Neal Gabler: Walt Disney could deal with anything creatively.
He could yell and scream and that's where he wanted his energies to be devoted.
But he didn't want to be devoted to this. And he couldn't understand it.
Narrator: Employees at the Walt Disney studios
had been begging for better wages, extra pay for overtime,
and a uniform system for determining job titles and screen credits for months.
Walt had waved this off as the hobby-horse of a few hotheads and union agitators,
right up to May 29, 1941,
the day nearly half of his art department walked out to take up positions on the picket line.
The strike demonstrations got bigger in the first weeks, and louder,
and so did the threat to the already shaky studio.
Disney's last two feature films, Pinocchio and Fantasia, had both lost money
and investors were fleeing;
the company stock had dropped from $25 dollars a share to $4.
Walt Disney needed a box office hit soon,
and his own workers seemed intent on derailing the studio's only two hopes:
Dumbo and Bambi.
Tom Sito: As the strike lingered and kept going, the mood of everybody started to get ugly,
and people started to get angrier, and then Walt was getting angrier.
Narrator: A month into the strike,
Disney refused to recognize the union representing his workers, the Screen Cartoonist Guild.
He refused to negotiate with the guild's representative, Herbert Sorrell.
And he refused to make apologies to the man whose firing had prompted the strike,
long-time Disney animator Art Babbitt.
Tom Sito: There was one day where Art Babbitt noticed Disney driving to the gate.
And Babbitt just kind of blew his stack and just jumped over and grabbed the bullhorn,
and shouted out loud so everybody could hear, "There he goes, the great man,"
and basically just heaped abuse on Disney.
"Shame on you, Walt Disney."
Narrator: As the crowd cheered, Disney jumped out of his car and charged at Babbitt.
The two men had to be pulled apart.
Walt Disney could not believe that so many of his workers had actually taken sides with the union,
and against him.
Disney sniffed conspiracy -- and a big one.
He went public with his pet theory in a full-page advertisement in a Hollywood trade paper, Variety.
Nancy Koehn: He needed to have a bad guy. He needs to blame it all on a villain.
And in this case, the new flavor of the month in Hollywood,
at that time and later, would be the shadow or specter of Communism.
Eric Smoodin: He becomes then like a typical industrial boss.
Most American executives at the time blame unionization on Communists.
So in this way Disney becomes completely conventional.
Neal Gabler: Walt Disney is being bombarded,
by all of this negativity.
And it's just not something he was accustomed to.
Narrator: "The entire situation is a catastrophe," he wrote to a friend.
"The spirit that played such an important part in the building of the cartoon medium has been destroyed...
I have a case of the D.D.'s -- disillusionment and discouragement."
The next day Disney skipped town for a 10-week working tour of South America,
and left the headaches to his brother and long-time business partner, Roy.
Steven Watts: What Walt Disney was doing was getting away, period.
He just was sick and tired of the whole business, and he wanted o go away and do something else.
Neal Gabler: South America is a real relief for Walt Disney.
Wherever his plane lands, people are there to greet him;
dignitaries invite him to dinners.
Everybody loves him.
And I think the contrast between the affection with which he's greeted in South America
and the kind of hostility with which he'd been greeted in Los Angeles isn't lost on him.
Narrator: Disney was still on the road in South America when his father, Elias Disney, died unexpectedly.
Walt declined to cut his trip short and return home for the funeral
of the man with whom he had clashed much of his life.
This was just fine with Roy;
he was happy to have Walt and his explosive temper
remain at a safe remove while he tried to make peace with the Screen Cartoonists Guild.
Steven Watts: Roy Disney sees the writing on the wall. He sees that unionization is
coming into the studios whether we like it or not,
and he wants to settle this. He wants to get things up and running.
Narrator: By the time Walt did finally return at the end of October, Roy had resolved the strike.
The workers had been granted almost everything they had asked for.
The Disney art department was back on track,
but the studio would never again feel like family to Walt.
Don Lusk: The gal I married was a secretary in personnel.
She was called up to Walt's office to help on the files.
And she would go through and find people that were out on strike.
And they were moved from here to this file.
Walt came in and said, "How's it going?"
She just said, "What are we doing this for?"
And he said, "Well, these are the people that are true to Disney.
These are the people who at one time or one day will not be here."
Tom Sito: After the strike, Walt distrusted everybody.
One of the great animators who worked on Snow White said, "Walt Disney was a great man.
Walt Disney was a genius.
If you were his friend, he was a warm friend.
If you crossed him, he was a mean SOB."