I’ve been willing to believe the possibility of Disney’s anti-Semitism for years (Read the excellent industry history book Serious Business for some alleged recollections of it), but there’s a difference between holding a grudge against a race and wanting them outright slaughtered. Plus, would Disney really collaborate with Hitler when he was focused on being appealing to America?

Disney liked Mussolini, not Hitler. Il Duce was a big fan of Snow White and Babbitt said that Walt was a fan of Mussolini too. An autographed photo of the dictator hung on his office wall. “He may be a fascist, but at least he makes the trains run on time.” The photo quietly disappeared once war broke out. I believe that Mussolini’s son Vittorio, who wanted to be a film producer, visited to tour Disney’s studio with Leni Riefenstahl in 1938.

The friendship between Walt and the fascists may have been just business though. Roy Disney met with the Nazis in Berlin around that same time trying to get them to accept Snow White for distribution in Germany. Apparently Hitler arranged for a print to be screened for him privately and publicly stated that it was one of the best films ever made. The propaganda ministry, which had been blocking distribution of American films in Germany, made an exception for Snow White and allowed it to be screened there in early 1939. The lack of European distribution during the war was a huge blow to the studio on later films.

I guess Der Fuehrer’s Face, Education For Death , and Victory Thru Air Power were just a cover up for Walt’s pro-Adolph leanings ?

Not necessarily defending the play (I haven’t seen it and likely won’t), but you’d have to be an imbecile to believe it as anything but pure fiction. Last year I saw a very similar play, MOONLIGHT & MAGNOLIAS, which depicted Selznick, Fleming and Hecht locked in Selznick’s office for a week while they completely rewrote the script for GONE WITH THE WIND. Nobody for a second believed a word of it, just enjoyed it as a speculative entertainment. I think Harry isn’t giving the San Francisco audience enough credit for understanding that the play is utter fantasy and accepting it as such.

O.K??? Which one of them dreamed up the giant geodesic testicle at EPCOT????

Inquiring minds want to know.

…Otay, so does Hitler wind up in the freezing tube instead of Walt at the end of the play, or what? :p

What a crock of shit. Wouldn’t waste my time or money…

I see your point precode but I think Harry is saying that even if the audience accepts it as pure fiction, the play still makes no real point and takes itself too seriously. A play that succeeds at doing what this Hitler play attempts to do is Steve Martin’s: “Picasso at the Lapin Agile” which shows a mythical meeting between Einstein and Picasso right before each of them became famous. The play never claims to be anything but a “what if” scenario and is overtly self-conscious about it in the classic Steve Martin style. If you’re going to do a play about Hitler and Disney meeting it should at least have a sense of humor and/or a point.

Precode–I respect the intelligence of the average San Francisco playgoer quite a bit, and don’t think that they were likely to believe that the play was nothing but fact. But the handouts we got suggested that it’s known that Disney and Hitler met, and drudged up the anti-Semitism charges from the Eliot and Moseley bios. A reasonable person who wasn’t otherwise familiar with Disney’s life might take these statements as being…well, true.

To put it another way–if I go to a play on Broadway based on real events, I don’t unalloyed facts on stage. But I -do- expect background material in the Playbill to at least be within a country mile of accuracy.

–Harry

Stephen…
Who said the “He may be a fascist…” quote in your post? Who are you attributing that quote to and what’s your primary source?

Hi Disneydave,
Babbitt explained to me that a lot of people back then had that attitude. It isn’t a direct quote.

It’s pretty old hat that, viscerally, Walt Disney evokes a hard-right Reaganesque aura. And that’s just not cool! N0, no, no. So there’s always a hack journalist or playwright to cater to those who revel in keeping the worst rumored attributes of the man alive. It’s very hip and cynical to conjure up a meeting between Hitler and Disney, as far as that goes. I understand the political catharsis that this yields for some people. Sure, it could be amusing to put those characters in a room and watch ‘em go -maybe. However, this play looks like it’s being handled pretty irresponsibly, as it passes hateful rumors off as truth. In turn, these errors are regurgitated as boilerplate fact into “progressive” urban culture.

In other words, it’s a load of bullshit.

Selby Kelly also said something to me once that might explain a lot. When I asked her if Disney (the studio, not the man) was prejudiced against Jews, she said “Oh no, we had a lot of Jewish people on the picket line with us in 1941.�
I also did not know until his memorial service that Art Babbitt was Jewish. It explained a lot.
I interviewed Isidore Klein once and asked him whether Disney was Anti-Semitic. “I resent your even ASKING that question! Of course not! Klein said loudly.
Disney was a man of his time, unconsciously prejudiced because that was in the air of the times; but he did not deliberately set out to insult audiences.
Jack Hannah told me that his unit re-animated the section of THE THREE LITTLE PIGS that contained the Jewish peddler wolf. This was redone in 1942. Significant year. Most other studios would not have gone to the trouble.
I’ve never found any of the little Jewish characters in films like THE DELIVERY BOY to be even mildly irritating–they are funny, and one of the films even features good Yiddish titles.
Disney was a businessman, not a fascist. Lots of people liked Mussolini before the Axis formed. Check out the list sometime.

. . . and he met Eisenstein too, was it in 1930? Despite the opinions shown in “Alice’s Egg Plant”. Publicity was important, and Foreign markets were important.

Thanks for clarifying that Stephen because the way the quote was used it seemed to me that the implication was Walt Disney had said it.

Kellie - foreign markets were very important to the Disney Studio. As I write in my book, prior to the war the Studio’s films were distributed to 55 countries. By 1944 just over 80% of the Studio’s box office revenue was being generated by just three countries: USA, Canada and England.

The remainder of the Studio’s box-office revenue was generated by Mexico and South America 6%; Australasia 6% and all other foreign sources 7%. Commenting on the war years, Roy Disney later said, “It was a bad decade for us; we really got into a tight bind around here.�

The Company Annual Report for the year ending September 27, 1941 reported:

“In our annual report to stockholders issued December 1940…we stated ‘the effect of the war in Europe upon the affairs of your company has been serious and the full measure thereof cannot be determined.’ It was evident that the loss of foreign markets necessitated a sharp lowering in production costs in order to assure a profit from the remaining markets…since the date of that report there has been a further deterioration in the foreign markets…”

There was a rumor circulating at one time that Disney had met Hitler a the Olympic games held in Berlin. There is apparently nothing in Walt’s daytimer/travel record to indicate this. I gather Walt was in Europe at the time, but there is no record of him attending the 1936 Olympics, let alone meeting Hitler.

“Serious Business” is an excellent industry history book? It’s rife with factual errors, often easily refuted with even minor effort. If Kanfer’s book is the basis for suppositions about how Walt felt about Jews, it’s a very weak basis.

As the playwright whose play, DISNEY IN DEUTSCHLAND, is creating all this lunatic reaction, let me repeat that the details of the meeting are my ‘fiction’ based on remarks of Disney, Hitler and Leni Riefenstahl at the time, but that Disney and Hitler actually met is documented in the Nazi newspaper, Volkische Beobachter, in 1935, and other Nazi periodicals as well, welcoming Disney to Munich as”the great white hope against the Jews of Hollywood.” When an animator at Disney Studios ‘betrayed’ Walt and went over to Universal, Disney said, “Who cares? Let him go over to that Jew boy!”
My play is not a revisionist view of Disney: for many, many years Hollywood studios have known about his attitude. Until his death in 1966 no Jews or blacks were allowed to be employed at any Disney facility: that is a matter of record. Suits against the Disney organization regarding discrimination are now legion. If anyone cares to, they can look it up. As for Leni Riefenstahl, only an utter fool would believe SHE was not anti-Jewish. If y’all are going to dismiss any serious research that has been done, as by Leonard Mosley in his scholarly DISNEY’S WORLD, and Neal Gabler in WALT DISNEY: THE TRIUMPH OF THE AMERICAN IMAGINATION, then I assume you subscribe to the dictum, ignorance is bliss.
JOHN J POWERS

Poppycock.

My understanding is you also relied heavily on Marc Eliot’s Hollywood’s Dark Prince for inspiration…and we all know how factual that book was. Both books you quoted as reference are rife with factual errors.

Hmmm, let’s see, Art Babbitt, Dave Hand, Kay Kamen, Chester Feitel are just a few Jewish employees that come to mind who worked for Disney. Kamen begain his career in 1932 and was still there when he was killed in a plane crash in 1949. He made Disney millions through merchandise licenses. I’m sure there were dozens more employees of Jewish faith at Disney’s.

