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The Disney genius

By NINA HIBBIN

Who designed Mickey Mouse?
You’re wrong, of course (other-
wise why ask the question?), It
was Ub Iwerke, an associate of
Walt Disney since their strug-
gling days in the early ’20s.

It was a source of embarrass-
ment to Disney that, although he
had had some training as a car-
toonist, he was unable to provide
young autograph-hunting admir-
ers with the simple sketches of
Mickey, Donald and Pluto that
they often asked for.

That Disney was an artistic
genius is one of the myths explo-
ded by Richard Schickel in Walt
Disney (Weidenfeld and Nicol-
son, $7.50.) He also puts his foot
through the “Uncle Walt” legend
—Disney, according to his publi-
cists, as a “man with a mission
to bring happiness to millions.”

Yet few people have contribu-
ted more to 20th century folk-

lore than Disney, and if he

wasn’t exactly an artistic genius,
or a man with an altruistic mis-
sion, he was certainly a genius
of a kind, with a mission of a
kind.

Generations who have never
seen the pigs or Snow White can
whistle’ the “Big Bad Wolf‘
tune in the dark, and can tick
off the emotive names of each of
the seven dwarfs.

Pinocchio and Mary Poppins
never had it so good on the
printed page as when they were
Disnified. Mickey Mouse and
Donald Duck, for better or for
worse, are part of our lives.

“Next to Enid Blyton,” I once
heard an already tainted little
six-year-old inform her school
friend, “Walt Disney is the
cleverest person in the world.”

In Mr. Scheckel’s remarkable
book, which is not so much a
biography as a_ sociological
assessment, Disney comes over
as a cold, shrewd businessman
in the grip of a number of deeply
rooted obsessions.

His genius was, in part, his
ability to exploit these obses-
sions in a way that exactly
suited the mood and limited
ideals of a wide section of the
American and British public.

Unlike most movie magnates,
he didn’t have to develop elabo-
rate ways of estimating the
pulse of this section of the
public. He was the pulse.

The most valuable aspect of
Mr. Schickel’s book is the light
it throws on the specifics of Dis-
ney’s Middle-Western upbring-
ing, which made him into the
embodiment of the great Amer-
ican Middle-Western dream—a

narrow, small-town dream of

prettiness and perfection, godli-

ness, cleanliness and an unskak-
able confidence in the status quo.

This analysis accounts for the
limitations in Disney’s work, but
not for its brilliance. It accounts
for the cuteness that has always
marred his most dazzling fiights
of fancy; the coy equation of
animals with human beings that
bedevils his astonishing studies
of nature in the raw.

It explains the social smug-
ness and self-righteousness that
has been a growing characteris-
tic of the worst of his postwar
live-action films, from “Polly-
anne” to the abysmal “Follow
me Boys.”

But it doesn’t accommodate
the imaginative, satirical content
that made “The Absent-Minded
Professor” and its sequel “Son
of Flubber’ into lively and
worthwhile entertainment.

It doesn’t completely explain
Disney’s infallible ear for a
catchy tune, but it pins down
the prudery and prejudice which
led the Disney company to re-
fuse to allow the producers of
“Who's Afraid of Virginia
Woolf?” to use the appropriate
tune (they had to use the “Mul-
berry Bush” melody instead).

It may well account for Dis-
ney’s notoriously reactionary
politics — his support of the
extreme Right and his hard-
headed treatment of his staff.

Mr. Schickel is inclined to see
this as a kind of unthinking
naivety—and certainly one could
dismiss as merely naive the
extraordinary statement Disney
published in the '30s, at a time
when Mickey Mouse was being
solemnly analysed in terms of
social, psychological and politi-
cal symbolism by theoreticians
all over the world.

“Mr. Mussolini takes his fam-
ily to see every Mickey picture,”
he wrote, “Mr. King George and
Mrs. Queen Mary give him a
tight royal welcome; .. . Doug
Fairbanks took Mickey with him
to savage South Sea Islands and
won the natives over to his pro-
ject. Mickev is one matter upon
which the Chinese and Japanese
agree...

“. . Mr. A. Hitler, the nazi
old thing, says Mickey’s silly.
Imagine that! Well, Mickey is
going to save Mr. A. Hitler from
drowning or something, some
day. Just wait and see if he
doesn’t. Then won’t Mr. A. Hit-
ler be ashamed!”

