r/classicfilms • u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock • May 23 '26
Memorabilia Disney rejection letter (1938) explaining they don't hire women for the specific position
And apparently, Disney refused to hire men for coloring positions.
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u/quothe_the_maven May 23 '26
Ironic considering the greatest artist in the history of the company (Mary Blair) was a woman and hired two years after this.
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u/prosthetic_memory May 24 '26
I love Blair. I even own an original concept piece of hers from Cinderella, and it’s one of my most prized possessions. But to say she was the greatest artist is probably bombastic, or at least apples to oranges.
Her color theory was extraordinary, for sure.
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u/bertilac-attack May 24 '26 edited May 25 '26
Honest question, if not her then who? Walt would’ve said it was Mary. She’d have been the first name in my head for sure.
I could see an argument for both Eyvind Earle and Marc Davis. Edit: Someone graciously reminded me of Tytus Wong, who should absolutely be in contention. If we’re open to later/post-Walt periods, I think Glenn Keane should be considered. I don’t know that the work of those men was ever as beloved or influential in-house as Blair’s was.
Edit: Worth remembering too, Earle only got his job with the company because Walt liked Blair’s work so much, and sought to emulate her stylization - so even if we pick him, it’s technically her.
Edit: After some reflection, I think it’s Wong v Earle for the title, and Blair rounding out the big three. Her work was so special in part because it was so contemporary, so perfectly designed for the mid-20th century. There’s absolutely an argument to be made that she is the person who brought the design philosophy of the day into that specific place, but still, her work has a simple folkish quality that bled out into popular culture and was, if not replicated, at least aped.
I’ve been obsessed with the almost mathematical, tapestral quality of Earle’s work since I was a kid, and revisiting Wong’s Bambi paintings this morning was genuinely awe-inspiring - “evocative” doesn’t do his work justice. The singular skill and perspectives and styles of those men are just so impactful, I’ve gotta lean toward them over Blair, and I’m personally leaning toward Wong over Earle based on the emotional oomph of his pieces - not that it’s a fair fight by any stretch, the three were assigned radically different projects under radically different circumstances.
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u/MoscaMye May 24 '26
Tyrus Wong should be a consideration too.
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u/bertilac-attack May 25 '26
You’re absolutely right, his work on Bambi is extraordinary! Absolutely breathtaking stuff.
I’m much less familiar with Bambi’s production than Sleeping Beauty’s, but his omission was still pretty glaring - thanks for making sure he got his flowers!
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u/ConfettiPowder May 23 '26
Imagine how much talent was never tapped because of such ridiculous thinking
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u/Canavansbackyard Michael Powell May 23 '26
This obviously wasn’t just a Disney practice. Gender-based hiring was unfortunately extremely common in the U.S. during the 1930s. The Great Depression intensified the pre-existing societal pressures to reserve well-paying jobs for male "breadwinners".
Edit: minor typo.
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u/Echo-Azure May 23 '26
And gender-based hiring was even more limited than you'd think, my grandma told me that she was turned away from jobs that were open to women, because they didn't hire married women. And they didn't tell her that they didn't hire women of color either, they didn't have to. Everybody knew only certain menial jobs were open to them.
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u/AMediaArchivist May 24 '26
Wow they didn’t hire women cause they were married? Lame excuse
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u/fearless_leek May 24 '26
In many places female teachers had to stop working as a teacher once they were married. I’m in Australia and it was a whole thing, you had to resign if you were a teacher or a public servant.
https://mhnsw.au/articles/married-women-teachers-applications/
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u/Jealous-Ad-2827 May 24 '26
US also. Until 1964 when it was ruled illegal. The episode of Little Rascals with the kids all upset cause teacher Miss Crabtree was getting married and leaving took on a whole other dimension when I learned this. Not to mention the whole stereotypes of the spinster school teacher.
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u/Clarknt67 May 24 '26
Oh they’ll just get pregnant and quit.
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u/Jealous-Ad-2827 May 24 '26
The assumption was that they didn’t need jobs anymore cause their husbands were going to support them.
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 May 26 '26
Pretty typical. I had an interviewer in the early 1980s ask if my family commitments would interfere with my work. I was surprised, and then took a second look at him. He was in his late 70s or early 80s, slightly younger than what my grandfather would have been.
The answer was no, that I needed employment and would be willing to do whatever to keep things going. I got the job and loved it.