And if Disney was so anti-Jewish, why did he allow one of his artists, Hank Porter, who worked in the Publicity Art Department, to create an illustration used by the Fight For Freedom Committee, in their defense of the heads of the other major studios, who were mainly of Jewish faith, during the Senate sub committee hearings into warmongering charges levelled against those studio heads by isolationist congressmen, in September 1941?

It is also a matter of public record that Walt Disney refused Reifenstahl’s offer of a private viewing of her film Olympia.

And if Disney was so anti-Jewish, why did B’nai B’rith bestow him with their Man of the Year Award? Do you really think they would give him that award if he was an anti-Semite?

And I wouldn’t necessarily agree with everything that is published in the Nazi press. (BTW, feel free to email me a copy of that newspaper story, or provide the date or issue number the article was in. I’d like to read it for myself)

Hitler and Walt Disney getting together for a meeting????? What a silly, absurd idea.

Here is an excerpt from the German “Film-Kurier” of 1931 (7/28), citing an article from a regional Nazi party organ, “Die Diktatur”:

“The Mickey Mouse Scandal!!!

Blond, free-spirited German youth at the leading string of the merchant Jew. Youth, where is your self-confidence? Mickey Mouse is the grottiest, most miserable idol ever invented. Mickey Mouse is a stultifying cure of the Young-capitalism. Common sense should have told any decent girl and any honest boy, as it goes without saying, that the filthy and smutty varmint, the great transmitter of diseases, cannot be made into an animal idol. Is there nothing better we can do than spangle our clothes with filthy vermins because American merchant Jews want to earn money? Down with stupidification by the Jews! Away with the varmint! Down with Mickey Mouse, erect swastika!”
(quoted from C. Laqua: Wie Micky unter die Nazis fiel. Rowohlt, Germany, 1992. 1490-ISBN 3 499 19104 0; translation by me)

Hey, why not making a screenplay from the meeting of Osama Bin Laden, Kim Yong Il, Saddam Hussein and Ajatollah Khomeini, when they decided to destroy the free world?

“Until his death in 1966 no Jews or blacks were allowed to be employed at any Disney facility: that is a matter of record.”

As most readers of this blog know, fellow-reader Floyd Norman is black and worked for Mr. Disney. A matter of record? I’m not even a historian - as some of the previous posters are - and I can refute your claims.

John P Powers, you are an idiot.

Obviously Powers either did no resarch, cursory research, research from suspect and erroneous sources, or research that suited his concept.

Art Babbitt, Dave Hand, Kay Kamen, Chester Feitel, Joe Grant, The Sherman Brothers, Floyd Norman all give the lie to Powers’ assertion that “Until his death in 1966 no Jews or blacks were allowed to be employed at any Disney facility: that is a matter of record.â€?

What record is that? Citiation please? Would it not simply be easier to claim the work as a conceptual fiction and thus dissipate the criticism?

As for Neal Gabler, these are the thoughts he shared with me about the premise of Powers’ work:

“Artists are certainly entitled to take liberties with lives and they are also entitled to provide something less than hagiography of a subject, as my own biography does, but there is a difference between taking liberties and smearing an individual who cannot fight back.

“Walt Disney’s cartoons were banned in Nazi Germany, and Mickey Mouse was specifically ridiculed in the German press. There is no evidence that Disney ever visited Adolf Hitler or praised him. When a mutual friend arranged for Nazi filmmaker Leni Riefenstahl to visit the Disney studio in 1938, by Riefenstahl’s own account Disney kept his distance and later disavowed the meeting. He spent World War II making training films and even anti-Nazi propaganda to aid America’s war effort, often at a loss to his studio.

“As for charges that Disney was an anti-Semite, charges that I investigated carefully in my book, there is absolutely no basis for saying that Disney personally harbored any anti-Semitic feelings. Herman Kamen, Harry Tytle and Joe Grant, to name but three Jews, were prominent figures in the company, and Disney donated generously to Jewish groups.

“Disney was tarred by associating himself with the Motion Picture Alliance, an anti-Communist organization that did have alleged anti-Semites among its officers. Anti-Communist Disney was. Anti-Semitic he was not.

“Walt Disney was not perfect, as my book makes clear. But to accuse him of being a Nazi sympathizer and Jew hater are heinous charges contrary to everything we know about him.”

Amused by all the furor over Disney and the Fuhrer. Disney did not see Riefenstahl’s OLYMPIA because he knew that his reputation would have been tarnished, not because he didn’t like Riefenstahl’s work. And yes, yes, he did have a party for Leni when she came to Hollywood and knew full well that every other studio boycotted her and her work. I may be wrong regarding blacks being employed at Disney facilities (sorry for any offense) but I KNOW he did not hire Jews. Of course, Uncle Walt was ever the opportunist so he might have made some concessions to artists far better than himself (and MANY animators were). I address in my play the Nazi revulsion toward Mickey Mouse, but quoting a Nazu rag sheet associating the mouse with Jews is just plain silly, One comment about the possibility that the Disney organization suppressed informaiton about his anti-Jewish position seems the only truth I can discern in all these diatribes.

Mr. Powers is the author. We are just the audience. He outranks us.

I myself, have uncovered irrefutable video evidence that Hitler could dance the pants off of Churchill, because he had a song and a dance in his heart!!!

Here’s the link for all to see the evidence!!! Copy and paste it to your browser’s address window, or click on the word “Hasdrubal” above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LQj8OdE66ck

Powers’s responses are as disingenuous as they are uninformed.

Playing the bemused intellectual superior does not deflect the fact that a large body of very informed people here have caught him in lies, distortions, and his own lack of honest research.

If he was as amusedly unconcerned with these “diatribes” as he maintains, why does Powers keep posting factually spurious and defensive responses?

Good last question, Jeff. I continue writing because I am so tired of the Disney image everybody loves and because I wrote this play to seriously put a stop to this image. Disney and Hitler were both power-hungry monsters. Disney refused to unionize his workers on SNOW WHITE and so they went on strike (look it up, Jeff). He was giving ‘inkers,’ people who had to actually draw or paint on each frame, minimum wage. The strike finally ended but only if Disney would give them more wages. Incidentally, Disney (like Warhol, whom I respect more) refused to allow credits for his animators to be placed onscreen until DUMBO. The revised versions you see on DVD have restored the animators, giving them their dignity Disney had no time for. Also incidentally, a fellow animator named Ubi Iwerks even disputes that Disney invented Mickey; Disney’’s only contribution was to provide the falsetto voice, hardly an artistic leap. He was a business man who knew the business, again not unlike Warhol. He knew what would sell, and (AGAIN) he had no time for Jews telling him what to do, especially the Zukors, Louis B. Mayer, Carl Laemmle at Universal, etc. These ‘Jew boys’ as he called them, need to be dealt with. Hitler did him a service.

Hey JJ, your repsonses are laughable…and you are horribly misinformed. I’m beginning to think maybe you had a bad experience at Disneyland when you were a kid.

JJ, please feel free to refute any of the factual statements I made in my earlier post of June 20th. You won’t…because you can’t.

By the way, if anyone is interested, I’m writing a play about a two bit San Francisco playwright who produces a spurious stageshow based on misinformation and untruths in hopes of making a fast buck.

I’m calling the play “The Misguided Story of an Idiot Iconoclast Playwright in San Francisco Who Suffers Delusion Thoughts and Writes Silly Theatrical Numbers and Who is an Embarrasment to his Trade.”

And JJ, I think you’ve had more than your 15 minutes of free publicity. Time’s up.

“Disney and Hitler were both power-hungry monsters. Disney refused to unionize his workers on SNOW WHITE and so they went on strike (look it up, Jeff).”

I have devoted most of my life to a serious study of Walt Disney’s life and work. And Powers? He appears to have read a couple of books and bought into apochrypha and misinformed intellectual posturing with no basis in fact.

“Incidentally, Disney (like Warhol, whom I respect more) refused to allow credits for his animators to be placed onscreen until DUMBO. The revised versions you see on DVD have restored the animators, giving them their dignity Disney had no time for.”

This statement is simply not true. The Disney features have always credited the Studio staff.

“Also incidentally, a fellow animator named Ubi Iwerks even disputes that Disney invented Mickey; Disney’’s only contribution was to provide the falsetto voice, hardly an artistic leap.”

