1941 film shows striking animators brandishing a working guillotine at the Disney studio gates
mostlysignssomeportents
The 1941 Disney animator’s strike was bitterly fought, as Walt Disney refused to grant the concessions that all the other animation studios had agreed to, and instead grew paranoid and accusatory, convinced the “Communist infiltrators” had turned his animators against him.
One poorly remembered – but vivid! – moment from the strike was when Chuck Jones led Warner animators came to join the picket line in solidarity, bringing with them a working guillotine with a mannequin styled to look like Gunther Lessing, the Disney attorney.
Archivist John Basmajian has preserved and digitized a film of the guillotine, along with many other Disney rarities.
As Gizmodo’s Mat Novak notes, we tend to gloss over the more radical elements in union history in our contemporary retellings of famous strikes, but these were not polite, timid affairs. Unions attained their goals through radical, relentless action that put them at risk and brooked no compromise.
dduane
This one resonates doubly for me, both as someone who’s written animation for the House of Mouse and who’s been a member of the union that this movement birthed.