Women occupied few power seats in Hollywood during the Golden Age of the 1930s and ‘40s. This was true at all the studios, including the one featured in Queens of Animation. The revealing new book by Nathalia Holt, author of the bestselling Rise of the Rocket Girls, focuses on the underacknowledged role of women at Walt Disney Studio and their contributions to Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio and other animation classics.
Of course, in one respect, women were shortchanged because movie credits were much shorter in the old days. Unlike now, when efforts are made to list every participant at whatever tertiary level, in the ‘30s and ‘40s only key cast and crew were namechecked. Still, Snow White’s credits acknowledged Hazel Sewell, Disney’s sister-in-law, as art director, and Dorothy Ann Black among the cowriters.
But as Holt points out, a hundred other women played their part in Snow White’s development, most of them in the Ink and Pen Department where color was applied to the cels—the sheets of cellulose that convey the moving images. It was the necessary grunt work of animation but opened the door—at least a crack—to women interested in the field.
Ink and Pen was a friendly refuge but the all-important Story Department, where screenplays were composed, was a toxic setting—a frat house for infantile men who “would yell obscenities and throw wads of balled-up paper” at presenters whose ideas they disliked. Their grade school aggression was directed at all comers but—in the early years—the sharpest edge was saved for the few women admitted to the clubhouse.
Uncle Walt seemed of two minds. He married a Pen and Ink gal and admired the independent spirit of storywriter Bianca Majolie, his onetime classmate, and gradually hired other women for that department. His general attitude was in keeping with the era’s expectations: Why hire a woman when she was likely to get married, have children and stay home after a few years?
And yet he came around to hiring them. And yes, they were paid less than the men, Holt finds.
After Disney’s death in 1966, the number of women employed by his studio declined—this at a time when a rising tide of women were entering workplaces across the country. The new Disney executives, interested only in theme parks and forgettable live action flicks, thought animation was dead. For the few women at Disney in the ‘70s, the environment was even worse than in the ‘30s.
Once Uncle Walt’s nephew, Roy Disney, took charge in the ‘80s, the studio began to reinvest in animation. The final chapters of Queens of Animation summarize recent years in which Pixar now a Disney subsidiary, took the lead.
Queens of Animation: The Untold Story of the Women Who Transformed the World of Disney and Made Cinematic History, is published by Little, Brown.
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