Ub Iwerks (Ubbe Iwwerks) was not just a “fellow animator,” he was a longtime colleague and friend of Walt Disney from his days in Kansas City, an excellent draftsman, a prolific artist, a genius of technical development, and at one time a one-third partner in the Disney Bros. Studio.

Mickey’s falsetto voice did not appear until “Karnival Kid,” Mickey’s eighth film, first released on May 23, 1929, produced shortly before Iwerks left Disney to form his own studio. Iwerks returned to Disney in 1940 and remained there until his death in 1971.

The creation of Mickey Mouse was one of the great collaborations in the history of popular culture. Walt Disney and his wife returned on the train from New York (March 13-18, 1928) with a character concept and some design drawings (these are believed to be the drawings in the possession of The Walt Disney Family Foundation), Ub took the ideas and refined them into an “animateable” design.

“He was a business man who knew the business, again not unlike Warhol. He knew what would sell, and (AGAIN) he had no time for Jews telling him what to do, especially the Zukors, Louis B. Mayer, Carl Laemmle at Universal, etc.”

Even when Powers is presented with a long list of Jewish employees of Disney, and the assertion of Disney biographer Neal Gabler (whom Powers credits in an earlier post as “serious research”) that, “As for charges that Disney was an anti-Semite, charges that I investigated carefully in my book, there is absolutely no basis for saying that Disney personally harbored any anti-Semitic feelings,” the playwright continues to flail with his “anti-Semitic” rants.

There is little dialogue that can be had on this subject if Powers refuses to accept the facts.

Also, one of Walt’s closest friends through all his years in Hollywood was famed producer Samuel Goldwyn (born Schmuel Gelbfisz in Warsaw, Poland). Walt collaborated with Goldwyn on the development of a Hans Christian Andersen biopic in 1938, Walt shot the live-action sequences of “Song of the South” at Goldwyn’s Hollywood studio, and Walt and Lillian Disney frequently socialized with Sam and Frances Goldwyn.

As for Powers statement that “These ‘Jew boys’ as he called them, need to be dealt with. Hitler did him a service,” well, what a shame that his intellectual posturing gives way to ugly racist smear couched in a tone cerebral superiority.

Not only does Powers appear to lack any real research evidence of the subject he posits, he manifests a bile and hatred that make his overall motives suspect and his play even less interesting even as an intellectual excercise.

If a writer or artist has an axe to grind and chooses to do so through the creation of art, so be it. But Powers has revealed that his intent was not to create stimulating dialogue through art, but rather to defame without any real intellectual merit: “I continue writing because I am so tired of the Disney image everybody loves and because I wrote this play to seriously put a stop to this image.”

Mr. Powers will no doubt continue his efforts to besmirch Walt Disney–and he will continue to find that for every half-truth, innuendo, rumor, or outright falsehood that he puts forth, there is a body of genuine information based upon research and erudition far beyond his current state of scholarship and skill.

Walt Disney was a complex, and in some cases impenetrable figure. He was as imperfect as any individual, but the stature of his impact on the culture of the world merits far more serious discourse than an uninformed and biased attack.

One skill that Powers appear to have learned from the other subject of his play: “The Big Lie.”

This is a propaganda technique, defined by Adolf Hitler in his 1925 autobiography “Mein Kampf,” as a lie so “colossal” that no one would believe that someone “could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously”.

Ahhhh…at last, Powers reveals his true motivation for writing his “play.” Glad at least that is out in the open, again as misinformed as he is.

And Jeff…great response!

I’m sitting here with my jaw in Tex Avery mode reading all this, and while others who know a lot more about Walt Disney than I do are responding to Mr. Powers beautifully, one note on the notion that Disney denied animators credit until DUMBO:

“In February 1940, Pinocchio appeared in the local theater…When the picture started, and the credit titles appeared, I saw in the list of animators that my ex-assistant Norman Tate had made the grade after I left. To my consternation, my name was missing. It was almost a physical shock, like getting a karate kick in the crotch.”
–Shamus Culhane in TALKING ANIMALS AND OTHER PEOPLE

Um, that would tend to suggest that Walt Disney may have credited animators (if not, alas, Shamus) before DUMBO…

The opening titles of “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” (after dozens of individual credits) bears this single card:

“My sincere appreciation to the members of my staff whose loyalty and
creative endeavor made possible this production” - (signed) Walt Disney

Hey, Jeff, that was a spirited if uninformed reply. Glad you don’t refute the fact that the workers at Disney studios did strike because of incredibly low wages vis-a-vis SNOW WHITE. I’m sorry you have dedicated your ‘most of your life’ to Mr. Disney; no wonder you’re so upset when unlikable aspects of his character are revealed. To cite the blatantly racist SONG OF THE SOUTH is mind-boggling. Neal Gabler, in his Disney book, writes ‘Arthur Babbitt is later years claimed to have actually seen Walt Disney and Gunther Lessing at Bund meetings of Nazi sympathizers.’ Gabler then says that this was unlikely but not impossible. Gabler does insist that Disney was a political ‘naif,’ which doesn’t explain our Walt’s welcoming of Riefenstahl in 1938 and subsequent fierce denials that he knew who she was. In fact, ‘denial’ seems a major motivation for many of the comments I keep reading, and I love responding to them. And no, to whomever said it, my fifteen minutes are not up.

I’m delighted that Mr. Powers was able to find two important and critical points to criticize in my posting, while responding to none of my other corrections, clarifications, or opinions. While he claims it as “uniformed,” I’m sure a cursory reading will reveal that it is quite the opposite.

I am delighted to have devoted my life to something as satisfying, constructive, and interesting as the study of a man and his work. I am saddened that Mr. Powers is not interested in a dialogur rather than diatribe.

The Disney Studio strike is far more complex than Mr. Powers’s simplistic world view can grasp, and as far as the “racist Song of the South,” I doubt that Mr. Powers has ever seen it, and that he has the analytical ability to see beyond the superficial to place its view of post-bellum blacks in proper context.

Obviously I was correct in my prediction that Mr. Powers will continue his efforts to besmirch Walt Disney–and he will continue to find that for every half-truth, innuendo, rumor, or outright falsehood that he puts forth, there is a body of genuine information based upon research and erudition far beyond his current state of scholarship and skill.

The denial in this dialogue that is attributed to this writer all belongs to Mr. Powers. A denial of documented fact, a denial of his own shortcomings in scholarly research, a denial of his own agenda as a smear campaign based solely on his assertion that “I continue writing because I am so tired of the Disney image everybody loves and because I wrote this play to seriously put a stop to this image.�

At the heart of it, Mr. Powers can write anything he pleases, and posit any fantasy meetings of any famous people, and for any reason he likes. My only real conflict with the play that Mr. Powers has written is his continued assertion that it is based in fact. It is not, and should not be presented as such.

Gee, Jeff, thanks for saying I can write “anything I please.” Incidentally, as I have said more than once, my play is a fiction BASED on the fact that Disney and Hitler met. We do not have the minutes of the meeting. As I said before, when I recently attempted to visit the Disney Archives (where I had visited years ago, doing my research, and found the microfilm of Nazi papers welcoming Disney), this time I was told by the Archives Legal Department that they are closed to the public. I asked why and actually was told “too much has come out.” Call the Archives legal department yourself, Jeff, and get your facts straight. To say that SONG OF THE SOUTH was not racist is beyond absurd. Blacks at the time protested the film, as they did GONE WITH THE WIND, which you probably think is wonderfully sympathetic to ‘Negroes.’ Everybody has their agenda, Jeff; own up to yours.

DaveL B’nai B’rith may well have given Disney an award, everybody makes mistakes. Henry Kissinger was given the Noble Peace Prize a few months after he proposed the massive invation of Cambodia. There are too many other historical mishaps to make your affirmation have any meaning. To say that you’re sure many other Jews worked at Disney Studios means very little; that’s an assertion, not a fact.

I think my agenda is fairly clear as stated, it seems the only person who has trouble owning up to facts is Mr. Powers.

I have spent hundreds of hours in The Walt Disney Archives, and have little need to research what I have already researched and discovered.

Mr. Powers seems to have retreated or softened his previous statement, “I may be wrong regarding blacks being employed at Disney facilities (sorry for any offense) but I KNOW he did not hire Jews,” has now become “To say that you’re sure many other Jews worked at Disney Studios means very little; that’s an assertion, not a fact.”

