And action he got, as he set the studio working in three directions at once -- at whatever risk that entailed: True-Life Adventures, live-action films, and a reinvigoration of cartoon features, led off by "Cinderella." Song of the South
"Song of the South"
 
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