Was Walt Disney an anti-Semite? Not according to The Wizard of Oz

Jim Hill

10 years ago

Sorry I’ve been away for a couple of days. So what did I
miss?

Ah, yeah. Meryl Streep‘s speech at the National Board of Review awards. Where
— before she handed Emma Thompson the best actress award for her stellar
performance in “Saving Mr. Banks” — Streep first went out of her way
to attack the late Walt Disney. Calling him racist, sexist and anti-Semitic.

Look, Floyd Norman has already effectively addressed the racism issue. And Amid
Amidi did a great job of debunking Meryl’s claim that ” … Walt hated
woman and cats.” As for me … Well, I’d like to try & use one of the
greatest fantasy films of all time — MGM‘s “The Wizard of Oz” — to
prove once & for all that Walt Disney wasn’t an anti-Semite.

Okay. So let’s start with the very term
“anti-Semite.” Which — according to FreeDictionary.com — is “
… a person who discriminates against or is prejudiced or hostile toward Jews.”

Now let me introduce you to a key player in the development of “The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as a major motion picture. And that’s industry
pioneer Samuel Goldwyn, who was born in Warsaw
in a Polish shtetl back in July of 1879. Raised as a Hasidic Jew with his only
formal education coming from those few years that he spent in Hebrew school,
Goldwyn always like to tell the story of how — when he was only 12 years-old
— Samuel walked across Europe and eventually immigrated to North America. Once
there, Goldwyn made his way from Nova Scotia
to New York City. Whereupon Samuel “anglicized”
the name he was born with (i.e., Shmuel Gelbfisz) and became Sam Goldfish.

Now let’s jump ahead to May of 1933. And Sam Goldfish (who
is now known as Samuel Goldwyn and is already one of the true giants in Hollywood
history) catches a screening of “Three Little Pigs.” And what does
Sam see as he views this animated short? Well, yes, he see a brief unfortunate
joke that does feature the stereotypical Jewish peddler …

(Though — to be fair here — were you to view a sampling of animated cartoons
that had been produced by the other major
studios during this exact same period in Hollywood history, you’d see that ethnic
humor was one of the mainstays of animation during this era in American entertainment.
It was something that the movie-going public readily accepted & genuinely seemed
to enjoy during this time in our country’s history. More to the point, when
Walt realized that these sorts of gags were no longer considered palatable by
the greater movie-going public, he had the offensive sequence trimmed &
re-animated.)

… Anyway … Now getting back to Samuel Goldwyn and
Disney’s “Three Little Pigs.” What does Goldwyn see as he views this
soon-to-be Academy Award-winning short? He sees the future. To be specific: A time
when movie-goers will hunger for similar sorts of Technicolor fantasies, only
the feature-length kind.

And given that Samuel now prides himself on being a fully
assimilated American, he wants his studio to make a distinctly American film
fantasy. Which is why — according to Jay Scarfone & William Stillman’s “The
Wizard of Oz: The Official 75th Anniversary Companion
” (Harper Design,
October 2013) — Goldwyn reaches out to Frank J. Baum, the son of the late L.
Frank Baum and offers to buy the screen rights to “The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz.”

Now what’s kind of interesting about all this is — just prior to Samuel’s
attempt to snag the screen rights to “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” in
mid-to-late 1933 — MGM had also been talking with the Baum family. That studio
had seen the huge success that Walt was having with his “Silly
Symphonies” series and now wanted to get in the animation business in the
worst way. And the idea that MGM executives came up — which they hoped would
eventually turn into some serious competition for Disney’s Mickey Mouse cartoons
— was to do a series of full-color animated shorts built around Baum’s
“Oz” characters.

Unfortunately for MGM, Frank J. Baum and L. Frank’s widow,
Maude, thought the amount that this studio was offering for the rights to use
the “Oz” characters in animation was far too low. So when Samuel
Goldwyn came along and offer them $40,000 for the screen rights to “The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz,” the Baum family immediately said “Yes.”