The employment of Art Babbitt, Dave Hand, Kay Kamen, Chester Feitel, Richard M. Sherman and Robert B. Sherman, Joe Grant, and dozens of other self-identified Jews is a matter of common knowledge among anyone who has attempted even cursory research on the matter, their employment is documented in Company records, and beyond that, I have no idea what will make Mr. Powers move this data from the “assertion” column to the “fact” column.

Again, Mr. Powers takes little effort to present alternate real facts to those corrections and assertions presented by myself and others, prefering to belittle my career, my citation of a film he finds offensive (and a not very subtle attempt to cast me as racist because of it–laughably ridiculous, as those who know my family can attest), and accuse me of a hidden agenda, when my agenda is rather clear based upon a careful reading and processing of my posts.

As my good friend, Disney Archives manager Robert Tieman often tells me, “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinions still.” Mr. Powers is so convinced that he is right, that he refuses to even consider moderately presented facts, rather, his replies become more personally insulting and less intellectually viable.

Mr. Powers may insult me and ridicule me to his heart’s content, I am comfortable in my skin and have no problem standing behind my own convictions with factual data, but Mr. Powers will not refute any of the factual statements made in earlier posts, because he quite simply can’t, neither can he admit that his play is a work of fantasy, and while based on an interesting notion, seems to have nothing to accomplish intellectually other than to attempt to tar the reputation of a decidedly great American.

Okay, that’s it. I’m now completely convinced that John J Powers is not a real person, and is in fact the pseudonym of an esteemed animation luminary playing an extended practical joke. Let’s start offering odds: I’m betting 5-1 Michael Barrier, 10-1 John Kricfalusi and 100-1 John Canemaker. Any takers?

Andrew…well, you’d lose. I is a real person!

But you’re not John Powers, the film critic and columnist, right?

>Andrew…well, you’d lose. I is a real person!

That was a shockingly racist caricature of black stereotypes, you bigoted filth.

I is kiddin’.

Mr. Powers, your knowledge of Walt Disney and animation history in general seems so pedestrian that it’s funny.

You brought up “Ubì [sic] Iwerks” as if he was some obscure animator the Evil Disney Corporation has disavowed and that none of us had ever heard of.

Next you’ll say something along the lines of “Did you KNOW there was a cartoon called the Three Little Pigs with a Jew joke that Walt Disney tried to cover up!?!?!”

Hey, guess what, dumbass, not only do we all know who Ub Iwerks is, at least 50% of the readers of this site know enough about animation history as to be able to list dates, personal correspondences, events, and business deals Walt Disney had with Iwerks, Grim Natwick, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Friz Freleng, Charles Mintz, Winker, Lantz and others from 1929 that refute anything you say regarding the creation of Mickey Mouse! I’m not one of them, but most of the readers here are and could KILL you in an animation history debate. Don’t try it.

Jerry Freakin’ Beck runs this site and could kick so much animation history knowledge off the top of his head that it’d make your head spin, and he could actually cite more reliable sources than Marc Eliot! It’d be like killing an ant with a sledgehammer. It’d be like a neanderthal watching a Dennis Miller routine.

I still cannot believe you brought up Iwerks as if we wouldn’t have heard of him before, and as if the only animation history book we’ve ever read was “Illusion of Life.” (Good book, by the way. And don’t tell me I have to explain the reference, smart guy)

Of course, you know, the one of the first things the Disney story should teach us is that you can’t trust the word of a man named Powers.

Hey, John J! You’re not a descendant of Pat Powers, are you, out to get vengeance after your great-grandpa was cast as the villian in the early Walt Disney / Ubu ‘Roy’ Iwerks saga? That’d be funny…

I have to say, John J Powers’ posts are quite amusingly uninformed.

Dear Humorless Harbingers of Hubris
You folks (and a few fanatics: Jorge should lay off the steroids) and Mr. Powers can protest the exact events of history ’till the twelfth of never; it remains that theaters present live performances which are, unless otherwise specifically stated, entertainment. Obviously you all seem to follow a more “Napoleonic” standard regarding art; absolute fact unless otherwise stated. What compels you to mistake an evening out at a play for an academically accredited course? Worse, what compelled you to decide to boot up your soapboxes and execute an attempt at a review of the play in the first place? Why you think that your self-appointed role as “Animation Overlords” automatically entitles you to recognition as a theater critic is beyond this humble reader. Your hamstringing of the artistic energies of the many people and organizations involved in the production in question has hurt living people. No matter what your allegiance to this or that deceased mass icon makes you jump to their grave’s defense, the ill-will you’ve projected alone makes your malformed editorial smack of ego-driven ranting,

While your shellacking was as mean as it was unwarranted, at least it wasn’t a review that would pass any dramatic criticism course in which you would do well to attend. You never address most of the basics of this play’s performance. Blocking, dialogue and its interpretation, dialectic accuracy, scene/set integration, script structure, audio/video elements and prop utilization are a few that spring to mind. Perhaps that’s where you should be placing some of that research time you presently use to defend your attack on an example of artistic expression of which you seem to have but little comprehension.

I won’t go on regarding the near-sadistic irresponsibility you’ve demonstrated by going outside the bounds of your purview. Regarding what you declare digital intellectual dominion upon, you fail to recognize the significance of the documented contemporary press upon Disney’s arrival in Germany in ‘35, and Walt’s recorded attendance at several National Socialist rallies in the states. The fact that Walt (and his wife?) was (were) flown in a military aircraft on a secured flightplan for a period of 3 days while in Germany in 1935 slipped by you as well. Your snide quip about Buena Vista was another gem. True to their “Show Me” state roots, Walt and Roy saw the need for vertical and horizontal integration right from their studios’ inceptions.

In closing, I want to thank you for supporting the arts and artists of San Francisco by demonstrating the kind of perceptive open-mindedness that has inspired so many fuehrers, media moguls, and maniacal book-burners throughout history. I suppose you won’t post this because I haven’t cited sources, but the fact that your misguided, megalomaniac spew does naught but harm is irrefutable. Your “victory” in virtual-ville over an actuality; a real artistic creation, which you perceived as unworthy demonstrates a pitiful naivete’ which borders on regressive. Such recklessness reminds me alarmingly of that purple-stained revision of the Battle of the Alamo Disney produced for the big screen way back when…

I’m sorry, but the quality of the play doesn’t quite matter here. It’s the intention of the play, which - due to what was seen - was perceived as smearing Walt Disney’s reputation, which was confirmed by Mr. JJ Powers himself. What matters here is not whether the play is fact or fiction, or based in fact or fiction - either can be fine - but how it is presented. Here, it’s based on fiction (even if there are records that might lead you to assume the meeting took place, there are none that are irrefutable), but it’s presented as fact through the surroundings such as the handouts, to slander a public figure.

Also, I’ve never seen Mr. McCracken claim that he wrote any kind of professional review. When I “review” a play with friends, I’ll say whether I like it or not and why. Mr. McCracken reviewed the play not as a theatre critic, but as an animation historian. So not conforming to the theatre critic’s rules doesn’t make his writings any less valid.

There’s a reason why “The Birth of a Nation” didn’t appear on the recent AFI Top 100. And it certainly isn’t its qualities as a film.

Mr. De Schrijver,
Accept my apology regarding any slanderous assertions seemingly condoned in my previous posting. My observations pertaining to this site’s enclave of crypt-keepers was, as you’ve adroitly disclaimed, innapropriate in light of the fact that dramatic license as accorded a living author of fiction must be suspended when the reputation of a deceased cultural icon is called into question! Sarcasm aside: standards are standards; why are your colleagues’ “reviews/critiques” not subject to the same requirements of thoroughness to which you hold Mr.Powers’ work? It seems that the libel/slander accusations could be levelled from both sides of this (silly) debate.
Unlike quite a few of those who’ve written so many of the preceding entries, I have attended “Disney in Deutschland”. The play’s literature nowhere uses any text declaring the mise en scene to be taken from actual events. However, the historically documented activities, quotations, and prophessed political viewpoints of the characters are employed effectively to develop an intense, surprisingly humorous (oh my gosh!), and provocative exchange between them. By the play’s conclusion, the audience is left with the forgone collapse of Hitler’s reich, the accension of Disney to arbitor of post-war Western mass culture, and the undeniable similarities between the “cleansed” Germany of Nazi ideal, and the “spotless” fantasy-land America gobbled up from coast to coast as served by the Disney company up to this day. Perhaps anthropomorphism is a blessed logistical liberty, seeing as that’s ultimately what WWII Germany saw as the unforgivable sin represented within Disney’s products.
The fundamental questions raised by this play are not rooted in the activity of re-condemning any of the characters presented, nor even their respective works while alive. Rather, as with any work which is heartfelt and thoughtfully well-written, a reflection is mandated of the play-goer to recognize the echoes of the past within the halls of the present. What cost comes with security, the assurance of an un-offending landscape, the simplification and typification inherant in any propaganda/mass media campaign, and the unending mystery life propogates wherein societal madness can influence what will eventually be described as “the happiest place on earth”?
Again, the play never portrays Mr. Walt Disney as a friend, protoge’, or even associate of Adolph Hitler, and it is through the contrasting behaviors of the two figures that the adroit, affable, and animated (sorry) Walt D. is left in clear dominion of the future. Almost more importantly, the characters of both men are not so much “exposed” as they are believably underpinned through personal revelation of past trauma; so effectively that one gains a great feeling of understanding how ordinary people can through time and place, become villians or visionaries. It is a credit to Mr. Power’s perceptiveness that the basic behavior and speech patterns of Adolph (psychotic megalomaniac) are counterposed to the same character traits as evinced in a gifted, energetic and driven artist whose power of influence would outstrip Hitler’s within fifteen years following the end of WWII. What the play does lack is any of the self-rightious, demeaning judgements so prevalent in the messages written to protest the play.