But childishness, plus a natur-
al inclination to associate him-
self with the forces which
seemed to him to represent

stability, cannot excuse Disney’s
racialism, which Schickel ob-
serves, for instance, in his
apparent reluctance to employ
Jewish artists.

I am surprised that Schickel
didn't also notice the uncon-
scious racialism in’ Disney's
final and much-overpraised, full-
length cartoon “The Jungle
Book.”

Disney’s obsessions led
curious contradictions.

A technological innovator,
compulsively seeking new ways
of developing the art of anima-
tion, he established methods of
work which have formed the
basis for animation all over the
world.

Yet the very strength of his
influence has held back “world”
animation progress, which has

, only recently begun to shake

itself free from the negative
aspects of his style.

A perfectionist, he understood
the need to employ the best
artists and to provide them with
the finest equipment and facili-
ties — but strictly on his own
paternalistic terms.

When his rapidly expanding
staff decided that they could no
longer put up with long hours,
low pay and unfulfilled promises
of bonuses for voluntary over-
time, his reaction was vicious in
the extreme.

Many technicians were cruelly
victimized for the part they
played in. forming the Screen
Cartoonists’ Guild, in opposition
to Disney’s company union,
leading to a bitter nine-week-
long strike.

His obsession with childish
fantasy—a psychological refusal
to grow up—led him into strange
modes of behavior, like building
an elaborate model train system
round his house and having his
lawyers draft a_ right-of-way
contract when his wife and
daughters suggested that the
studio grounds might be a more
suitable site.

It led him to the construction
of the most profitable aspect of
his entire entertainment empire,
Disneyland—that monument to
technical perfection and artistic
vulgarity which he looked after
and administered like an over-
devoted father until his death in
1966.

Yet. of course. it was precisely
this obsession which was respon-
sible for the remarkable’ and
enduring aualities of some of
his work. The fact that Disney
couldn’t draw Mickey Mouse is
wtimately irrelevant. The point
is that he had the ability to con-
ceive him.

Sister George — mildly funny

Frank Marcus’ comedy, The
Killing of Sister George (a big
hit in New York and London)
is mildly funny and modestly
satirical. Final production of the
Theatre Toronto season, it at-
tracted a large opening night
audience.

Many, I suspect, came to the
Royal Alexandra anticipating a
revelation of lesbian mysteries.
Well, Timothy Bond, the direc-
tor, preferred to focus our at-
tention on the play’s meaning
and rejected the gimmicks of
sensational sex, much in evi-
dence on the commercial stage
these days.

The Marcus play concerns
four women (all more or less
lesbian). The most aggressive
and masculine *of the four’ is ‘a

PACIFIC TRIBUNE~=MARCH 21, 1969—Page 22

radio actress in a long-time
BBC series about life in an Eng-
lish village. The Sister George
of the series is a nurse beloved
and respected for her good
works and virtuous chartcter.
The BBC, in its wisdom, decides
the time has come to kill off the
dear girl. The actress is angered;
her vanity is wounded. Into this
situation comes a suave BBC
lady (who has designs on the
girl friend of the actress) and
a flamboyant fortune teller.

You can regard The Killing of
Sister George either as a com-
ment on BBC behaviour, and in-
volving some off-beat women;
or a comment on some off-beat
women and involving BBC
mores.

It is really a rather surface

glimpse in either direction. It
has the sort of writing, largely
gag-based, that encourages arti-
ficial performances even from
our better actresses. The satire
is pretty conventional. (One
shaft, above the average: “In
my country we shoot people.
You send them to the House of
Lords.”’)

The writing and, I feel, the
direction, require a deepening
of the characters, an accenting
of the dark side of the humor.
There are, after all, some very
sick people in this London flat
—cruel people, sadistic people,
self-centred and cynical and tra-
gic people—and you can’t just
laugh them away.

Dawn Greenhalgh, as June
Buckeridge, as Sister George,

to -

In the March edition of Steel
Shots, organ of the big Ham-
ilton Steelworkers Union Lo-
cal 1005, a spokesman for the
the rank-and-file asks a ques-
tion, and suggests that per-
haps District 6 Director Larry
Sefton should answer it.

For the Steelworkers Union
together with all Canadian
trade unions it is an impor-
tant question, set forth in the
title of the article referred to,
“Should Pen Baskin be a
member of the tribunal?”