Another interesting side note: On the heels of the “Three Little Pig”
‘s huge success, Walt finally got serious about the idea of producing a
full-length animated feature. And what was one of the stories that he
considered as possible fodder for Disney Studio’s first full-length feature? You guessed it. L.
Frank Baum‘s “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” As the story goes, Walt
asked his brother Roy to discreetly make inquiries about whether the screen
rights to this book was still available in early 1934. Only to then have the Hollywood
trades break the news on January 26,
1934 that Goldwyn had officially scored the screen rights to
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.”

And just so you know: When it came to the movie version of
“Oz” that Samuel wanted to make, the connections between that project
and Disney’s “Three Little Pigs” were quite strong. Goldwyn even went
so far as to hire Ann Ronell (who wrote the lyrics for the hit song from that
animated short, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”) to do the songs
for his proposed “Oz” production.

And in another weird parallel between the way that Samuel
Goldwyn & Walt Disney thought, according to Scarfone & Stillman …

… When negotiating with the Baum family to purchase the
screen rights (to this book), Goldwyn had contemplated The Wizard of Oz as a
Technicolor talkie with Mary Pickford in the lead.

This is the only remaining frame of Mary Pickford’s Technicolor
test for Disney’s proposed live-action / animated version of
“Alice in Wonderland.” The rest of this test footage dis-
appeared decades ago. Copyright Disney Enterprises,
Inc. All rights reserved

“What’s so weird about that?,” you say. Well, in
early 1933 when Walt was actively looking for a hook to build Disney Studios’
first full-length feature around, he actually shot a Technicolor test with
screen legend Mary Pickford. With the idea being that this then-41 year-old
actress would then be the only human performer in an all-animated version of
Lewis Carroll’s “Alice in
Wonderland.” (Which — if you know your Disney history — given that, just
10 years earlier, Walt had burst on the scene in Hollywood by being the guy who
made that “Alice in Cartoonland” short. Which featured 5 year-old
Virginia Davis capering with cartoon characters … Well, that would have been
kind of intriguing to have Walt revisit the idea that had initially helped him
break through in Tinsel Town
as the way for his studio to now expand into features).

But as the two images that I’ve folded into this article
show, by 1933, “America’s
Sweetheart” could no longer really pull off the sort of ingenue roles that
she’d built her fabled film career on. Which is perhaps why — just after this
“Alice in Wonderland”
test at Disney Studios — Mary officially announced her retirement from
on-screen acting. Though she would then continue to produce films at United
Artists (i.e., the movie studio that Pickford formed back in 1919 with Charlie
Chaplin, D. W. Griffith and her then-soon-to-be-husband, Douglas Fairbanks).

Getting back to Samuel Goldwyn’s proposed movie version of
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” now: While his studio let word leak in
1936 that they were considering child star Marcia Mae Jones for the role of Dorothy,
“Oz” never really moved into active development at Goldwyn. Some say
this was because the writers that Sam hired for this proposed production never
delivered a screenplay that he liked. Still other have suggested that it was
Goldwyn’s mercurial nature, his infamous indecision, that ultimately did the
project in.

All that is known is that …

In December of 1937, Goldwyn momentarily became disenchanted
with the picture business and — on a whim — began divesting himself of the various story properties that
he owned. Most significantly, Samuel began entertaining offers on The Wizard of
Oz, and a bidding war ensued.

Samuel Goldwyn

Now — to be blunt here — Samuel’s timing (at least when it
came to the sale of the screen rights to “The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz”) couldn’t have been worse. For December 21, 1937, “Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs
” premiered at the Carthay Circle Theater.
And as Disney’s first full-length animated feature began its nationwide roll-out
in February of 1938 and then began racking up record-breaking sales (For a
brief while there, “Snow White” was actually the highest grossing
sound film in Hollywood history), there was the cinematic equivalent of the
Oklahoma land rush. As the whole of Hollywood
seemingly hurrying to get into the feature-length fantasy film business.

It’s now time to bring our second key player in the
development of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as a major motion picture
on the scene. And that’s legendary movie producer & director Mervyn LeRoy. Born in San
Francisco in October of 1890 to Jewish parentsEdna
(née Armer) and Harry LeRoy, Mervyn’s family (which owned a successful
department store in the city) was financially ruined by the Great Earthquake of
1906.

