by Mark Langer
Walt Disney with the Richard
Nixon family at the 1959 opening
of the atomic submarine ride at Disneyland.
Photo courtesy of Mark Langer. 
In 1959, the
largest "atomic" submarine fleet in the world was owned by Walt
Disney. While I'm not proposing that a bad day in the Magic Kingdom might
have resulted in nuclear Armageddon, the Disney fleet is an historical
fact that stems from the cooperation among Disney's business empire, major
American arms manufacturers and the U.S. government.
Disney had long established relationships with the federal government dating
back to the early 1940s. In a sense, Walt Disney went to war before America
did, producing war shorts on contract for the National Film Board of Canada
and military production films for Lockheed Aircraft. Days after the Japanese
bombing of Pearl Harbor, Walt Disney was in Washington meeting with top
government officials. The result of these meetings was The New Spirit(1942),
an animated film made to encourage citizens to pay "taxes to smash
the Axis." This began a close relationship between Disney and the
U.S. government in the production of films for propaganda, training, and
educational purposes. These films not only served the needs of the government
in wartime, they added over two and a half million dollars to the Disney
studio's coffers in the first year of the war alone.
Getting Through the Slump
In 1941, Disney was asked to go on a goodwill tour of Latin and South
America by the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. The
U.S. government was concerned about Axis influence in this part of the
world, while Disney and the motion picture industry were interested in
developing new markets for their product since the war had cut off traditional
export areas in Europe and Asia. Patriotism and good business were intermeshed
by the complimentary interests of government and the film industry.
With the end of the war, came a slump in the animation industry. Rising
costs of production made animated film, always a marginal enterprise, even
more so. Disney sought to strengthen his company's financial position through
diversification. Walt Disney Productions already had developed reciprocal
ventures with other companies that dated back to the early 1930s, when
Disney licensed his characters to corporations like the Lionel Train Company
and the Ingersoll Watch Company (now Timex) to produce Mickey Mouse handcars
and watches. Mickey Mouse comic strips and a lucrative contract with the
Western Printing and Lithographing Company (publishers of the Little Golden
Books) were other major sources of income.
Building on this, Disney first moved into live-action films which were
more cheaply produced than their animated counterparts. On Christmas Day
of 1950, the first Disney television program was aired -- One Hour In
Wonderland -- which was a promotion for the upcoming animated theatrical
feature Alice In Wonderland (1951). The special reached twenty million
viewers, which was a phenomenal number for early television. This not only
pleased the sponsor, Coca-Cola, but made a deep impression on Disney executives.
At the time, Walt's brother Roy Disney remarked that One Hour In Wonderland
"leads us to believe that television can be a most powerful selling
aid for us, as well as a source of revenue. It will probably be on this
premise that we enter television when we do."
When Disney did enter television, it was part of a move that further diversified
Disney's business interests. Disney agreed to produce the "Disneyland"
television series for ABC, if the network's parent company would join Disney
and Western Publishing as the major investors in the new Disneyland theme
park. The television show, amusement park, publishing interests, and movies
would all promote each other in a synergistic relationship. By establishing
interlocking business relationships with allied companies, Disney was able
to create interlocking systems of promotion among different media.
Our Friend The Atom was produced by Disney in
cooperation with the U.S. Navy and General Dynamics,
builders of the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus.
Photo courtesy of Mark Langer.
Atoms for Peace!
The Disneyland amusement park and the
"Disneyland" television program were enormously successful, catapulting
Disney out of financial difficulty and turning the company into a media
giant. This success was noticed by the government in a critical time for
American public relations, both internally and internationally. After WWII,
the use of atomic energy for defense figured large in the United States
government's plans. However, these plans faced growing opposition both
from the scientific community and the public in the wake of the American
experience in the Korean war and a series of mishaps related to atomic
testing.
In order to counter opposition to the military use of atomic weaponry,
the Eisenhower administration began a public relations effort called "Atoms
for Peace," in which positive propaganda would be developed to promote
the use of atomic energy. In a letter to President Eisenhower on December
20, 1955, Acting Director of the United States Information Agency Abbott
Washburn reported on his bureau's efforts. Wrote Washburn, "We have
also had favorable preliminary conferences with Walt Disney (whose overseas
audience surpasses all others) on an `Atoms for Peace' cartoon." (Disney
would go on to animate television commercials for Eisenhower's 1957 re-election
campaign.)