No one here ever made a claim to be reviewing the work, every post here took issue with the factual accuracy of the work, which the playwright presents as an historic event rather than speculative theatre.

The readers and posters here have not claimed to be theatre critics or authorities. The playwright, however, has made claims to authority in areas where he is lacking expertise.

I believe any of us would be open-minded to an informed speculation about the subject, but when the author admits that his intention is only hatchet job against Walt Disney, it removes his work from the protection of “a real artistic creation, which you perceived as unworthy.”

The author states that his intent as a playwright is neither art or entertainment, or even information. It is Powers’s assertion that, “I continue writing because I am so tired of the Disney image everybody loves and because I wrote this play to seriously put a stop to this image” that is the foundation of the disagreement here.

Art is one thing. Character assassination by any method necessary is quite another.

I’ll say this: I find it funny that Mr. Moore consideres us sadistic and mean for demolishing a fool’s claims that Walt Disney was a NAZI with such tenous evidence. How dare we defend someone’s memory, eh? How MEAN, we really should care more about Mr. Power`s delicater sensibilities and his wonderfully written, paced, and acted work of fiction.

What is our “purview,” exactly? Who are you to put us into a box?

In particular, Harry McCracken, Michael Barrier, and Jeff Kurtti dismantled Mr. Power`s assertion that his play was `based on real events.` If Mr. Powers would admit that he didn`t do any real research and admitted upfront that his play was 100% fiction (in the playbill, perhaps, next to the `story by` credit) and that Disney wasn`t a Nazi sympathizer, then I think we could all stop being so MEAN and lay off. And I promise to lay off the steroids, whatever that meant.

>There’s a reason why “The Birth of a Nation� didn’t appear on the recent AFI Top 100. And it certainly isn’t its qualities as a film.

Uh…Intolerance did…but you can decide for yourself which is the better film. And I think the thesis of Intolerance will clear up any doubts about Mr. Griffith`s racism. But that`s another argument.

So who thinks that Moore ISN’T a sock-puppet for Powers (or Barrier, or Canemaker, or whoever’s really behind all this amusing tomfoolery)? Bets start at 1000-1…

In fairness to Moore/Powers, Mr McCracken’s original post might have been better described not as a ‘review’ but rather a ‘comment,’ less on the play’s dramatic content than on the way it was sold - as a piece of well-informed historical speculation rather than e.g. a playful ‘what-if?’ provocation.

Presumably this (arguable) error of labelling Mr McCracken’s comments as a review has been sufficient to damage the fragile San Francisco artistic community and convict this website of crimes against humanity.

For all I know, Disney in Deutschland may be a witty, beautifully-staged and acted piece of drama. Unfortunately, I know beyond doubt that its author is a nincompoop and fantasist, as proved by his messages to this site. (Let’s just run through it one more time, Mr Powers: it’s a matter of RECORD that no Jew was employed by Walt in his lifetime? No on second thoughts, don’t answer that; one should never feed the trolls without good cause.)

As an aside, the recent announcement of a blockbuster ‘Tintin’ animated trilogy led me to muse on the posibilities for a ‘Herge in Deutschland’ play. Perhaps Mr Powers is planning it as a follow-up.

Mr Moore:

Why do you assume these people are my collegues? I do have a lot of respect for them, but I’m just a 20-year old kid standing on the sidelines, reading this discussion with interest. Re-read my two posts. I haven’t made any comments about my thoughts on the play, and I will not, as I simply haven’t seen it. I haven’t posted any judgements. Heck, I’d probably even be interested in seeing it, depending on the price, if I were living in San Fransisco instead of Belgium.

Both my posts were based on what I felt were errors of logic in this argument. The first one being refuting Mr Powers claim of something I know is false, the second one being pointing out to you that the quality of the play is not what’s being discussed here.

Mr. De Schrijver,
Indeed, I overstepped…to you an apology for far too much blather so far from the point of this arena’s current bullfight. Yet the start of all of this was the “review” by McCracken …a word which absolutely enjoins the entirety of a production. You write with the clarity and reason of someone I’m sure I’d respect upon meeting. I hope you can respect my rather pathetic attempts to introduce a more considerate perspective; that is, does the play in fact slander W.D.? (the condemnation and incivility so crassly dispensed thusfar has at its root a fundamental misperception by Mr.McCracken re: assertions on a 7″ X 5″ playbill.
It now appears that many of the above respondants completely accept the retarded agenda of documenting the unverifiable; I regret any frustration my previous submissions have caused you.
Mr. Garrido,
My allusion to your use of steroids was in reaction to your consistent aggressive verbage. To ameliorate your indignance at receiving a toned-down rebuttal to the flex-o-centric screed you yourself issue, you may from this point on consider me utterly afraid of you. Purview? Cartoonbrew; films. As those are this site’s specialties, surely you can understand my failure to recognize that you are, in fact, omnipotently positioned to judge anyone by your infallably justified standards. Sure thing.
Mr. Osmond,
Wow, what an incredible job of discrediting by association. I confess. I was responsible for set design and modelmaking on the play’s run at Next Stage Theatre. With that brilliant bit of dot connecting you no doubt feel completely justified in dismissing my observations. Now I think I owe more than an apology to Mr. De Schrijver, for without his notation of my repeated ignorance regarding why y’all are hair-pulling and teeth-gnashing (Jorge: chest-pounding, leg-hiking), I’d likely keep trying to introduce a degree of context, or meta-thematic appreciation. This forum’s far too monomaniac to adopt a more realistic perspective, especially in light of the apparent mass hypocrisy your scholars embrace as part of their discipline. Yes, on closer analysis, it’s allowable for H.M.’s “review” of a play which in no way states it is based on an actual occurance (in fact, the work is credited to Mr Powers in its conception as well as direction. Concieved. Do you folks understand what that word means?) to incite the mob’s lynching of Mr. Powers. Facists all stick to a similar m.o. Find a villian. Release the hounds. In this scene, as the dogpile increases its pressure, it is rewarded with the playwrite’s “confession” as to his “intention”. So, via dual-standard dismemberment (the play itself is disalowed, adherance to mutual requirements of representation is suspended, etc,), a response one could expect from an accused (I mean, the creator/author) after so much roughing up comes out. Wow, how deranged of Mr.Powers to respond strongly when he is denied an objective hearing, and the court demands he pay a fine to buy kerosene for the script burning/heretic BBQ. With the mantle of absolute rightiousness once more restored to the naked, discrediting inquisitors, the greater question of the play and its effect on the attendies, or even to poor, defenseless Walt Disney’s legacy is made moot. The Napoleonic system of justice seems all but knee-jerk compared to the complexities of illogic utilized by your court, especially since to a man, you are all in denial regarding the actual “big lie”: American “supremacy” to this day owes its most spectacularly pride-inducing achievments to the efforts of many Nazis whom our country voraciously grabbed out of Germany right before its surrender, expunged any possible crimes against humanity of which said Nazis may have been guilty, and promptly installed at the top of programs and organizations which were deeded to shape the cultural values and priorities of American society. Small wonder our nation worships the elitest brutality demonstrated in a Donald Trump delivered “you’re fired”.
Fortunately, the people who attended the shows of “Disney in Deutschland” never experienced the invective thrust of Mr Powers’ assesment of Disney’s socio-political legacy because the play they saw wasn’t performed for a kangaroo court who don’t speak English, and use physically intimidative body language and yell over the dialogue so they won’t have to think about whether it contains any bearing on how Walt Disney is portrayed within it or perceived through it.
Need more evidence of your hypocrisy? So there’s not one now nor has their ever been any connection/interaction between yourself and anyone else who enters their comments down this page? Denial, denial, denial.