To help make money for his family out during this extreme
tough time, LeRoy (just as the young Walt Disney did) sold newspapers. As he
grew older, Mervyn drifted into the world of entertainment. First as a singer
and a dancer, and eventually — as he transitioned from vaudeville to silent
film — as a director of highly successful motion pictures like “Little
Caesar
.”

Which is why — on February 3, 1938
— MGM brought LeRoy onboard as a producer. With the hope that Mervyn would
then become create some highly successful films for that studio as well. And
what’s the very first thing that LeRoy did after he arrived at MGM? He makes
sure that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer outbid Twentieth Century Fox for the screen
rights to “The Wonderful World of Oz.” Fox had been pursuing this
property as a possible vehicle for Shirley Temple. But at Mervyn’s urging, MGM
swooped in at the very last minute. And on February 18, 1938, MGM won the screen rights to
“The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” by offering to pay Samuel Goldwyn
$75,000 for the property.

Mind you, not everyone in Hollywood
was happy that MGM now owned the screen rights to “Oz.” As Scarfone
& Stillman recall in their “The Wizard of Oz: The Official 75th
Anniversary Companion,” Hollywood columnist Paul
Harrison snarked in a March 16, 1938
story that …

… I hope the ghost of L. Frank Baum gives Samuel Goldwyn a
good haunting for not selling the rights to The Wizard of Oz books to Walt
Disney.

Cecil B DeMille

Now why would Harrison say something like that? Well, you
have to understand that — on the heels of “Snow White” ‘s success —
all of Hollywood was hailing Walt
as Tinsel Town’s
new resident genius. I mean, you had industry giants like Cecil B. DeMille
sending telegrams to the studio saying that ” … I wish I could make
pictures like Snow White.” And as Neal Gabler recounts in his “Walt
Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination” (Knopf, October 2006) …

Critic Gilbert Seldes, long a Disney admirer and advocate,
was given a private screening (of ‘Snow White’) and left saying “he
thought Metro Goldwyn might just as well close their studios as long as you
produce feature films.”

So you could perhaps understand why the Hollywood press
would react negatively when LeRoy announced that MGM’s version of “The
Wonderful Wizard of Oz” wouldn’t be an animated feature. But — rather —
a live-action musical which would simulate a cartoon.

(L to R) William Austin as the Gryphon, Charlotte Henry as Alice and Cary Grant
as the Mock Turtle in the 1933 live-action version of “Alice in Wonderland.”
Copyright Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved

“And why would the Hollywood
press react negatively to that particular piece of news?,” you query.
Because there were a lot of people in town who still remembered what a train
wreck Paramount‘s live-action
version of “Alice in
Wonderland
” had been back in 1933.

On paper, this motion picture looked like it was going to be a smash hit.
Paramount Pictures had loaded up this live-action version of Lewis Carroll‘s
books with the biggest stars of the day. We’re talking about people like W. C.
Fields playing Humpty Dumpty, Cary Grant as the Mock Turtle and Gary Cooper as
the White Knight. With each of these performers decked out in elaborate
costumes & make-ups which attempted to duplicate the exact look of John
Tenniel’s pen-and-ink illustrations for the Alice
book. But given the limitation of make-up back in the 1930s (or — to be
completely blunt here — given that the make-up department at Paramount
couldn’t compete with what Jack Pierce & his team were doing over at
Universal), what was supposed to be a family-friendly film wound up being more
of a horror movie.

Paramount’s
elaborate costumes and make-ups made it so members of the audience couldn’t
actually recognize most of the big-name stars who were appearing in this motion
picture. I mean, look at the photo below. Is there anything about this image
that lets you know that this frog footman is actually being played by Disney Legend
Sterling Holloway (i.e., the voice of the stork in “Dumbo
,” the
Cheshire Cat in Disney’s animated version of “Alice in Wonderland
,”
Kaa the Snake in “The Jungle Book
,” not to mention the voice of the
title character in Disney’s “Winnie the Pooh and the Hunny Tree
“)?

