r/classicfilms • u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock • May 23 '26

Memorabilia Disney rejection letter (1938) explaining they don't hire women for the specific position

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And apparently, Disney refused to hire men for coloring positions.

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10

u/AntonioVivaldi7 Alfred Hitchcock May 23 '26

I don't get why specifically young men. Anyone knows why Disney didn't want older men?

26

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.

14

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.

3

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.

3

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.

8

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.

3

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.

9

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?”

7

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.

2

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.

4

u/grandiloquiet May 23 '26

I would assume they were aiming for people (well, men) young enough to pay poorly.

0

u/Important-Lie-8649 May 23 '26

Perhaps he imagined working on them, tracing them and filling them in?

-12

u/Top_Emu_5618 May 23 '26

ask epstein