The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation's Golden Age

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Description

An essential piece of Disney history has been unreported for eighty years.

Soon after the birth of Mickey Mouse, one animator raised the Disney Studio far beyond Walts 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, labour 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 Capones 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 labour dispute that changed animation and Hollywood forever.

The Disney Revolt is an American story of industry and of the underdog, the golden age of animated cartoons at the worlds most famous studio.

Reviews

Jake S. Friedman has done an impressive job of research, to put it mildly. Without knowing the sequence of events its impossible to understand how this bitter strike came about. Add to that the perceived insults, slights, and resentments and you have the stuff of great drama. Leonard Maltin, film critic and historian, author of Of Mice and Magic Author Jake S. Friedman takes us on a deep dive into Hollywood history delivered in a style that reads like a film noir page turner. I could not put this book down. Don Hahn, producer of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King Gangsters, backroom deals, murder, and . . . cartoons Ive long been interested in the 1941 Disney strike, and Jake S. Friedmans book does not disappoint. Well written and thoroughly researcheda great read! Pete Docter, director of Monsters Inc., Up, Inside Out, and Soul

Author Bio

Jake S. Friedman is an animation historian and author of The Art of Blue Sky Studios and The Disney Afternoon. He has appeared as an expert on TV documentaries and written for Animation Magazine, American History Magazine, the Huffington Post, and Philadelphia Daily News. He worked for ten years as an animation artist on television shows and features, and now works as a mental health specialist, teaching the occasional History of Animation course at NYU or FIT. He lives with his wife in New York City. www.JakeSFriedman.com