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Video: Walt Disney: A Good Storyteller in the FBI Service
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
The American cartoonist and founder of Walt Disney Productions is known all over the world. The bright and kind cartoons created by him are still loved and watched by millions of kids, however, adults are not averse to plunge into the colorful world of Walt Disney again. However, the good storyteller Walt Disney was not only a cartoonist. For many years he collaborated with the FBI, and even more than half a century after the artist's death, many materials about this side of his activities remain secret.
Walt Disney's political views
Hollywood has always known that the cartoonist had a very conservative outlook and never sympathized with Jews, communists and blacks. At the same time, he considered Adolf Hitler a good politician who saved his country from Bolshevism.
Disney films were actively purchased by Goebbels for distribution in Germany, and the government of this country viewed the founder of Walt Disney Productions as a popularizer of the Nazis' successes. At one time he organized a private screening of Leni Riefenstahl's film "Olympia" for 50 journalists, although it was not released anyway.
From 1940 until his death in 1966, Walt Disney was associated with the Los Angeles branch of the FBI, and his first contact with internal intelligence took place back in 1936. He wrote denunciations of his colleagues, and in 1941, during a strike by Disney animators, he publicly accused the organizers of the protest movement of communist agitation. He testified before the House Committee on Anti-American Activities and openly referred to the strikers as communists, providing the committee with a list of organizers.
According to union leaders, the strike was triggered by the dismissal of Disney employees for union activities, but Walt Disney disagreed.
In the service of the FBI
For the first time, details about the relationship between Disney and the FBI were released in the book "Walt Disney: The Black Prince of Hollywood" by Eliot, where the author published fragments of a copy of the cartoonist's dossier so that they could be checked for compliance with government documents. It was this fact and the comparison of the photocopies of the dossiers that left no doubt that the documents used by Eliot were genuine. At the same time, some of the materials were obscured or hidden for reasons of national security, so it is not known for certain who exactly Disney mentioned in his reports.
Based on the information provided, Mr. Eliot claims, the cartoonist was made a full special agent in 1954. However, Walt Disney was far from the only FBI informant in Hollywood, and there were very famous names among the agents. But being a special agent meant that Disney could provide the FBI with reports from other informants, and this likely provided opportunities for the FBI to find and recruit other agents. According to the documents, the good storyteller ran a network of informants and collected data for the FBI, using his own contacts in Hollywood.
The cartoonist and producer was considered a very reliable source of information, and he provided the FBI with the names of actors and directors, screenwriters and technicians, producers and trade unionists suspected of anti-American activities.
The cartoonist's collaboration with US domestic intelligence was so fruitful that in 1955, when Tomorrowland was opened, a document appeared in the Disney dossier, which announced Disney voluntarily granting access to all facilities in the amusement park for "official matters and for recreational purposes. ". At the same time, the producer himself and the founder of the company was referred to as a “close contact person”.
However, Disney himself soon benefited from the collaboration. His assistant was granted the right to use the Bureau's offices in Washington DC in 1956 to film the Mickey Mouse Club children's show. True, at the request of the FBI during the filming, some changes were made to the programs, they concerned the part where episodes with the participation of actors portraying FBI agents were shown directly. At the same time, Walt Disney himself willingly fulfilled the requirements of the director of the Bureau, John Edgar Hoover.
In 1961, John Edgar Hoover came across the script for the film "Lunar Pilot", where, as it seemed to the director of the Bureau, the FBI agent was shown in an unflattering manner, and Walt Disney was informed that internal intelligence would strongly oppose the mention of the Bureau in this tape. Disney immediately changed the character to a regular security agent. Later, several more facts of the FBI's interference in filmmaking were mentioned.
In fact, the Walt Disney Dossier is a historical reminder of the Cold War years when Hollywood artists could have suffered from their beliefs. The government censored everything quite harshly, and some writers, directors and actors were blacklisted and could not work.
The name of Walt Disney is known all over the world, but the name of Lillian Bonds, a woman who for 40 years remained his muse and most loyal assistant, is hardly familiar to the general public. But if this fateful meeting had not happened in his life, the world would hardly have seen so many beautiful fairy tales.
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