His Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse have made millions laugh; now they will teach other millions to read
Symbolically speaking, a celluloid duck is emerging from World War II as the greatest potential educational force this world has ever known. His name is Donald Duck—and he stands for the international picture language developed and perfected over 25 years by his 43-year-old creator, Walt Disney. What the printed textbook is to today's scholar, Disney's drawings may conceivably be to tomorrow's. The movie-going public has long recognized Donald, Mickey. Snow White, Bambi and the rest as superlative entertainers; now educators are realizing that animated cartoons also can teach. Quick, guaranteed painless, their effectiveness has been proved under the stress of global war.
Disney's methods received their first wartime trials back in April, 1941, when he turned out an employee-training film called Four Methods of Flush Riveting for his Burbank, Calif., neighbor, Lockheed Aircraft. Then Canadian authorities asked him to do a film on the proper care and use of an antitank gun. That same year, our own Congress broadened the income-tax laws to start millions of new taxpayers contributing to the national-defense effort: and the Treasury promptly asked Disney for help. He obliged with Donald Duck in The New Spirit, which played to some 60,000.000 film-goers.
Later, when a poll was conducted on whether or not the picture had any effect on their willingness to pay, 37 per cent of those polled replied that it had. Thereupon, the Treasury ran the film off again the next year.
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