An on-the-set / in-production shot of the 1933 live-action version of “Alice in
Wonderland.” Copyright Paramount Pictures. All rights reserved

Given how badly Paramount Pictures’ “Alice
in Wonderland” crashed & burned when it was released to theaters in
December of 1933 … Well, that was one of the main reasons that Goldwyn backed
away from doing his live-action version of “The Wonderful Wizard of
Oz.” Not to mention giving Walt pause when it came to doing that
live-action / animated version of “Alice”
that Disney Studios was (at that time, anyway) thinking of co-producing with
Mary Pickford. More to the point, when LeRoy announced that “The Wizard of Oz” was going to be this live-action musical that would simulate the look & feel of a feature-length cartoon … Well, to many in Tinsel Town, that just made it sound as if MGM were about to repeat all of the mistakes that Paramount had made with its live-action “Alice in Wonderland.”

Ah, but what many Hollywood observers didn’t
understand was that Meryn LeRoy actually held Walt Disney in extremely high
esteem.

In later years, Mervyn stated that Walt was one of only two
geniuses that he had ever met — MGM producer Irving Thalberg being the second.

Walt Disney and Shirley Temple at the 1939 Academy
Awards ceremony

(In fact), LeRoy so admired Disney that he was the member of
the Motion Picture Academy who came up with the idea of giving Walt one Oscar
statuette plus seven small ones when he was honored for “Snow White”
at the eleventh annual Academy Awards in February 1939.

So given that Mervyn thought so highly of Walt, LeRoy didn’t
hesitate to reach out to Disney when he felt MGM’s “The Wizard of Oz”
(Mervyn had snipped the “Marvelous” off of this proposed motion
picture’s title as soon as Metro had acquired the screen rights to Baum’s book)
was going off-track. As Scarfone & Stillman recounted in their “The
Wizard of Oz: The Official 75th Anniversary Companion” …

… Dissatisfied with a flurry of meandering Wizard of Oz
script drafts and rewrites from more than two months prior — all contributed
to by various screenwriters — the producer sought to revitalize his production
team’s mind-set about the elements of successful fantasy. On May 10, 1938, LeRoy screened Snow White and the
Seven Dwarfs at M-G-M, the print on loan directly from Walt Disney himself at
LeRoy’s request. Among the production staff undoubtedly in attendance were
songwriters Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg, who had begun their association with
The Wizard of Oz just the day before.

Not just to circle back on the central premise of today’s
piece: If Walt Disney actually were the sort of anti-Semite that people like
Meryl Streep seem to think that he was, then why would Walt repeatedly go out
of his way to help someone like Mervyn LeRoy? Who was, after all, a Jew?

And when I say “repeatedly,” I mean repeatedly.
Look at the huge favor that Walt did for Mervyn once principal photography on
“The Wizard of Oz” had wrapped back in February 1939.

(Now that this motion picture was complete) save for
post-production and retakes, LeRoy turned his attention to marketing his movie
characters, and went straight to the best for outside expertise: Walt Disney.
Like any self-made mogul, Disney was fiercely protective of his brand, yet he
didn’t see The Wizard of Oz as a threat to his domain, in equal parts perhaps
the film was live-action and because he and LeRoy had a genuine rapport. In an
affable gesture, Disney put LeRoy in touch with Herman “Kay” Kamen
… Kamen had achieved remarkable success leading Disney character merchandise
throughout the 1930s. (Kamen wasn’t a Disney employee but an independent
contractor free to pursue outside business ventures, provided there was no
conflict of interest with his primary work for Disney).

Now it’s important to understand here is that Kay Kamen —
like Mervyn LeRoy — was a Jew. More to the point, Disney’s New York-based
merchandising office had so many Jewish employees working there that Kay used
to joke that the place ” … had
more Jews than the Book of Leviticus.”

Disney even went further than this when it came to helping
out LeRoy. Given Mervyn’s obvious affection for “Snow White and the Seven
Dwarfs,” Walt arranged for Adriana Caselotti (i.e., the talented young
actress & singer who voiced the title character of that animated feature)
to do a vocal cameo in “The Wizard of Oz.” Which is why — if you
listen carefully as the Tin Woodsman warbling “If I Only Had a Heart”
— you can hear Adriana sings “Wherefore art thou, Romeo?”

