Existing comment:
The toughest Period
"As I remember, it was the toughest period I've had in my whole life. It wasn't a worry of losing anything, it was just sort of a big disappointment in a lot of things. But something comes out of it. Sometimes you've got to build yourself up and explode. And then you begin to pick up the pieces and take stock." -- Walt
"The 1940s, with the war and our frozen markets, was a bad decade for us. We really got in a tight bind around here. We were a young organization and our fellows were subject to the draft -- to the service -- and we lost many, many of them. Walt jumped in and started making films for the services, and on the strength of that, was able to keep some of the boys to keep a nucleus of an organization going." -- Roy
During the early 1940s Walt and his studio were sorely tested by two major crises. The first was a bitter three-month-long artists' strike, which drastically disrupted the staff's working relationships. The second crisis was World War II, which consumed the studio's attention from the moment the United States entered the war in December 1941. Either one of these events, alone, would have altered the course of Walt's future; together they amounted to an enormous personal and professional challenge.
The strike took its toll, but Walt met the war emergency with a series of creative responses. The studio diversified its activities, producing a distinctive variety of films and other products, and emerged from the war years newly strengthened. |