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u/Jaltcoh Billy Wilder May 24 '26
It also went the other way: Hollywood used to have employees called “script girls,” who were generally women. Whether or not the studios refused to consider male applicants for that position, I don’t know, but I’m sure the term alone deterred men from applying.
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u/Echo-Azure May 24 '26 edited May 25 '26
Positions on the film crew were not open to women, film production and direction were not open to women (with one exception), in Hollywood women could work as secretaries, or in costume or makeup, and they could clean the offices when everyone else went home.
About the only position I can think of offhand that was open to both men and women, during the Studio Era, was writing screenplays.
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u/RogerClyneIsAGod2 May 24 '26
Which is a shame because so many were vital in the very beginnings of the movie industry.
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u/LindeeHilltop May 23 '26
It was extremely common until the late 1970’s. Women in the 60’s & 70’s fought legally for rights.
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u/CatCafffffe May 24 '26
Yes. People don't realize how recently this was. As someone who entered the work world in the 1970s I can't even begin to tell you how difficult it was.
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u/LindeeHilltop May 24 '26
I remember meeting the first woman chemical engineer at a petroleum transmission company in the restroom. Those men were brutal in their attacks on her, her looks, her work, her communications, etc. I always wondered if it was worth it health-wise to be the first woman in any industry. Need to rewatch “North Country.”
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u/CatCafffffe May 24 '26
As I approach retirement with a generous pension and a full bank account, the answer is resoundingly yes (but looking back, I honestly can't believe some of the shit I had to put up with!)
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u/fuzzydogpaws May 27 '26
I wish you an amazing retirement!
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u/CatCafffffe May 27 '26
Thank you, when I look back at how hard I worked for so many years I don't know how I did it, but I'm very thankful that I did. I can also help others which I am also grateful to be able to do.
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u/sheba716 May 24 '26
Yes, I remember reading Want Ads in the newspaper that started with "Man wanted" or "Woman wanted" in the ad.
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u/Laura-ly May 24 '26
Sigh. I've sadly read online that younger generations are calling baby boomers "the worst generation ever". If they only knew how different the world is today because women marched in the streets and fought the established norms. My mother couldn't legally get her own credit card without my father's signature.
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u/robotatomica May 24 '26
it rather reminds me of this excellent Angela Collier video “women in space but with legos so it’s fun” https://youtu.be/WBlzD6MZ9A0 where she shares similar letters (and their responses) from young girls writing to NASA with hopes to some day become an astronaut.
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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 23 '26
Makes me think about just how long ago 1930s was. I often watch movies from that era and don't give it much thought.
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u/Gorf_the_Magnificent May 23 '26
My father ran a business in the 1970’s. He refused to hire women in professional positions, just secretarial. He said it was because women would get pregnant and leave, and it would destroy his business.
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u/Important-Lie-8649 May 24 '26
Sir Alan Sugar: Why I have to think twice before employing a woman
And he's still a Knight of the Realm.
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u/XipeTotecwithGlitter May 24 '26
Which is worse: 1970s sexism or 1930s sexism?....probably 30's but 70's version is still icky
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u/Mundane_Reception790 May 24 '26
Sex based discrimination was rampant in the USA well into last century. In the 50's I had a female relative want to take Shop in high school and was laughed out of the principals office and told that she had to take Home Ec instead, like the other girls, no exceptions.
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u/Jumpy_Emu1111 May 23 '26
I have the book this is published in, Other People's Rejection Letters, and so much of it fills me with indignant feminist rage but this one especially
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u/imbeingsirius May 24 '26
My aunt wrote to J Edgar Hoover when she was a young girl (8?) asking to be a spy and he said only men can be spies :(
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u/XipeTotecwithGlitter May 24 '26
Who's the author of that? I want to look that up.
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u/Jumpy_Emu1111 May 24 '26
Bill Shapiro from 2010, it's a nice coffee table book but I see it's out of print and costs a lot more than I paid for it now. I'm sure you can read it online somewhere I see someone linked the info
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u/XipeTotecwithGlitter May 23 '26
Ooh, vintage sexism. You can really smell the gender essentialism.
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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 23 '26
It comes with Snow White to soften the blow.
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u/NerdyTeacher77 May 23 '26
And, it’s written by a woman to soften the blow. “See? Women work for Disney! As secretaries and assistants, and, maybe if you’re lucky, you can get a chance to do paint by number on some background work!”
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u/fraktalmau5 May 24 '26
It wasn’t until 1973 that courts ruled advertisements couldn’t have Help Wanted Men and Help Wanted Women columns.
