Meryl Streep's harsh words about Walt Disney.

[beautywickedlover]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 1:15pm

Meryl Streep is apparently not a fan of the late Walt Disney. She said some very harsh words about him the other day. She said that his associates said that he never liked women. In fact he did, "not trust cats or women". She also called him a "gender biggot" and that he "supported anti-Semitic industry lobbying group" and that he believed women should never take part in creating hand-drawn animation. I don't know what to say about this because Disney Legends such as Kathryn Beaumont (Alice & Wendy Darling) and Mary Costa (Aurora AKA Sleeping Beauty) had nothing but wonderful things to say about him.

http://variety.com/2014/biz/awards/meryl-streep-blasts-walt-disney-at-national-board-of-review-dinner-1201035989/

Updated On: 1/28/14 at 01:15 PM

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 1:30pm

It's entirely possible for those things to be true but for performers to have had a good experience with him.

[artscallion]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 1:33pm

I recently watched a documentary on Walt. They interviewed several animators who all talked about how Walt specifically advertised for male animators and only accepted males in his animation school. Of course back then that probably wasn't unusual.

[finebydesign]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 1:34pm

Not trying to be apologist here but Walt Disney lived in a different time and this isn't exactly black-and-white. There is a book called Hollywood's Dark Prince all about this.

I'm not sure who she is to throw rocks, but he was not the saint he's been immortalized as.

That said, I don't know how you reconcile his affiliation with anti-Semitic groups/treatment of women with his trusted relationship with the Jewish Sherman Brothers and Mary Blair.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 1:38pm

Is this really the first time it ever occurred to you that geniuses can be SH*TTy people?

Or that people who are SH*TTy in general can be nice to individuals?

All right, now you know.

[DAME]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 1:54pm

And MOST of your own relatives that were around during that era were also Anti Semitic and crappy towards women. Not defending... BUT THEY WERE.

Updated On: 1/8/14 at 01:54 PM

[MrMidwest]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 2:06pm

In a way, I'm glad she said it, just to open up the conversation.

At the same time, is she aware that Julia Child's attitude toward gay people was pretty flip floppy? And wasn't she interested in playing Evita, a nazi sympathizer? Life is complicated, yo.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 2:13pm

Julia was nice to me at the Star Market. Oh wait. That illustrates what PalJoey said.

[Gothampc]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 2:18pm

"Is this really the first time it ever occurred to you that geniuses can be sh*tty people?"

Witches can be right
Giants can be good
Geniuses can be sh*tty
Meryl Streep has no t*tty
You decide what's right
You decide what's good

[Addison D.]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 2:20pm

And the important corollary: Nice is different than Good.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 2:46pm

At the same time, is she aware that Julia Child's attitude toward gay people was pretty flip floppy?

Yes.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 2:55pm

Does Meryl know that women got the vote in 1919 in the United States? Is she aware that those ads for male animators were running less than 20 years after women were allowed to vote---and it was still illegal for blacks and whites to marry in many states?

Does she always throw 21st century PC perceptions at people who lived in other eras and worked under entirely different conditions?

Here's another shocker ... Walt Disney smoked! A lot! Cancer, you know.

EDIT: Oh, by the way, almost the entire Ink & Paint department at Disney back then was women. Good luck getting a job as cell inker then if you were a guy.

The Help Wanted ads in all newspapers back then would say "Help Wanted Male" and "Help Wanted Female." Employers were allowed to decide which were appropriate jobs for men and for women, and they could advertise accordingly. That was for all professions, not just Walt Disney animators.

Updated On: 1/8/14 at 02:55 PM

[DAME]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 2:57pm

She knows.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 3:15pm

Such vehemence about Disney from the woman who bent over backwards to speak thus about that vile bigoted bitch Margaret Thatcher:

"But to me she was a figure of awe for her personal strength and grit. To have come up, legitimately, through the ranks of the British political system, class-bound and gender-phobic as it was, in the time that she did and the way that she did, was a formidable achievement. To have won it, not because she inherited position as the daughter of a great man, or the widow of an important man, but by dint of her own striving. To have withstood the special hatred and ridicule, unprecedented in my opinion, leveled in our time at a public figure who was not a mass murderer; and to have managed to keep her convictions attached to fervent ideals and ideas -- wrongheaded or misguided as we might see them now ... I see that as evidence of some kind of greatness, worthy for the argument of history to settle. To have given women and girls around the world reason to supplant fantasies of being princesses with a different dream: the real-life option of leading their nation; this was groundbreaking and admirable.

