Surprising no one, the Disney animators' strike. https://twitter.com/TheMariaMontano/status/1280516151588552706

You've all heard the story by now of Chuck Jones leading a contingent of masked WB animators over to the Disney picket line in support? With a mock guillotine? Well, here it is in action!

It's 1941. Disney has had success after success with its feature films. They are undeniably masterworks, and Disney artists are at the top of their game.

But there's trouble in Happy Valley, as the picket signs say. Walt wants his employees to see him as a benevolent patriarch, but their reality is closer to a dictatorship. The studio stopped profit-sharing during the Depression, and it somehow didn't come back afterward.

Strikes in 1937 at Fleischer Studios in New York spawned the Screen Cartoonists Guild, which by 1941 was signing contracts with all the major Hollywood studios. Disney is the last holdout. Walt tries to placate his unhappy employees with an internal union, but it's toothless.

Art Babbitt, one of Disney's highest-paid animators at the time, decides to forgo the internal union in favor of signing on with the Screen Cartoonists Guild. Walt sees this as a personal betrayal and fires Babbitt. In retaliation, half the studio walks out.

The strike would go on for nine weeks. Unionized animators from other studios join in support. Babbitt publicly calls out Walt as he drives through the picket line to work, and Walt jumps out of the car, tearing off his jacket for a fight. He's barely held back by a few strikers.

Later, Walt makes a big show of speeding his car toward Babbitt and stopping just short of him.

One night a rumor starts that Disney plans to hire goons to break the strike. So the guild president puts out a call, and a bunch of Lockheed mechanics armed with wrenches come to protect the strikers.

Maybe most importantly, other unions stand in solidarity. AFL-CIO organizes a boycott of Disney products. Printers refuse to print Disney comics. Technicolor stops processing Disney films.

FDR ultimately gets involved, sending a mediator to help the strikers and Disney work out terms they can live with. But Walt won't budge. He blames Communist agitators for the strike, and goes on to give names years later to the House Un-American Activities Committee.

It's not until Walt leaves for a "goodwill tour" of South America that the strike is finally settled in the animators' favor. With Disney's entry into the SCG, 90% of California's animators are unionized.

Moral: don't piss off artists if you don't want to get drawn into a fight.