Although the decision on what firm to hire came at a bleak moment for some American animation companies (the film could have been produced in Los Angeles by a studio whose reputation was beyond reproach), I suspect Halas and Batchelor’s reputation, personal friendships and budgetary restraints were important factors in the decision to award them the contract.

Animal Farm was to be the first animated feature produced in England. John Halas (1912-1995) was born in Budapest and had worked as an animator before moving to Paris. He moved to England in 1936 to work on Music Man, the first British cartoon in Technicolor. In 1940 he formed Halas and Batchelor with Joy Batchelor (1914-1991), a British animator and scriptwriter. During the war they were kept busy with training, propaganda and other forms of government sponsored films. After the war they worked on films that explained NATO, the Marshall Plan and other changes in the post-war world.

Louis De Rochemont was handpicked by the CIA to produce Animal Farm because of his political background. Here he stands, Animal Farm in hand, with Halas and Batchelor. © The Halas & Batchelor Collection Limited. Courtesy of the Ani

The animation firm was awarded the contract to do the feature in November 1951 and it was completed in April 1954. It is logical to assume that before the contract was signed De Rochemont made it quite clear that the film would not be identical to the book and he may have had a rough script or other guidelines. Vivien says that during the production the script went through several changes before it was finalized.

The production employed about 80 animators. In Halas’ book The Technique of Film Animation, 1959, he has little to say about the production, but he does state the film’s target audience was adults rather than children and that they needed to simplify the plot. After reading a draft of this paper, Vivien Halas added that the film wasn’t shown in Paris until the 1990s as it was considered too anti-Communist. When it finally premiered in Paris about 1993, the Mayor of Aubervilliers (a suburb of Paris) “introduced it as a tribute to communism! My father said no, this is not communist or anti-communist. It is a fable for all time. It is anti-totalitarian and it has a humanist message.” In a letter to the animation historian Giannalberto Bendazzi in 1981, Joy Batchelor told him they wanted to make a film about freedom.

To meet the CIA’s objectives, the ending was changed to show that only the pigs had become totally corrupt. The film ends with other animals mounting a successful revolt against their rulers. There is no mention of the humans in the film’s conclusion.

Joy Batchelor co-wrote the script for Animal Farm, and argued with De Rochemont against changing the ending. © The Halas & Batchelor Collection Limited. Courtesy of the Animation Research Centre Archive.

Vivien recalls, “The changes came about as the film evolved. There were at least nine versions of the script and heated discussions about the end. My mother especially felt it was wrong to change the ending.” She has a tape recording of her father saying that the ending they used offers a glimmer of hope for the future. In an interview on Granada TV (U.K.) in 1980, he defended the ending as being necessary to give the audience hope for the future. “You can not send home millions of audience being puzzled.”

Besides having Philip Stapp and Lothar Wolf working on the script with Joy Batchelor, De Rochemont had another friend from their days in the Navy’s film unit working on the project. Borden Mace became president of the company set up to produce Animal Farm by De Rochemont, his mentor. Mace told Vivien in an interview in 2002 that De Rochemont had the ultimate say about script changes. While it isn’t clear who suggested the ending used, it was certainly what the CIA needed.

While the film was in production, Fredric Warburg, the book’s publisher, visited the studio several times and viewed the work-in-progress. Saunders thinks he may have suggested that old Major, “the prophet of the Revolution, should be given the voice and appearance of Winston Churchill.” More importantly, she reveals earlier in her book that Warburg had dealings with the British intelligence group M16. He fronted for them by taking their checks, depositing them and then writing personal checks that he gave to Encounter, an anti-Communist liberal literary publication. He may or may not have been a “consultant” helping to ensure that the film would be a successful propaganda tool.