The said tribunal is the
Mediation Commission set up
by the Socred Bennett govern-
ment of B.C. under Bill 33 of
the Trade Union Act, design-
ed to clamp the ball-and-chain
of compulsory arbitration up-
on organized labor, if, as and
when the government may de-
cide in its (lack of) wisdom,
that any trade union with-
holding its labor power to
back up its efforts to secure
an improved wage and work-
ing conditions union contract
“is not in the public interest.”

This Bill 33 if carried to its
logical conclusion as envisag-
ed by the political spokesmen
of Big Business, will reduce
the hardwon right of free
collective bargaining to a
farce, impose heavy penalties
of fines and prison terms up-
on union locals and members
to the “full extent of the
law,” and as some trade
unionists have correctly de-
scribed it, reduce free trade
unionism to a state of peonage
similar to Hitler’s “corporate
state” unions.

As the B.C. Federation of
Labor (BCFL) describes it,
“, .. it simply means that, in
a dispute between labor and
management at any time, the
people involved can be or-
dered back to work at the
whim of the cabinet and
forced to accept conditions
as laid down by the Media-
tion Commission, whether
those conditions are accept-
able or not.”

Should Steel Director Larry
Sefton respond to the request
in Steel Shots, and this col-
umn sure agrees that he
should, since Labor’s fight
against Bill 33 in B.C. is by
no means ended, nor does its
vicious implications end at
the border of B.C., he should
take his cue from the Execu-
tive Council of the BCFL.

At a mass public rally of
trade unionists at Exhibition
Forum on April 7, 1968, (and
any changes since that time
have been for the worse)
BCFL president E. T. Staley
read an executive statement
to the audience —with Pen
Baskin on the platform as one

of the executive members and
a designer of that statement.

“Will the Commission con-
sist of more than one man?

If this is the case, then no
doubt the government will

seek to appoint a man to re.
present management and a
man to represent labor. The
only problem here is to find
a man to represent labor. No

self-respecting labor man
could accept such an ap.
pointment while kno
one of his duties would be
to revoke freedom and en-
force compulsion.

be someone who,
sake of a political

of a government that has no
understanding or sympathy
for labor”.

Neither BCFL president Sta-
ley nor any trade unionist in
that audience was at that mo-
ment aware that Pen Baskin,
sitting on the platform behind
Staley, already had his “ap.
pointment” in his hip pocket,
with its assurance of a five- |
year tenure of office at $40,000 |
per annum. j

Moreover since then “Prime |
Minister” Bennett has faced
no “problem” in finding oth-
ers like Baskin, ready and
willing “to revoke freedom
and enforce compulsion” for
a fat salary bribe.

The “appointment” of Van- |
counver and District Labor |
Council (VLC) ex-president
Ed Sims and newly elected
BCFL executive member Chas.
“Chuck” Stewart as “media-
tors” to do the Commission’s
dirty work was a heavy moral
blow to B.C. labor, but by no
means destroyed rank-and-file
determination to do battle
against Bill 33 and all it
stands for.

Veteran Steelworker leader
and rank-and-filer of Local
3302, Coray Campbell made
his final impassioned plea at
the December 3 session of the
VLC for greater unity and
struggle against Bill 33. Then
turning to Bennett’s most
recent “appointee” Stewart,
Coray said: The labor move-
ment in B.C. is not ready to
balance old friendship with
acts of treason, and you will
live to regret your decision”.
These were Steelworker Co-
ray Campbell’s last words
before death stilled his great
workingclass heart forever.

Sure, Larry Sefton should
answer the question posed,
“Should Baskin be a member
of the tribunal?” not only for
the enlightenment of Steel-
workers and other unions in
Eastern Canada, because Bill
33, like the Rand “formula”
for union wrecking threatens
the freedom of all unions.
Such a viewpoint could also
help stiffen the fight against
Bill 33 in B.C. — at the mo-
ment, a badly needed stiffen-
ing.

overstresses the hard, near-ugly
and eccentric male mannerisms
to the exclusion of all feminini-
ty, so that, in her last scene,
when you should be near tears,

‘you come close to laughing at

her desperation.

Rita Howell, as the gypsy
type, gets trapped in dialect and
florid mannerism. Amelia Hall,
in a cool’and positive charactér-

ization as the BBC woman, cal-
not avoid a certain air of arti
fice.

For me, the most sympathe-
tic and multi-faceted portrait |
is that of Barbara Bryne, the @
grown woman with the teen-age |
air, part hippie, part courtesal,
part rebel, part fool, but altoge
ther helpless and complicated
‘and very real. “~~~ Martin Stone