ARTISTS labored at their easels, cameramen went quietly about their photography – script writers dreamed up funny gags for a galaxy of strange characters, mostly animals – that’s a pre-war picture of the studio presided over by Walt Disney in Burbank, Calif. The sole object was entertainment. But today Disney and his helpers, far busier than their dwarfs of “Snow White” fame, are engaged in one of the greatest of wartime education projects. They have produced more than 400,000 feet of educational war films for every branch of the service – enough to make a continuous movie 68 hours in length. Last year the studio produced 150.500 feet, 88 per cent for Navy Bureau of Aeronautics, the Signal Corps, and the Army Air Forces.
During 1943, alone, Disney produced 204,000 feet of film. Most of it – a total of 94 per cent – was produced for the Government at cost. Yet normal production for one pre-war year was 27,000 feet. Streamlined methods of production made possible this increase.
Disney had already achieved considerable fame in all branches of the services by producing without charge hundreds of comic insignia for everything from bomber and pursuit squadrons to PT boats and coast artillery units. Any officer who wrote for “something funny to go on my squadron’s planes” got just what he ordered.
But Disney actually made his first venture in producing battle films in 1939. That year he produced a series for the Canadian Government covering the operation of the Boyce anti-tank gun plus a number of war bond trailers. Then, by spring of 1942, the Disney studios were swamped by scores of orders from our own services. The Navy got there first with a request for 90,000 feet of film to be delivered in three months.
Since then Disney and his staff have dabbled in, investigated, studied and worried over virtually every Government activity, with accent on the aviation branches. They have produced films for the Co-ordinator of Inter-American Affairs, covered every conceivable subject from aerology (the practical application by pilots of the science of meteorology) and pursuit combat tactics to maintenance of aircraft by ground crews – everything from health problems in South America to electronics, electricity and superchargers. Their films have been translated into Portuguese, Spanish, Russian, Swedish, French and Italian. Chinese versions are to be undertaken soon.
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