If I can make sense of what Jerome is saying, it seems to be that Powers’ earlier comments were beaten out of him by our unkind words, and should be disregarded by the jury. There seem to be some fragile folk in San Francisco.
For the record, as an occasional freelance journalist, I’d be ecstatic if real evidence emerged that Disney was a monster - a view that’s been mainstream in much of the British media since the publication of ‘Hollywood’s Dark Prince.’ It’s such a _shame_ that that fine book, along with Mosley’s, was swiftly discredited by pesky nuisance historians who bothered to check the sources. There’d be so much juicy stuff to write about if they hadn’t…
The implication of Jerome’s post seems to be that Mr Powers is now mentally and emotionally incapable of speaking for himself. If so, I hope that Jerome can restrain Mr Powers from contacting Cartoon Brew again to commit more pitiable self-abuse through involuntary and injurious confessions; confessions such as ‘I am so tired of the Disney image everybody loves… I wrote this play to seriously (sic) put a stop to this image.’ For heaven’s sake, Mr Powers, this is ART, not history!
(Hint to Jerome: a straitjacket for Mr Powers may be the best solution.)
On a less jesting note, in his comic-strip From Hell, Alan Moore fingered the late Queen Victoria as the force behind the 19th-century Jack the Ripper murders. (For those who haven’t read the strip, it’s not really a spoiler, just a plot detail.) No-one could accuse Moore of slander because he made clear his work was essentially fiction, albeit one that explored serious moral and social themes.
If we discount Powers’ posts to this thread, everything seems to hinge on these famous hand-outs at the performance of Disney in Deutschland. McCracken claims that they present Disney’s anti-semitism as incontrovertible fact, and Disney’s meeting with Hitler as highly plausible. Jerome seems to imply this is a gross misrepresentation of what the hand-outs do say. If this argument goes on much longer, perhaps a kind soul could scan these hand-outs (or some relevant portions) somewhere so we could judge for ourselves?

Mr.Osmond,
Your last submission validates my assertions of increasing social cannibalism. “Did you honestly mean “for the record” when you said you’d be ecstatic to be able to confirm that Walt Disney was a monster? I fail to see the spiritual “warm fuzzy” in such a realization, regardless of the person so judged. You can’t be serious. If you are, seek help.
Mr.Powers’ words are his own, and he doesn’t need me defending him. Yet the play itself warrants all due representation. At least I thought that was the subject of all this ridiculously assumptive “judgement” you enjoy serving out. My desciption of the manner used to negate the dramatic work of JJP was intended to illustrate that a person’s invective expressions are inevitable when they are shown no reciprocity regarding the standards used in their prosecution.
Right, so I’m a wimpy soul for attempting to dismantle the unsound gallows your ilk have cobbled together upon which to hang a playwrite, and you are a fit authority for adjudicating what constitutes a fair lynching.
Once again, credit on the flyer for “Disney in Deutschland” states that John Powers “conceived and directed” the play. As a self-described journalist, don’t you understand the meaning of “conceived”? Just how many times do I have to relate the depiction of W.Disney in this play? For your much needed information, there are two instances on stage where Disney directly rebuffs Hitler’s genocidal proscriptives regarding Jewish citizenry. Suddenly I find myself quite able to relate to Walt’s predicament.
As I wait for more semi-sadistic smear to excrede from your folk’s tower of sanctimonious isolation, I remain grateful for the encouraging words regarding my pitiful lack of fortitude. Just the sort of motivation that helps this inveterate procrastinator prepare for “Disney in Deutschland”’s next run, which is booked for 2 months from now. Maybe one of you oh so strong souls (or at least one of your illustrated friends) will show the grapes to attend.

I thought about writing a courteous, considered reply to Mr Moore, discussing the implications of the phrase ‘conceived by’ and stressing that I’d very much like to see the play, and will certainly go if it ever plays in London.
I would also have expressed puzzlement at Moore’s insistence that Powers’ version of Disey is sympathetic, and that one of the key points of the play is that it contrasts and counterpoints Hitler and Disney. This seems to sit oddly with Powers’ own statement that ‘Disney and Hitler were both power-hungry monsters.’
Then I looked back over the thread, comparing the tone and tenor of the comments posted by this web-site regulars with those posted by Mr Powers and Mr Moore, a charming, amiable duo who (unlike any of the Cartoon Brew people) can scarcely draw breath without accusing their critics of being bigots, lunatics, murderers and Nazis. And I decided that life’s too short to go on with this silly thread, arguing against two VERY silly people.

I’d be very interested in attending, and would appreciate an update on the upcoming performances.

The three things I would find enlightening from Mr. Powers’s perspective are:

1) On a philosophical level and from an artist’s perspective, why does he perceive Walt Disney as a monster on the scale of Hitler?

2) Why is he “so tired of the Disney image everybody loves,” and what harm or damage does he feel this has created that it has become the core motive of his creative work?

3) Why does he insist on portraying his play as fact-based, when all evidence points to the contrary?

I look forward to finally seeing the work at the center of all this tumult. Please be sure and post the new performance schedule.

(P.S. to Mr. Moore, your tone of accusation and hostility isn’t really conducive to an objective dialogue on this subject. I don’t think anyone here sees themselves in an ivory tower, or intends to present anything other than factual responses to Mr. Powers’s own statements. If the author makes declarations, he simply needs to be able to defend them, or absorb the correction or criticism. Thanks.)

P.S. to Andrew Osmond–THE Andrew Osmond? Twitcher, Big Fish, High, Young British Slacker?

No, just Andrew Osmond the lowly hack!

Mr.Kurtti,
Oh, I’m the one making it difficult to admit reason into this thread? Something about blitzkreig journalism, and summary diversionary convictions irk me. The double standard of yours saying you just want an objective dialogue is laughable. Face it, in order to answer McCracken’s original call to arms over how people’s attitude toward Disney would be influenced by their attending “Disney in Deutschland, isn’t it the play which must be understood? Instead, all of you attack the playwrite over historical accuracy, even though none of you had any proof that Mr. Powers was in fact responsible for declaring his work factual in content. But you guys, through biased agenda, just kept slashing at issues closer to your own passions, i.e. Disney’s image and historical fact. Since you were set up by the authoritative review of McCracken to go for the kill and discredit the source of the threat to humanity’s love of Walt, you never bothered to adopt any real objectivity, such as you now sanctimoniously preach to me. When I stepped in to shine a light on the disfunctional mechanizations employed within the increasingly heated exchanges by all parties, I received responses which denied specifically that which had been the thrust of their entries. Or better yet, prose expressing precisely the illogic, non sequitor, or ad hominem problems I had at first observed, and now had vomited back at me in order to prove that I didn’ know what I was talking about. If you guys want to run JJP down, well, that’s what some people like to spend their time doing. Yet now, here at the fin de secle, you come on all “we just want to understand”… Man, take a serious look at the way you folks operate. You bait and switch; your definition of objectivity has a variable depth of principle which makes it all too easy to repeatedly refer to me as fragile or weak, then, affecting a composure certainly absent during your name calling phase, politely paint me as the hostile one. Slick. “If an author makes declarations, he simply needs to be able to defend them, or absorb the correction or criticism.” Not once did your side adopt that policy with regard to my repeated notations of hypocritical or unfair tactics and spurious subect fixation. You’re writing that quote to me now stands as all the proof you need of the disrespectful, superiorly ignorant position you and yours have displayed all along. Objective dialogues are hard to come by when you don’t practice what you preach. Maybe characters who are drawn, or are already dead, are less able to call you on your bipolar , immature, self-alienated social “skills”. At least you have denial to keep you in the right. The traits I have once more described as your stock in trade bespeak the blithely selective memories which come from living in ivory towers.
From Tower Osmond early on :”Would it not simply be easier to claim the work as a conceptual fiction and thus dissipate the criticism?” When I repeatedly stated the credit for John Powers in the play’s bill as “conceived and directed by”, the guy seems to totally dismiss any significance. I have consistently attempted to communicate fairly simple principles of logical critical debate. I have repeatedly attempted to raise the level of inquiry to one that would address your seeming initial concern (has Walt been smeared?). At every turn, when I’d tender factual content of the play’s perfomance or attendant material content, none of you listened, even when my submission was in direct response to one of your group’s desired conditions. I tried conducive, and had it spindled, ignored, or recycled into abusive. You don’t fool me one bit, even if you’ve completely hoodwinked yourself.