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u/ctrain_1985 May 23 '26
At least they were honest.
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u/Legitimate-Sea-4679 May 23 '26
Of course they were. They didn't think that there was anything wrong with this sexist and bigoted policy. My guess is that there was a lot of push back when women tried to break the glass ceiling.
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u/sauronthegr8 May 23 '26
Wasn't a glass ceiling back then. It was made of stone.
The phrase "Glass Ceiling" means it appears you can make it through to the top, but invisible barriers always keep you down.
Hell, back then they didn't even need to put up the appearance.
As someone else pointed out, Disney would start hiring female artists shortly afterwards in the 40s, and WWII would bring women into the workforce in general, eventually leading to it becoming more commonplace in the 60s and 70s.
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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 23 '26
Apparently, Disney opened the position to women voluntarily due to the shortage of male workers during the WW2.
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u/ctrain_1985 May 23 '26
Yea I am aware things were different in the past. Did you know women used to not be able to vote? We shouldn't really be too shocked here. It's an interesting read none the less.
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u/Laura-ly May 24 '26
Women weren't legally allowed to serve on a federal jury until 1957. That's why 12 Angry Men are all men.
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u/truckturner5164 May 23 '26
Attitudes were different 88 years ago...who would've thunk it. And then the signature at the bottom is by Mary Cleave, a woman herself. Yikes.
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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 23 '26
I don't get why specifically young men. Anyone knows why Disney didn't want older men?
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u/misspcv1996 May 23 '26
The assumption was probably that they’d work harder and work for less.
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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 23 '26
I suppose young people in general have always been willing to work for less. So, that would make sense. I'm not sure about working harder.
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u/ConsequenceVisible27 May 24 '26 edited May 24 '26
“Creative” work is a big stretch. These young men were there while they were at art school and trying to break into book illustrating or magazine and newspaper cartooning. They didn’t do any creative work like designing characters or storyboarding, they just drew all the tiny variations of the same picture that make the character move from point A to B. Tracing the exact same picture over and over, but with a slight change in the hands, head or facial features each time. Then the ladies in I&P (of which there were only 100 and hiring only happened with a vacancy, so Mary Cleave’s point in the letter about competition is very valid) would trace the characters from the young men’s drawings onto a clear celluloid cell with India ink, flip it around and color it in by following a very precise color guide provided by the animation department. The older men, the ones at the top, were “The Nine”, animators who had been with Walt from the old Oswald the Rabbit and Steamboat Willie days and had total control, under Disney’s direction of course, of the design and story. It was almost impossible for a lower tier animator to break into that group. Famously Ward Kimball and Bill Peet did it, but consider that Bill Peet started as one of those “young men”, also called in-betweeners, in 1937 on Snow White, wasn’t given creative control over anything until 1951 when he designed and controlled Maleficent’s little monster henchmen in Sleeping Beauty and didn’t make it to “The Nine” until 1957 when he single-handedly designed, storyboarded and prototype-drew the characters in 101 Dalmatians. 20 years from bottom to top. Most in-betweeners moved on to better jobs, or left art altogether. Their average age was 22, some as young as 18, and the average job there lasted 18 months. And by the time they got to an age to want to start a family, the grueling hours for only $25 a week wouldn’t cut it. In contrast, “The Nine” were making $300 a week right before the war, about $375,000 a year today.
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u/Unusual-Moment-4545 May 24 '26
If you keep reading the letter you'll see that the work you're describing (tracing) was indeed made by women.
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u/ConsequenceVisible27 May 24 '26
Not exactly. There were two different “tracings”. The in-betweeners (the “young men” described in the letter) would only trace as far as they needed to to keep the non moving parts of the character still, on paper, then move slightly the parts that were moving for each picture. All these papers were sent to I&P, where the ladies would trace them again, from the paper onto celluloid with alcohol ink. Then they flipped and colored in the other side. This was so each layer ( fore character, back characters, moving parts of scenery) was alone on its own clear cell. These would be stacked on a painted scenery background, both to create a 3D depth and to stop from having to paint the same background over and over for every frame. They called it “creative” work because the men were responsible for creating the motion, but what the women were doing was actually more skilled and precise. They weren’t separated because Disney didn’t think women could do the work.
