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. 66In the spring of 1942, work on the twelve South American themed shortswas moving forward rapidly understandably so, since the writing of all thoseshorts began before the 1941 trip did, and the people who did most of thework on them were not part of El Grupo, the studio contingent that ac-companied Disney to South America.Disney attributed to his distributor,RKO, the idea of combining four of the shorts into a sort of feature, to over-come the difficulty of selling a Brazilian-themed short in Argentina, and soon. They said, You ve got to put these together somehow.So I didn t knowhow to put em together but I had taken 16mm film of our trip.I tookthe 16mm film, blew it up to 35, used it as connections between the four sub-jects and presented it as a tour of my artists around. on a treadmi ll, 1 941 1 947 1 83 Saludos, as the forty-two-minute result was called for its release in Span-ish-speaking Latin America, included cartoons that placed familiar Disneycharacters in South American settings (Donald Duck in Bolivia and Brazil,Goofy in Argentina) and introduced new Latin-flavored characters ( José Car-ioca, a Brazilian parrot, and Pedro, an anthropomorphic mail plane).Thefilm played to enthusiastic crowds throughout Latin America.In BuenosAires, a representative of the coordinator s office reported, the sequences,particularly those dealing with Argentina, amazed the audience with theirauthenticity, their charm and their humor.There was little doubt thatthe Brazilian sequence and particularly José Carioca were considered [even]more enjoyable than the Argentine sequences and this in Buenos Aires isnews. 67 Retitled for its domestic release, Saludos Amigos opened in the UnitedStates in February 1943.It returned rentals to the studio of $623,000, morethan twice its negative cost of less than $300,000.68By the summer of 1942, the Disney studio still had only around 500 to550 employees,69 but war work was beginning to take up the slack left by thedormant feature program.That work accelerated the Disney studio s turnaway from being strictly or even mainly a cartoon producer.By 1943, abouthalf the film footage the studio produced was live action, most of it for de-fense series like Aircraft Production Methods.70 In order to get his men whowere making military films deferred, Disney brought members of draft boardsto the studio where, he said, they could not get security clearances to seesome of the most sensitive work being done.In the later months of 1942 and the early months of 1943, as war workramped up, Disney somehow found time and money (receipts from Bambino doubt helped) to make another feature, this one radically diªerent fromthose he had made before the war.Although Disney is best remembered asa train enthusiast, he loved air travel, too, and in early 1942 his South Amer-ican trip stimulated him to plan a bargain-basement feature on the historyof aviation.Instead, that plan was subsumed in a largely animated versionof Victory Through Air Power, Alexander de Seversky s 1942 book advocatinga reliance on long-range bombers to defeat the Axis powers.Disney s artists had adapted rapidly to the new demands of the militarytraining films, so far removed, both in graphics and as narrative, from any-thing they had done before.The maps and diagrams and symbols that makeup much of Victory s animation, illustrating Seversky s ideas, were a furtherchallenge, especially combined with Disney s zeal for the subject matter. Iwas confused after a meeting on the film, said Herb Ryman, whose métierwas the evocative sketch. I could only see maps.Walt followed me out of1 84 a queer, qui ck, deli ghtful gi nk [the] room.He hit the jamb of the door with the flat of his hand. What sthe matter, Herbie? Is that a bad idea? No.no.no. You couldn tsay no to Walt. 71Disney remembered getting pressure from both naval and army air corpsofficers during work on Victory Through Air Power.He made Victory, afterall, in the midst of making training films for the navy, and Seversky s bookalarmed officers in both services, although its ultimate impact was slight. Itwas just something that I believed in and for no other reason [than] that Idid it, Disney said. It was a stupid thing to do as a business venture. Thatwas true.RKO sagely passed on the film, so in November 1942 Disney signeda distribution contract with United Artists instead.When Victory ThroughAir Power was released in July 1943, the Disney studio lost more than$450,000 on the film.72In other respects, too, the war was a trying and difficult time for Disney.During the war, he complained more than ten years after it ended, the the-aters had no time for Disney.and all the little brats Disney attracted.Wartime was a poor time for us. The theaters prospered without the fam-ily trade, he said, because they were doing such a business with any oldpiece of cheese they d put in. Disney did not enjoy working with many of the military officers and gov-ernment officials who had to pass on his films. Some of those people, whenthey got a uniform on, it was like a pinning a badge on somebody, he com-plained in 1956. They just couldn t hold it. Frequent visits to Washingtonhe made five in 1942 alone were a necessity but no pleasure.Sometimes,Disney said, he couldn t find a hotel room, so I went and sat through a movieseveral times to have a place to sit down. Joe Grant remembered hearing Disney talk about his studio, on one ofthose trips to Washington, in terms that were in striking contrast to the con-ditions that prevailed by then.Perhaps Disney was speculating about someideal arrangement, or about what might have been if the strike had not in-tervened. He wanted a dormitory on the lot, he wanted people to live there, Grant said. I got that on a train ride back to Washington once.As [Henry]Ford did, when he had all of his employees living there; he had a perfect set-up.He not only had a belt-line, but he had all the accessories to go with it,which were people. 73For all the jarring changes that Disney and his studio had endured in thelast few years, outsiders could still find the man and the place refreshinglyattractive compared with the rest of Hollywood.The novelist and screenwriter Eric Knight worked at the Disney studio inon a treadmi ll, 1 941 1 947 1 85 1942, as a major in the army, when Disney was making animated inserts forthe Why We Fight series produced by Frank Capra s military film unit.Knight,in Hollywood since 1934, was by the time he met Disney disgusted with theHollywood idea.that a writer is the lowest form of life a sort of ste-nographer. Jaded though he was, Knight liked the Disney studio, marvelingat its oªhandedness, and, as he wrote to his wife on August 6, 1942, hefound Walt himself good fun.He is always trying to wangle an idea out ofme.He is a queer, quick, delightful gink with more capabilities rolledinto one man than even me. On August 17, 1942, Disney wanted to know what Knight thought of apossible film about Gremlins and Fifinellas and Widgets.Gremlins ride on[Royal Air Force] planes with suction cup boots and drill holes in planes.Fifinellas are girl Gremlins all cousins to a leprechaun.Widgets are youngGremlins born in a nest.So we laugh at lunch and I can kid him any wayI want.Then back after lunch to maps and more maps
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