Mr. Moore,

Oddly, you have taken this forum and made it about you. It is not. (Although I like to hum the “Superman” theme when I read your statement,”When I stepped in to shine a light on the disfunctional mechanizations employed within the increasingly heated exchanges by all parties…” Yes, a world in need seeks the shining light of Mr. Moore, hero of psuedo-intellectual prattle!)

Your writing is shrill and defensive, your arguments are facile efforts to divert the dissertation, your structure is byzantine, you are verbose beyond belief, it sounds like you swallowed a thesaurus, and your spelling is just awful.

You probably should quit now and let the author speak for himself, since the tone and content of your posts are really doing no good for him, and you sound increasingly like the kind of frothing zealot you suspect (and accuse) us all of being.

You see, your premise is flawed, and therefore inarguable: “…all of you attack the playwrite [sic] over historical accuracy, even though none of you had any proof that Mr. Powers was in fact responsible for declaring his work factual in content.” Actually, the playwright himself did so, over and over, in this forum.

I again invite the AUTHOR to participate in an intellectual coversation. My three specific areas of curiosity about his work are delineated above.

And in the meantime, here’s another, rather amusing, alternate history of Disney:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHa_SQB8NB0&mode=related&search=
(There was a longer sketch within the programme, with appearances by Dick van Dyke and a frozen Disney, but I can’t find it online.)

Can we all quiet down now? My play’s run is over for the moment (a revised version is coming!). For his admirers, Disney is sitting on a throne in his animated heaven, his characters hopping happily about him, while Hitler stews and whines among his other uniformed loons in some sort of Nazi hell. For Disney’s detractors, the old man and Hitler are having a field day laughing at the absurdity of all of this.

Mr Powers, the irony is that several early posters to this thread were sympathetic to the premise of your play. Your own ‘lunatic reaction’ (to borrow your phrase) put a stop to that, especially your continued insistence that Walt Disney never employed Jews. Either you’re supremely bigoted (in the proper sense of the word) or you’re a common-or-garden troll. Either way, you’re wasting our time.

“Some of the most influential people at the studio were Jewish”: quote from Disney artist and storyman Joe Grant - himself a Jew - in Gabler p455, bottom of the page, if you’re REALLY unaware that you’re talking nonsense on this subject.

Mr Kurtti, unlike myself, thinks you’re still worth taking seriously, despite the outrageous insults that you’ve hurled in his direction on this thread. He’s taken the time to ask you some civil questions; perhaps you might give him some civil answers. I’ve copied his questions below.

(from Mr Kurtii)
1) On a philosophical level and from an artist’s perspective, why does he perceive Walt Disney as a monster on the scale of Hitler?

2) Why is he “so tired of the Disney image everybody loves,� and what harm or damage does he feel this has created that it has become the core motive of his creative work?

3) Why does he insist on portraying his play as fact-based, when all evidence points to the contrary?

Mr. Powers:

I’d be very interested in attending any stagings of the revised version of your work, and would appreciate an update on the upcoming performances.

I also invite your reply to any or all of my questions.

Just a note to Mr. Osmond referring to Mr Kurti’’s questions. Mr Disney was a ‘monster’ in the way Henry Ford was, the latter happily distributing a virulently anti-Jewish tract in his factories entitled The Internatinal Jew. As far as I know, Disney did not kill millions of people, but I would not supply my absolute proof of this from evidence such as is presented by Osmond and company. As for why I am ‘tired of the Disney image,’ I tire of any inflated image of a simple man used to sell product. For the last time, I state that my play was a fact-based fiction, much like the new film about Queen Elizabeth, THE QUEEN, or any of hundreds of works written over the centuries which were fact based. Another example, perhaps more cogent, was Shakespeare’s RICHARD III. No serious historian would argue that Shakespeare based HIS monster on the real monarch, but the play has engrossed generation after generation. Should Mr Shakespeare be vilified? I do, I think, rest my case.

My first question wasn’t about a relationship of ethics or philosophy between Henry Ford and Walt Disney. Disney was not, as has been discussed, a virulent Jew-hater and distributor of anti-Semitic tracts, as Ford was. (The Dearborn Independent was a weekly newspaper owned by Ford from 1919 to 1927. The paper reached a circulation of 900,000 by 1925, largely due to promotion by Ford Dealers due to a quota system. Lawsuits regarding the anti-Semitic material caused Ford to fold the paper, the last issue being published in December 1927.

Anti-Jewish articles published by The Dearborn Independent were also released in the early 1920s as a set of four bound volumes, cumulatively titled “The International Jew, the World’s Foremost Problem.” Vincent Curcio writes of these publications “they were widely distributed and had great influence, particularly in Nazi Germany, where no less a personage than Adolf Hitler read and admired them. Hitler, fascinated with automobiles, hung Ford’s picture on the wall; Ford is the only American mentioned in Hitler’s book. Steven Watts writes that Hitler “revered” Ford, proclaiming that “I shall do my best to put his theories into practice in Germany,” and modeling the Volkswagen, the people’s car, on the model T. (Source: Wikipedia)

Mr. Powers’s reply still does not address why he feels Walt Disney was a monster on the scale of Hitler.

Mr. Powers’s reply to my second query indicates that he may have misunderstood my question. I’m not terribly curious why he is tired of the Disney image, I’m an admirer of Walt Disney and I’M tired of the superficial Disney image, especially the constant oversimplification of his identity and personal philosophy–often by employees of the company that bears his name.

Rather, I wonder what harm or damage he feels either Walt Disney himself, or this “Disney Image,” largely created by others, has caused that has made it the core motive of his creative work, and (relative to my first question), whether he truly feels that such harm makes Disney a Hitler-scale monster.

Mr. Powers now claims his play as a fact-based fiction, which is a good step, although many of the elements that the playwright cites as fact in the previous thread of posts (Walt Disney was a virulent anti-Semite, Disney did not hire blacks or Jews during Walt’s lifetime, Leonard Mosley and Marc Eliot are scholarly sources, Disney refused to allow credits for his animators to be placed onscreen until “Dumbo,â€? the Walt Disney Archives has microfilm) may call that label into question, since so much falsehood is proclaimed as truth.

Again, I’d be very interested in attending any stagings of the revised version of Mr. Powers’s work, and would appreciate any updates on the upcoming performances.

Mr Powers, your play might be a Shakespearean masterpiece; it doesn’t change the fact that you’re a self-confessed propagandist attacking historical truth. Shakespeare had to write plays to satisfy Henry VII’s granddaughter, who could have had him beheaded in a trice. What’s your excuse?

Your knowledge of Shakespeare and Elizabeth I is far too literal and unimaginative. Shakespeare had concerns involving the Tudors, and other historical realities, but also what someone like KING LEAR represented, beyond historical fact.

As bizarre posts go, that’s up there with your classic, ‘I KNOW that Disney did not hire Jews.’ How we got from Richard III (whom you originally brought up) to King Lear is beyond me. Richard III is a historical figure, who fought Elizabeth’s grandfather and whose reputation was smeared for generations after. Lear is a myth on a par with King Arthur, so talking about what he represented ‘beyond historical fact’ is bizarre.
If your play was simply fiction and presented as such, no-one would have any problems with it. For all I care, you could write a farce called ‘Barnyard Frolics,’ about how Disney enjoyed unnatural relations with mice and ducks. This thread was sparked by pseudo-historical claims in the ‘Disney in Deutschland’ programme, and fed by your statements that you want to tell the world that Disney, the real Disney, was a power-hungry monster comparable to Hitler. That’s bull, as I can say even if I never see your play, which I suspect I’d enjoy enormously.

Is Mr. Powers saying that Hitler or Disney are mythic figures beyond historical fact, like Lear? Is he saying that his work is not a representation of an historical figure such as Richard III, but rather a myth such as Lear? I find all this confusing at best, and evasive at least.