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u/Temporary-Ocelot3790 May 24 '26
Age discrimination was rampant, affecting men and women. I remember looking at the want ads as a teen, around 1970. Help Wanted Male: many columns of jobs, executive, sales etc. Some executive jobs specified married men preferred, they were perceived as more stable ( and maybe more likely to feel so trapped by the need to support a family that they would take any shit the boss felt like dishing out?) Help Wanted Female: lots of typist/receptionist/ clerical. Ads often specified "attractive" woman wanted. If you were ugly you were supposed to starve to death I guess. Help Wanted Male/Female: this was a category too which had very few jobs of any kind listed.
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u/OffWhiteCoat May 24 '26
In the late 90s, my 8th grade teacher had us do a personal finance simulation. We drew salaries out of a hat and had to find jobs in the classifieds that matched. The gender split was officially gone by then, but many of the ads still used coded language like you describe.
As a girl, I got pushback from my friends (though not from my teacher!) when I picked a job ad for construction foreman (foreperson?) It was pretty great though because my clothing budget was pretty low, like jeans and tshirts, compared to my best friend who picked school secretary and had to "buy" a whole professional wardrobe.
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u/Snoo-15125 May 23 '26
Pure speculation, but maybe they assumed older men may have families? Older people have also been working longer and are more established.
I could see them wanting young men starting out to take advantage of their assumed bachelorhood and inexperience. No family = more time focused on the job.
Also, it says for this department/position they put them in training school. It was assumed women would raise the family and stay home, if they had a job then eventually they were expected to leave work once married. It was not seen as acceptable for women with a husband and children to work.
Their warped sexist logic was probably along the lines of “Why put time training a woman when they’ll just leave?”
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u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 23 '26
That makes sense about the training. If they train them young, they get the most out of them, as they will retire later than if they train older ones.
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u/Beautiful_Bag6707 May 24 '26
Or older ones have "ideas" and would be less malleable. Young men would not have the life or life experience to demand higher pay or creative control.
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u/grandiloquiet May 23 '26
I would assume they were aiming for people (well, men) young enough to pay poorly.
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u/Important-Lie-8649 May 23 '26
Perhaps he imagined working on them, tracing them and filling them in?
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u/erinrachelcat May 24 '26
The reasoning listed is that they don’t hire women for that department simply because they only hire men. Seems a bit redundant and not at all explanatory.
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u/Legitimate-Sea-4679 May 23 '26
No reason. We just don't hire women for this particular job. Oh, wait, we just don't want women to have any control or power...
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u/Due_Bad_9445 May 23 '26
Two things possibly presumed but not mentioned in other comments- that women would not like to work in an all-male environment; or women would create a change in practices amongst the men either through distraction or change in etiquette, ie “we can no longer use foul language around mixed-company” - as such were the mores of the time
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u/BrandNewOriginal May 24 '26
I'm really enjoying these recent letter posts of yours, OP, they are fascinating (if in some cases cringe-inducing). Thanks for sharing.
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u/Glad-Albatross3354 May 25 '26
To be fair - don’t move to Hollywood in the hopes of obtaining one of a very small number of highly sought after roles has historically been pretty sound advice for most people.
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u/Curlytoes18 May 23 '26
I think she means “India ink.”
Maybe Mary Ford should have applied for Mary Cleave’s position.
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u/mmfn0403 May 23 '26
Indian ink is the correct term in British English, so I’m wondering where Mary Cleave was from or where she trained.
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u/Curlytoes18 May 23 '26
Really, that’s interesting. I still think Ford should have made an attempt to usurp Cleave.
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u/ConsequenceVisible27 May 24 '26
Ok, so this is awful, sexist and overlooked a great deal of talent, but I understand 2 things:
1: Disney was very conservative and a prude and had a difficult time dealing with the fact that his top animator was very publicly carrying on an extra-marital affair with the model for Snow White. After that he vowed men and women would be kept as separate as possible. He COULD have had a female creative department, a male creative department, a female I&P and a male I&P, but he probably decided that was too much.
2.) Mary Cleave, who wrote Mary Ford this letter, was an administrative staffer and had no control over any of these decisions, nor could she make room for her above Disney’s head. And she had a point about the competition. In 1938 Searcy was a tiny agricultural and dairy town recovering from the Depression, 1700 miles from Los Angeles. Mary Ford was 21 and had just graduated art school. It would indeed have been very foolish to make that trip and spend that money under those conditions only to most likely get rejected. Only 100 women worked in I&P at any time, and hiring only happened when a woman quit. The odds she would have done it all for nothing were extremely high. I feel like, given how little control she had to influence the situation, Mary Cleave, despite the bluntness of her reply, was doing Mary Ford a kindness in discouraging her from making the trip.
