Free Tinker Belles and Evil Queens: The Walt Disney Company From the Inside Out by Sean Griffin

this upheaval, and it seemed to many as if Walt was one of the few working in the film industry who was not appealing to the “low” interests of audience members. For example, Parents’ Magazine ’s award to Walt Disney was reported when the magazine was putting out “Family Movie Guides”
    in every issue that warned “Don’t run the risk of letting your sons and daughters see movies that are harmful. Many pictures are unfit for children and adolescents.”72 Other articles in future issues of the magazine would include “Helping Youth to Choose Better Movies,” “How to Select Movies for Children” and “Will the Code Bring Better Movies?”73
    Although it is hard to substantiate, it is probable that the Hollywood film industry as a whole heartily approved of Disney’s promotionalism.
    By presenting a figure that was contributing to the well-being of children throughout the world, the entire industry looked better. Highly influential columnists Louella Parsons and Hedda Hopper made sure to promote Disney’s brand of family entertainment quite often through the 1930s. In 1937, the Los Angeles Junior Chamber of Commerce, led by a panel that included Will Hays, announced Walt as their “Out-standing Young Man” of the year (for individuals under 35). It is certain that, by the mid-1930s, a number of film celebrities were voicing their admiration of Mickey Mouse and his creator, such as Mary Pickford, Will Rogers and Charlie Chaplin. By 1935, the conversion was absolute, and Walt was considered America’s mythmaker in residence.
    The “family-oriented” atmosphere of the Disney studio was not simply a public relations gambit though, for day-to-day life at the studio quickly began to mirror the moral image that was being advertised in the popular press. According to a 1936 article in Harpers’ Bazaar, the studio looked “like a small municipal kindergarten with green grass for the children to keep off of. . . . Law and order reign there, without seeming unattractive.”74 The employees were considered by Walt as a family, and they were expected to share that conception. Everyone at the studio called their boss “Walt,” whether they felt comfortable with it or not. Although everyone had specific titles and positions, it was not un-26
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    common for everyone to help out in a number of different ways—coming up with gag ideas, drawing inspirational sketches, etc. Lunch breaks at the studio usually included volleyball games on the lot.
    There was also a great deal of social propriety within the studio confines as well. A dress code was instituted for all employees. Men were expected to arrive at work in coat and tie (which could be removed when sitting at a drawing table). Pants on female employees were strictly forbidden. The women, who worked almost exclusively in the
    “inking and painting” department (coloring the animation cels), were often segregated from the male employees. One female employee, Phyllis Craig, recalls that the Ink and Paint Department was nicknamed
    “The Nunnery,” and that they were given their lunch break at a separate time from the men.75 In fact, as Disney biographer Leonard Mosley narrates,
    It was sometimes known among cynical acting types as Mickey
    Mouse’s Monastery, and . . . anything less than circumspect behavior while appearing on the lot would result in instant dismissal. You did not carouse, raise your voice off the set, look lecherously at a member of the opposite sex, or, in fact, indulge in any kind of hanky-panky at Disney.76
    In all ways, it seemed that Disney and his studio had created a specific, carefully circumscribed concept of sexual decorum, one that upheld the American bourgeois heterosexual norm.
    This is not to say that the attempt to construct this image amongst the employees at the studio always proceeded smoothly apace. In specifically mandating only one type of proper behavior for its employees, the studio was