arts & entertainment

Was Walt Disney Anti-Semitic?

Saving Mr. Banks draws renewed attention to iconic Hollywood figure.

Tom Hanks as Walt Disney and Emma Thompson as P.L. Travers, creator of the
Mary Poppins books, in Saving Mr. Banks.

A

ctress Meryl Streep has reignited
a debate that has simmered
below the surface in Hollywood
for decades: Was Walt Disney anti-Semitic?
The occasion was the annual awards
event of the National Board of Review,
an organization of filmmakers, students
and movie scholars. Streep presented an
award to Emma Thompson
for Thompson's role in
Saving Mr. Banks, about the
making of Mary Poppins.
Thompson co-stars as
Poppins author P.L. Travers,
alongside Tom Hanks as
Walt Disney.
Streep took the oppor-
tunity to blast Disney as a
racist and misogynist who
also "supported an anti-
Semitic industry lobbying
group:'
She did not actually call
Disney an anti-Semite, but many people
took it that way.
The Hollywood Reporter declared that
Streep accused Disney of being "sexist, rac-
ist and anti-Semitic:'
Columbia University journalism profes-
sor David Hajdu, who has covered the arts
for more than 30 years, said Disney was
"a deeply flawed human being. A misogy-
nist? You bet. An anti-Semite? That, too:'
An unnamed "female Academy member"
interviewed by the Reporter referred to

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January 23 • 2014

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him as "that old anti-Semite, himself, Mr.
Disney:'
Hollywood historian Neal Gabler, a
University of Michigan graduate, examined
the anti-Semitism charge in his 2006 biog-
raphy of Disney, Walt Disney: The Triumph
of the American Imagination (Vintage).
"Of the Jews who worked [with Disney],
it was hard to find any who thought
Walt was an anti-Semite Gabler
reported. "Joe Grant, who had been
an artist, the head of the model
department and the storyman
responsible for Dumbo ... declared
emphatically that Walt was not an
anti-Semite.
Some of the most influential
people at the studio were Jewish:
Grant recalled, thinking no doubt of
himself, production manager Harry
Tytle and Kay Kamen [head of
Disney's merchandising arm], who
once quipped that Disney's New
York office had more Jews than the Book
of Leviticus. Maurice Rapf concurred that
Walt was not anti-Semitic; he was just a
`very conservative guy."'
On the other hand, one former Disney
animator, David Swift, has claimed he
heard Walt make an anti-Semitic remark,
and another ex-staffer, David Hilberman,
has alleged that one employee was fired
because he was Jewish. (However, accord-
ing to Gabler, Disney himself was rarely
involved in firing anyone except the top

–

brass.)
In addition, the original animated ver-
sion of Three Little Pigs (1933) portrayed
the Big Bad Wolf as a stereotypically
Jewish peddler, although after complaints,
the segment was altered.
When it comes to explicit proof that
Disney was anti-Semitic, the critics' case
weakens.
"There is zero hard evidence that Disney
ever wrote or said anything anti-Semitic
in private or public:' according to Douglas
Brode, author of 2006's Multiculturalism
and the Mouse: Race and Sex in Disney
Entertainment (University of Texas Press).
Brode told the Hollywood Reporter that
Disney used more Jewish actors "than
any other studio of Hollywood's Golden
Age, including those run by Jewish movie
moguls."
Gabler also revealed that Disney "fre-
quently" made unpublicized donations to
a variety of Jewish charities, including a
Jewish orphanage, a Jewish old-age home,
Yeshiva College (precursor to Yeshiva
University) and the American League for a
Free Palestine.
The League, better known as the
Bergson Group, publicly supported
the armed revolt against the British in
Palestine by Menachem Begin's Irgun Zvai
Leumi. Disney was embracing not just
Zionism, but its most militant wing.
How, then, did the rumors of Disney's
alleged anti-Semitism spread so far and
wide?
That's where Meryl Streep comes in.
The "anti-Semitic industry lobbying
group" with which Disney was associ-
ated was the Motion Picture Alliance for
the Preservation of American Ideals. The
group's statement of principles said noth-
ing about Jews; its declared purpose was
to prevent "Communist, Fascist and other
totalitarian-minded groups" from gaining
a foothold in Hollywood.
Among its members were politically
conservative actors such as John Wayne,
Clark Gable and Ginger Rogers. But some
of its other members were accused of
being privately anti-Semitic, and in general
it had a reputation as being reactionary.
Gabler believes that "the most plausible
explanation" for the rumors about Disney
were a kind of guilt by association: "Walt,
in joining forces with the MPA and its
band of professional reactionaries and
red-baiters, also got tarred with their anti-
Semitism.
"Walt Disney certainly was aware of the

MPAs purported anti-Semitism, but he
chose to ignore it. The price he paid was
that he would always be lumped not only
with anti-Communists but also with anti-
Semites:'
The irony is that while Meryl Streep was
condemning Walt Disney for associating
with extremists, she herself was doing the
very same thing. The actress to whom
she gave that award when she made her
anti-Disney speech, her close friend Emma
Thompson, is active in the anti-Israel boy-
cott movement.
Streep hailed Thompson as "splendid,
beautiful, practically a saint ... a living,
acting conscience:'
Yet this "saint:' together with other
British actors, publicly urged a boycott
of Israel's Habimah Theatre troupe when
it participated in a festival in England.
Habimah, of course, has nothing to do
with Israeli government policies or any
political issues. Its only "crime" is that it's
Israeli.
By contrast, Thompson had no problem
with the National Theater of China taking
part in that festival, even though it really
does represent the Chinese regime — a
regime guilty of the most heinous human-
rights violations, aid to terrorists around
the world and support for the genocidal
government of Sudan.
But of course, hypocrisy is the hallmark
of the "saints" of the anti-Israel boycott
crusade.

❑

Dr. Rafael Medoff is director of the David S.

Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, in

Washington, D.C. The Wyman Institute worked

with Disney Educational Productions on its

new DVD, "They Spoke Out: American Voices

Against the Holocaust."