I was honored to try to imagine her late life journey, after power; but I have only a glancing understanding of what her many struggles were, and how she managed to sail through to the other side. I wish to convey my respectful condolences to her family and many friends.”

Updated On: 1/8/14 at 03:15 PM

[Mr Roxy]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 3:17pm

Let he who is without sin etc etc

I have a problem with those who criticize dead people who cannot defend themselves. Was he a saint? Probably not but to totally dismiss him ... Imagine cinema without Snow White etc etc.

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 3:30pm

Disney definitely wasn't a saint, but he most assuredly was a product of his time ... as are we all.

Here's another shock for everyone. Those guys (all guys) who ran every other studio in town? Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner, Harry Cohn, Carl Laemle, D.W. Griffith, Charlie Chaplin, Jesse Lasky ...

... they weren't saints either. They very likely had more enemies than friends. They ran huge movie studios. So did Walt Disney.

[Roscoe]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 3:36pm

Is it possible Ms. Streep was joking on the widespread accusations that Disney was something of a scumbag, and that the movie is a bigfat whitewash?

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 3:41pm

I don't know. I think it's also possible that actors ... even really good, legendary actors ... can stay really stupid things sometimes. Just because they can act doesn't mean they can think either rationally or intelligently.

I love the anti-Semitic comments too. A lot of people were confronted with their own bigotry and prejudices before and certainly during World War II, Walt Disney included. Has Meryl seen the many short films he made during the war? The anti-Nazi films? Does she realize that Disney's golden composers, the "boys" he used more often than any other composers, the real stars that so many others on the lot were jealous of, were Jewish guys?

[beautywickedlover]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 3:41pm

Here is what Mary Costa has to say about him from 0:48 to 1:08. Nothing but wonderful things

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9uFaiSs9ME

And again from 6:08 to 7:08, nothing but wonderful things.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ArrS1G1HifA

Kathryn Beaumont said she had wonderful experiences with him from 3:21 to 6:33

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FaKCMpR7Hu4

And here is a video of late Ilene Woods (Cinderella) talking about her time working with him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6Prjci0Hu4







Updated On: 1/8/14 at 03:41 PM

[best12bars]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 3:47pm

Being nice to people doesn't really have much to do with prejudice. A lot of bigots are nice to the people they don't want to treat equally.

To me, actions always speak louder than words. It's not so much "what did he say" as "what did he do?"

Did Disney hire women? Yes, but only in specific jobs, just like every other company in the United States back then.

Did Disney hire Jews? Yes, on screen and off. He also made many anti-Nazi propaganda films (some Oscar-winning, like Der Fuhrer Face), as did every other studio in town.

[PalJoey]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 3:55pm

I've said nice things about Walt Disney too. Should I put up a YouTube?

[dreaming]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 4:15pm

As one trained in history, I tend to try not to make value judgments of people based on today's standards if they lived in a different era. That's just how I am. Am I claiming Disney was a saint? Nope. But, I think he was very much a product of his time. There were prejudices and stereotypes prevalent then (just as there are now). I'm not justifying it, but I think Meryl Streep needs to take into account that socially and culturally it was a very different time. (My paternal grandfather gave my grandmother a 'weekly allowance' to run the house. She was a housewife until both my father and aunt were in school, then she was able to work part time while they were in school. It was expected that she have a hot meal waiting for him when he got home from work. Was he a bad person? He was a product of his time. Period.)

[Gothampc]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 4:16pm

"The Help Wanted ads in all newspapers back then would say "Help Wanted Male" and "Help Wanted Female."

And..."No Irish Need Apply"

[dreaming]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 4:18pm

Yes they would.

(The Irish one was replaced subsequently by "Italian" and other ethnic groups who came later.)

[themysteriousgrowl]

Posted: 1/8/14 at 4:37pm

But thank goodness those eras also had progressive thinkers and activists who saw right through the prevailing customs of their days and saw those prejudices for what they actually were. Thank goodness for the men who fought for women’s rights, whites who fought for black rights, and heteros who fought for homo rights.

I remind my mother of this whenever she tells me that I can’t, oh, I just simply can’t come out to my 80-year-old grandmother because she’s from a different generation, you know, that fictional time where everyone just hated gay people because it never occurred to anyone not to.

So, yes, my grandmother is from a time when homophobia was a lot more prevalent, but she’s also an unconscientious cun+. (For a lot of reasons, not just this one, if that seems too harsh.)

Updated On: 1/8/14 at 04:37 PM