In the end, Disney was very pleased with the way “The
Wizard of Oz” turned out. After catching this MGM production a week after
its world premiere at the Grauman’s Chinese Theater, Walt sent a letter to
Mervyn on August 23, 1939
which said …

Mrs. Disney and I saw The Wizard of Oz the other night and
we both liked it very much. The sets were swell, the color was perfect for the
story, and the make-ups far exceeded anything I though possible. Knowing the
difficulty that we have with cartoons, a medium that is limited only to the
imagination, I can fully realize how tough a production of this type would in
the live-action medium. All in all, I think you turned out a fine picture and you
have my congratulations.

LeRoy immediately wrote back to Disney, saying that …

“It is needless for me to tell you how proud I am to know that you liked
The Wizard … “

Mervyn LeRoy (L) on set with Judy Garland and the Munchkins during the shooting
of “The Wizard of Oz” at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios in Culver City, CA.

Again, does any of the above sound like the behavior of an
anti-Semite? Who — according to the definition that I cited earlier — is
” … a person who discriminates
against or is prejudiced or hostile toward Jews”?

Anyway … The way that Hollywood
saw it, Disney’s “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” & MGM’s
“The Wizard of Oz” were inexorably linked. In fact, Scarfone &
Stillman came across a Metro-Goldwyn in-house letter which — back in August of
1939 — promised that

“This Xmas the kiddies will be asking for characters
from The Wizard of Oz instead of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”

These paper masks were some of the officially licensed items for MGM’s
“The Wizard of Oz” that were available during the 1939 holiday season.

Sadly, that wasn’t actually the case. Partially because —
in spite of Kay Kamen’s best efforts — only two dozen officially licensed “Wizard
of Oz” products were available for purchase by Christmas 1939. Now compare
that to the 100+ officially licensed
“Pinocchio
” products that were available during this very same
holiday period. Which is all the more remarkable, given that Disney’s second
full length animated feature wasn’t actually due to be released to theaters
’til February 1940.

Anyway … Getting back to Walt Disney, alleged anti-Semite:
If Walt really was what Meryl Streep said that he was, then why — when it came
time to make “Song of the South” — would Disney have then reached
out to Samuel Goldwyn? Who — according to what Neal Gabler wrote in ” The
Triumph of the American Imagination” — …

(Walt) had as close a relationship as he had with any
producer in Hollywood with the
possible exception of Walter Wanger. (To help out with the production of “Song of the South”) Goldwyn … lent (Walt) his cinematographer,
Gregg Toland, who had shot Orson Welles‘s legendary “Citizen Kane
”

So you get what I’m saying here, right? If you actually dig
down into Hollywood history and look at how Walt interacted with all of these
Jewish movie moguls, there’s nothing about Disney’s behavior that suggests that
he was an anti-Semite. If anything, he seems downright thrilled that many of
these men considered Walt to be their creative contemporary.

Which brings us back to Meryl Streep. Which — given her
ill-informed comments weekend before last — just proves that this three-time
Academy Award-winner isn’t all that well-steeped in Hollywood
history.

Mind you, the irony of this whole situation is that — come
January of 2015 — it’ll probably be Emma Thompson onstage lauding Meryl Streep
as Walt Disney Pictures begins its big award season push for its Christmas 2014
release, “Into the Woods.” Here’s hoping that — as Ms. Thompson
helps talk up Ms. Streep’s turn as the Witch in the movie version of this Tony
Award-winning Stephen Sondheim musical — that Emma doesn’t pull a Meryl and
accidentally pull focus on her friend. Which might then ruin Streep’s chance to
win an Academy Award for this role. Which is what many in Hollywood
are now suggesting that Meryl did to Emma by giving that
Walt-is-a-racist-anti-Semite-woman-hating-cat-kicker speech at the National
Board of Review awards earlier this month.

But what did you folks think? Did Streep’s ill-informed
comments actually trip up Thompson’s chances to get nominated for her work in
“Saving Mr. Banks” ? Much less
win an Oscar for her performance as P L Travers in this John Lee Hancock film?

Your thoughts?