SCENE: A conference room in the long, low, streamlined Disney Studios at Burbank, California. Against the walls lean big “story boards” to which are pinned preliminary sketches and paintings, including the one at top of opposite page, for a film just going into production. Drawing pads lie at hand for conferees to sketch out new ideas as they talk.
The movie up for discussion is one of the scores of educational and propaganda films that Walt Disney is producing for the government-a war effort that now constitutes over three-fourths of his and his 500-odd employees’ output. This one is being done for the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (Nelson Rockefeller) as a goodwill gesture toward Latin Americans, whose health authorities asked for this help in combating malaria. Many preliminary conferences have already been held with experts from the Public Health Service and Pan American Sanitary Bureau. General plan thus far agreed on is to start the film with a lecturer describing the relation of mosquitoes to malaria and then call up Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs from the audience to demonstrate methods of mosquito eradication. What follows are excerpts from the stenographic transcription, sometimes condensed or recorded as indirect discourse by the secretary, of the conversation at this Disney story meeting. The discussion is opened by Walt himself-full name Walter Elias Disney but never called anything but Walt by the Disney staff. He is a slender man, just short of six feet tall, with black hair, a small mustache, and quick bright eyes. Forty years old, fond of polo playing, personable, friendly, and engaging, he has a great love of animals and laughter.
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