There's a movement to re-appraise Disney (the company) in light of
The Path to 9/11. Most of the founders of the studio had little to do with the 2006 made-for-TV movie -- but if you're looking for some great perspective here's some amazing bits of trivia about the history of Disney studios
(culled from
a new podcast)).
- Unions organized Disney's animators in the 1930s. Amazingly, a bitter Walt inserted caricatures of the labor organizers into the movie Dumbo. Later he testified before Joseph McCarthy's infamous "un-American activities" committee, naming those union organizers as "suspected communists." (Although Walt himself had embarrassing connections. In the 1930s he'd paid a social call on Mussolini, the dictator of fascist Italy.)
- The child actor who voiced Bambi was working in a metal shop by age 13, and disappeared altogether. He joined the Marines when he turned 18, and was a Marine the rest of his life. He fought in the Vietnam war, including the TET offensive. He was discovered last year in Texas, 63 years after filming Bambi. And he'd lost much of his life savings in the Enron debacle...
- Is Disney part of the military-industrial complex? Over 90% of Disney studio footage during World War II was for the Department of Defense. U.S. troops were actually quartered in Disney buildings along the Pacific coast.
Although my favorite story was the one about how Art Spiegelman drew a cartoon in the 70s about a thawed Walt Disney meeting Richard Nixon!