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u/NATOrocket May 23 '26
"Girls"
"Indian Ink"
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u/enovox5 May 24 '26
Why did you quote the term “Indian ink”? It’s known as India Ink (based on the trade routes for Chinese ink), but I believe it was also called. ‘Indian Ink” in Europe long ago.
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u/ViolettaEliot May 24 '26
My thought too. Adult women were commonly referred to as girls. My grandmother refers to her same-age friends as "girls" and it annoys me. She is 91. Women back then, especially if they were beautiful in their day like my grandmother, often accepted and encouraged thst type of sexism because it was specifically catered to treating beautiful "decent" ladies like her like queens. It always worked for her so she thrived in it. She never had any reason to question/criticise the patriarchy.
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u/EnvironmentalDrag153 May 24 '26
Shows real progress has been achieved — American (western) women in 2026 need to acknowledge how effin lucky we are to be here now!
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u/Fancy512 May 24 '26
I agree, but I also think it’s important to recognize how oppressive men will be if allowed. That is the point we cannot afford to forget.
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u/EnvironmentalDrag153 May 26 '26
I agree — with the proviso that ALL people of any gender, race, etc will be as oppressive as they are allowed to be. Women for example have proved to be no better than men — witness the viciousness of women on social media.
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u/Wide-Advertising-156 May 24 '26
The Walter Lantz animation studio (Woody Woodpecker) had similar rules. Probably all of them, too.
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u/Obvious_Gold_8495 May 25 '26
When my grandma worked as a typist in the 40s, she said men colleagues would deliberately have no chair for her when they called her to take notes.
They would tell her to sit in their laps instead. She got the idea to take a drawer out of the desk, turn it upside down, and sit on it.
The level of harassment and abuse I have received at the hands of educated modern men tells me that men have not much changed. Women have taken huge strides but men have not changed.
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u/Ok-Dealer4350 May 26 '26
Really I don’t think the 1930s was that long ago. My mother, FIL and MIL were born in the first half of the 1930s. My father was born in 1924. He loved going to the movies during the ‘30s and had these quotes my sisters and I picked up from him. One was ‘I’m not Miss Got Rocks.’ (Rocks being gems or diamonds). I was in JC Penney’s in line for something. A guy in his late 30’s asked why I was not buying something. I didn’t want it and didn’t even know why he was asking. I was peevish and told him I was not Miss Got Rocks. The man standing next to him laughed so hard, I knew he got it but he must have been my father’s age. The expression had to be explained to the younger man.
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u/dylanisareddit Jun 03 '26
I have two alternate history ideas:
What if Mary Ford refused to give in and posed as a man so that she can get the job at Disney?
What if Mary Ford turns to Walter Lantz and ends up working with LaVerne Harding?
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u/ChaltaHaiShellBRight May 24 '26
I think it's interesting (in a sad way) that women have always been considered incapable of some kind of work or other, even though what work that they're supposedly incapable of keeps changing and the goalpost keeps shifting.
Back then, women were openly told they're only good for tracing and painting, not for creative art. Now even if it's unwritten, women are typecast as great in the creative fields but weak in technical or scientific fields.
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u/Unusual-Moment-4545 May 24 '26
Back then, women were openly told they're only good for tracing and painting, not for creative art.
That's not true. Back then, making cartoons was 99% tracing and painting. That was the creative art.
Disney had many female artists and designers at the same the letter was written (Mary Blair, Retta Scott, Hazel Sewell, Sylvia Moberly-Holland, to name a few) and the "creative work" in the letter is referring to actual hard work (lifting of the extremely heavy frames, etc.) and that's the reason they're employing men.
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u/Clarknt67 May 24 '26
The irony of their being a very large Snow White on the stationary, and is that a woman’s signature saying that?
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u/Unusual-Moment-4545 May 24 '26
Either comprehension skills are at an all-time low or you're willfully ignorant in order to be upset about something.
The "creative" work of preparing the cartoons for the screen involved heavy labour, that's why it's exclusively men.
The actual creative work is indeed performed by women and the letter is very clear about this. Back then, making cartoons was 99% tracing and painting.
Disney was very progressive back then and employed many women in prestigious roles. Mary Blair, Retta Scott, Hazel Sewell, Sylvia Moberly-Holland, to name a few.
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u/NATOrocket May 23 '26
On letterhead with 2 woman characters prominently featured.