Part Two — Cartoon Shorts; A Preliminary Report on Militant Liberty Films

Frances Stoner Saunders discusses the CIA's Militant Liberty policy in her book The Cultural Cold War.

In Frances Saunders’ book The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (Who Paid the Piper? in England), she mentions a policy developed in the 1950s called Militant Liberty. The phrase was the name of a top-secret campaign by the CIA, Pentagon and other agencies that encouraged studios to insert the theme of freedom into our movies in the mid-‘50s. It also can be used to describe an informal trend or movement to include pro-American content into films. In the 1940s it is seen in a series of anti-Nazi and then anti-Communist films.

Saunders covers some of the Militant Liberty themes Carleton Alsop wrote about in memos to the CIA when he was working undercover at Paramount. In Arrowhead (1953), he saw serious potential problems that “the Commies could use to their advantage.” The film about the Apaches was tinkered with so scenes of the Indian tribe being shipped against their wishes to a reservation in Florida were removed or “their impact (was) significantly diluted.” After the film ended its run in the U.S., dialogue was re-dubbed so that the international release could be presented on “a commercial and patriotic basis.”

Images showing heavy drinking in our films were eliminated when they were not essential to the script. Showing Tobacco Road poverty (especially in our black population), corporate knavery, being irreverent toward organized religion and showing outrageous crimes were other themes to avoid if possible. Alsop wanted Hollywood to avoid showing negative stereotypes and to include “characterizations which represented a healthy America.”

The CIA called the Militant Liberty image of a sanitized America the “Hollywood Formula.” While Saunders doesn’t discuss how it affected short films and cartoons there are differences in the content of cartoons from the 1950s from those that were made before WWII. There is a reduction of racist stereotypes, drunken scenes, showing people living in poverty, etc. Which elements if any were reduced or cut consciously by Militant Liberty advisors is impossible to know at this point. For example while black stereotypes were eliminated in Warner Bros. cartoons by 1950, there are several Bugs Bunny cartoons from the ‘50s showing hillbillies and criminals living in shacks. At Paramount’s Famous Studios shacks were omitted from their 1950s productions, but Casper the Friendly Ghost lived in a rundown ruined house and the last black stereotype appears in a cartoon from Famous in 1958. (Alsop worked for Paramount in Hollywood and Famous was in New York so it appears his influence wasn’t as strong there.)

While the influence of patriotic watchdogs to remove negative images in cartoons is impossible to prove, their influence is obvious in several cartoons that promote freedom and the American way of life. The films to be discussed from Warner Bros., Sutherland, Disney and other studios are clearly propaganda and none would have been made if it were not for outside money and advice. Most clearly state in the opening or end credits who sponsored the film, but what isn’t said is whom the sponsors really were and why they felt there was a need to present these messages to the public. We might also wonder from where their money came. In 1967 the New York Times revealed that the CIA was using private and corporate philanthropic foundations as conduits to fund some seemingly innocent educational projects. It isn’t known if government funding was used to make any of these films, but Disney’s Our Friend the Atom, 1957, was made with the assistance of the Navy and Duck and Cover, 1951, was sponsored by the U.S. Federal Civil Defense Administration.

The Sloan Foundation, Harding College and John Sutherland Productions
Alfred P. Sloan (1875-1966) was the CEO of General Motors from 1923 to 1946. He is considered the father of the modern corporation. Today his foundation is a major supporter of PBS radio and TV, medical research projects and other impressive projects. The foundation has ties with many major corporations and institutions. They were not mentioned in the 1967 scandal over the CIA using foundations as conduits.