Our Friend The Atom
Disney was the ideal venue for the government's propaganda effort.
Not only did Disney have a long-standing track record of creating government
propaganda, but, as Time magazine reported in 1954, almost one billion
people worldwide had seen at least one Disney film. After all, Disney was
a leader not only in the film industry, but in publishing, television and
the amusement park business.
Our Friend The Atom (January
23, 1957), the "Atoms for Peace" cartoon to which Washburn referred,
was produced by Disney in cooperation with the U.S. Navy and General Dynamics,
builders of the nuclear submarine USS Nautilus. As a "Tomorrowland"
segment of the Disneyland television show, Our Friend The Atom
relates the history of atomic energy, beginning with a clip from the
earlier film 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, which erroneously maintains
that author Jules Verne predicted the use of atomic energy. The film then
progresses to an animated fairy tale of a fisherman who finds a bronze
bottle in his net. Opening the flask, the fisherman is confronted by a
genie, who explains that after centuries of confinement, he has resolved
to kill whomever opens the bottle. The fisherman feigns surprise that so
large a being could fit into the bottle. The genie returns to the vessel
to prove that it can be done, and the wily fisherman corks the bottle up.
Finally, the genie relents and promises to grant the fisherman his wishes
if the bottle is uncorked. Says the narrator, "The story of the atom
is like this fable, come true through science. For centuries we have been
casting our nets into the sea of the great unknown in search of knowledge.
Finally, we found a vessel and, like the one in the fable, it contains
the genie."
In a combination of live-action and animation, Our Friend The Atom moves
from this fairy tale premise to an international history of atomic energy
that culminates in American control of the technology. To soothe public
apprehension, atomic energy is explained in terms of common household items.
An atomic reactor, the viewer is told, is just like a big furnace. An atomic
chain reaction is likened to what happens when a stray ping-pong ball is
thrown at a mass of mousetraps with ping-pong balls set on each one. The
narrator relates that an atomic explosion might be like the angry genie,
but with the nuclear reactor and the magic power to transmute ordinary
materials into radioactive tools in science and medicine, "Here lies
our chance to make the atomic genie our friend." The film ends with
the prediction that "clean" nuclear reactors will replace grimy
coal and oil power plants. Radiation will be used to produce better crops
and livestock. People will zoom from place to place in atomic cars, trains,
boats and planes. "Then, the atom will become truly our friend."
Heinz Haber, narrator of Our Friend
the Atom, with
the mousetraps that illustrate nuclear fission.
Photo courtesy of Mark Langer.
One Step Further
Our Friend The Atom, both as a telefilm and a companion book printed in several
languages by Western Publishing, was an enormous success. This was followed
by the further cooperation of General Dynamics, the U.S. government, and
Disney in the development of a new US $2,500,000 ride at Disneyland, composed
of eight air-conditioned "atomic" submarines. The "Tomorrowland"
section of Disney's Magic Kingdom now had the largest fleet of "atomic"
submarines in the world. On June 14, 1959, in front of millions of ABC
television viewers, Vice-President Richard Nixon and family joined Rear
Admiral Charles C. Kirkpatrick of the U.S. Navy and Walt Disney in the
maiden voyage of the Disney submarine fleet. A highlight of the ride was
a cruise past a graveyard of sunken ships.
One indication of how successfully this ride propagandized the American
atomic arms program came from a reporter for the Christian Science Monitor,
who enthused that "all these things were turned, by Disney magic and
with Disney color, to sheer fun, as though the real purpose of technological
achievement, after all, was human happiness." Although Our Friend
The Atom and the "atomic" submarine ride at Disneyland were
not to be the only examples of cold-war propaganda carried out by Disney,
they were in many ways representative of an ongoing network of connections
between sections of Disney's Magic Kingdom, the broadcasting networks,
the publishing industry, defense contractors, and the state.
Mark Langer teaches film at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. He
is a frequent contributor to scholarly journals and a programmer of animation
retrospectives.
Note: Readers may contact any Animation World Magazine contributor by sending an email to editor@awn.com.
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