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The Penthouse Club, up on the roof of the Animation Building, was run by Walt Disney’s boyhood friend, Walt Pfeiffer. It was an all boys club—which as the 1943 Employee Manual pointed out: “Men Only! Sorry, gals.” The girls had their own “Tea Room” on the top of the Ink and Paint Building. This “Boys Only” rule was, of course, indicative of mid-Century gender discrimination prevalent throughout the American workplace. But at the studio, the separate areas for men and women also discouraged company flirtations and romances, which Walt believed wasted his staff’s time. “The only women allowed,” one employee recalls, “were waitresses from the Commissary.“ The Penthouse Club, as animator Floyd Norman explains, was “a perk ‘Walt’s Boys’ could earn after rising through the ranks over a series of years…a club not open to everybody–and that seemed to be the attraction.” In a 1941 talk to his employees, Walt pointed out that the Penthouse Club was not necessarily “a closed thing. We would be glad to allow any fellow who is decent and respectable to belong to it. However, at the start we had to allow those men who carry the main responsibilities of the Studio the first chance to join. After giving those men their chance, we then threw it open to the whole group.” Even after the club was open to all male employees, club fees generally put membership out of reach of the younger artists at the studio. In practice, then, the older and best-paid employees were primarily the club’s members. […]