Either the work is a fiction/myth as Mr. Powers’s detractors have been trying to have the playwright admit, or it is an historically accurate representation of the key figures, in both characteristic and event, as the programme notes and the postings of Mr. Powers assert.

As far as this thread goes, I have a friend who says, “It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing. You won’t succeeed, and it annoys the pig.”

I am looking forward to attending one or more of the upcoming performances, however–perhaps I can ask the playwright in person!

Good Lord. I am sorry I brought up LEAR, but despite Osmond’s assertions even he was based on an actual king.

“Shakespeare’s play is based on various accounts of the semi-legendary Leir, a King of the Britons, whose tale was first written down by the twelfth century historian Geoffrey of Monmouth.”
(Wikipedia)

“‘Historia regum Britanniae’ PURPORTS to be a Latin translation of a ‘very old book’ recounting the story of the rise and fall of the Britons. In composing his LEGENDARY history, Geoffrey utilized material from British LEGEND and FOLKLORE. He also borrowed from earlier Latin accounts of the Britons but treated all his sources with GREAT IMAGINITIVE FREEDOM. The Historia begins with the story of Brutus, grandson of Aeneas and founder of Britain; there follow accounts of many MYTHICAL monarchs (including King Lear). The climax of the work is Geoffrey’s INVENTION of a glorious reign of King Arthur and his description of Arthur’s tremendous victories over the invading Saxons and the hostile Roman Empire.”

(Wikipedia, emphasis added.) Would Mr. Powers use any of the emphasized words to describe his work?

BTW, scholars universally consider Geoffrey a “pseudo-historian” or author (as his work deals with fiction based on unsubstantaited historical legend) rather that a chronicler or true historian.

Sounds like a title Mr. Powers might wear, and with pride.

Seems like anyone Jeff Kurti and Andrew Osmond does not agree with or admire must be fraudulent. Scholars do not “universally consider” anything without in-depth analysis which none of those criticizing my play has offered. Besides, only one ’source,’ the glorified McCracken, actually saw the play. 71 comments thus far? This is getting to be fun.

It’s splendid fun. So far you’ve shown yourself to be a loud-mouthed ignoramus about both animation history and Shakespeare’s literary sources. Is there no start to your talents?

“Scholars do not ‘universally consider’ anything without in-depth analysis which none of those criticizing my play has offered.” I was speaking about Geoffrey of Monmouth, not Mr. Powers’s play. I’m afraid you’d be hard-pressed to find a scholar who would back up ol’ Geoffrey as an “ace reporter” rather than a fantasist, I’ll stand by the term “universally.”

The in-depth analysis that has been offered here, by some fair scholars on the subjects, is about not Mr. Powers’s work itself, but about its characterization as a factual or factually-based work.

I don’t believe I ever termed Mr. Powers or his work as fraudulent. Misrepresented, certainly, and even misguided, but it is Mr. Powers himself who continues to drag the discourse off track. Again I invite the playwright back on the subject.

1) On a philosophical level and from an artist’s perspective, why does he perceive Walt Disney as a monster on the scale of Hitler?

2) Why is he “so tired of the Disney image everybody loves,� and what harm or damage does he feel this has created that it has become the core motive of his creative work?

3) Why does he insist on portraying his play as fact-based, when all evidence points to the contrary?

As I said before, most likely “It’s like trying to teach a pig to sing. You won’t succeeed, and it annoys the pig,â€? but the playwright seems so passionate and so convinced that he is “in the right,” I’d really like to hear some constructive dialogue.

Again, I’m really looking forward to the upcoming stagings of the work. Will they again be in San Francisco? Please let me know so I can attend.

Some of your commentators, especially those who did not see the original production, will be delighted to know that DISNEY IN DEUTSCHLAND (retitled DISNEY UND DEUTSCHLAND) has been re-written and is to re-appear at the Garage Theatre, 975 Howard Street, San Francisco for an entire month in February, 2008. Josef Goebbels is a new lead character! Mr Kurtti especially should be pleased, it seems.

Disney did more to mobilize opinion against the Axis than almost anyone else in Hollywood. His studios were totally dedicated to low or no-profit pro-US vs. Axis propaganda films while other studios were still churning out profitable claptrap.

http://www.coxandforkum.com/archives/001096.html

http://www.websitetoolbox.com/tool/post/marvanhogan/vpost?id=2253035&trail=15#1

I’ll be delighted to attend a performance!

Where on earth did Marvan Hogan get his info? Disney not interested in profits! That’s the funniest comment I’ve heard so far. Apparently people like Hogan will be Disney disciples until death.

Hogan never said Disney wasn’t interested in profits. You know, for a campaigning playwright, you should learn to read sometime.

Hello,
It’s very interesting reading all these comments - I admit I don’t know much one way or the other about Disney’s dearest-held beliefs. However, I find it strange that so many people should be so concerned about whether or not a man who’s been dead for some 40 years was anti-Semitic or not. Many, many people had similar prejudices before, during, and after WWII, and obviously in hindsight now we can see that they were wrong. But they were products of their time, as are we all. We can wish they were more independent, enlightened thinkers, but the truth is many otherwise admirable people were racists or in some way bigoted (consider the framers of the Declaration of Independence, who owned slaves as well as excluded non-land-owning white men and all women from the rights they correctly believed were innate) because of the time, place, and accepted writings or propaganda of their upbringing. It is easy to damn them now, with progressive ideas and laws seeming natural to our psyches, but it was not always easy at that time to change your mind. Some people (like Senator Robert Byrd) are smart enough to renounce those views when they become unpopular, but the argument over whether or not Disney was anti-Semitic seems pointless to me in the face of the happiness his works and legacy have brought generations of people. Perhaps it does not seem pointless to you, but whatever his feelings or hiring policy for his company, they no longer exist and can no longer hurt anyone. Wouldn’t it be a more valuable use of time to focus on unfair laws and practices that are in effect now?
Thank you for letting me state my opinion.

To ‘A Student’: your comments are compelling but not conclusive. Yes, anti-Semitism was commonplace in the 1930s in Western culture, but what does that mean? In Europe it has been commonplace for hundreds of years. Disney’s attitude had a subtle effect on the cartoons he produced, which you seem to believe are so comforting and benign. Racist elements appear in everything from THE THREE LITTLE PIGS (with its big-nosed wolf not unlike Nazi caricatures of Jews, its distribution protested by the American Jewish Congress), to FANTASIA, PINOCCHIO, SONG OF THE SOUTH, and SNOW WHITE. Anti-Islamic attitudes are prevalent today in America, so I suppose you would advocate a complacency towards that too since it is widespread. Learning from history is vital. Disney was not a naive producer of loveable cartoons. He was a businessman who knew how to exploit prevalent prejudices. According to your logic of protesting only things going on in 2007, we may as well forget the Holocaust, Hiroshima, Vietnam, and eventually forget atrocities of today. Such complacency is dangerous and the theme of my play is to suggest a relationship between fantasy and fascism. That theme survives today in many countries. You can’t just close the book on history as if it is not alive today.

And now a professional propagandist (*) preaches the importance of learning history, while also insisting that Disney never employed Jews, King Lear is a historical figure, etc. Mr Powers, why don’t you read page 455 of Gabler’s Disney book - a book you yourself call a ’scholarly work’ - as I suggested some months ago? It won’t bite you, and you might learn something yourself.
(*) ‘I continue writing because I am so tired of the Disney image everybody loves and because I wrote this play to seriously [sic] put a stop to this image.’ John J Powers, June 21st.

Mr Osmond: for your benefit, I just read p 455 of Gabler’s book. He is as unclear about Disney’s prejudices as many other writers.
True, a certain Jew who worked for him insisted Disney wasn’t an anti-Semite, but why would he say that if it were not an issue?

Compare and contrast:

“Joe Grant, who had been an artist, the head of the model department and the storyman responsible for Dumbo together with Dick Huemer, declared emphatically that Walt was not an anti-semite. ‘Some of the most influential people at the studio were Jewish,’ Grant recalled, thinking no doubt of himself, production manager Harry Tytle, and Kay Kamen, who once quipped that Disney’s New York office had more Jews than the book of Leviticus.”
Gabler, p455

‘Until his (Walt Disney’s) death in 1966 no Jews or blacks were allowed to be employed at any Disney facility: that is a matter of record.’
John J Powers, laying down his credentials as a serious historian in his first post to this thread, 20 June.

Mr Powers, will you now admit your comment was a slanderous crock of shit? (Oh, and I love the way you write