Interview: Ted Thomas on Walt & El Grupo
Documentary About Disney's 1941 Latin American Tour
Sep 18, 2009 Dominic von Riedemann
Walt & El Grupo, the new documentary by Ted Thomas (Frank and Ollie), tells the story of how Walt Disney achieved an artistic renaissance by touring Latin America with 16 of his most trusted employees. Part of a goodwill tour by the US Government to ensure Central and South America didn't fall under the Axis aegis, the trip not only saved the studio from bankruptcy – following the box office bombs of Fantasia and Pinocchio – but allowed Walt to develop techniques that served the studio well into the 1960's.
In this exclusive interview, senior director Thomas talks about how he got involved with Walt & El Grupo, and why Disney toured South America.
S101: How did Walt & El Grupo come together?
Ted Thomas: "In 2003, we were told that film historian J.B. Kaufman was writing a book about the Good Neighbor films at Disney. At the same time, we talked with Diane Disney Miller, Walt’s daughter, who said that J.B. had come across this shoebox full of fabulous photographs that Norm Ferguson took.
"So we got in touch with J.B., looked at them, and wheels started turning. I had grown up hearing stories about this trip because my dad (legendary Disney animator Frank Thomas) was on it but it wasn’t until we saw those photographs that we realized here was a chance to make a film that involves some Disney biography that people don’t know about, international relations – both in that time and echoing down to our own time.It could be really compelling film about something no one’s ever seen before."
S101: Why was this trip so important for Disney's development?
"There are two very important reasons. One was that it provided a lifeline to the studio, which was in a very precarious financial shape.
"But perhaps the bigger reason was it gave a creative outlet for Walt Disney to find his groove again. Because of the financial difficulties his studio had and the inability to do feature film production, because there just wasn’t the cash flow, he was becoming rather bottled up. He was also spending a lot of emotional energy dealing with the labour conflicts at the studio (Writer's note: In 1941, Disney's animators went on strike, protesting what they saw as an unfair salary system).
"It was like friends standing around watching people get divorced, and you know no one’s going to come out well. When the opportunity came along to firm up his plans for the trip, I think it was something of a lifesaver.
S101: The most obvious results of this trip were the films Saludos Amigos! and The Three Caballeros; what effect did this trip have on Disney for a longer perspective?
"It obviously cemented Disney’s reputation with Latin American audiences . . . you know, they’re such funny films with overtones of propaganda, done so very well that you’re not aware of them until somebody brings it up and says, ‘You know, these were made during World War II and the government was hoping they’d achieve this, that and the other.'
"That’s one of the long-term things: Disney was able to make some films that were very popular and win the sympathies of Latin American audiences. And because these were the only two entertainment projects the studio was able to start and complete during the War years, it planted the seeds of some technical innovations that really developed over the next decade and more, such as the mix of animation and live-action that occurred in Song of the South and Mary Poppins."
S101: You mentioned the propaganda reasons for doing the trip, and for making those films. What can you tell me about those?
"In the fall of 1940, the US Government had come to the Hollywood studios and asked them if they could incorporate elements of Latin America into the stories they were telling. So Fox did a series of films with names like One Night in Rio or Weekend in Havana, films that featured (1940's Latin star) Carmen Miranda, and were intended to improve North-South relations.
"World War II had already started in Europe and there had already been a major naval battle between the British and the Germans off the coast of Uruguay. It looked inevitable that the United States would be in the conflict. Washington hoped that Latin and South America would be allies instead of with the Axis (the war alliance of Nazi Germany, Italy and Japan).
"That was why many notable Americans had been encouraged to make trips. Leopold Stokowski (the conductor who appeared in Fantasia) made a very successful trip in 1940, where he did some recordings in Rio de Janeiro.
"(Citizen Kane director) Orson Welles' trip was not as successful. In February of 1942, he went on a goodwill tour, and was trying to finish a film called It’s All True. Unfortunately, everything that could go wrong did go wrong.
"But the most successful was this research trip by Disney and the artists who would later be named El Grupo. Unlike other Hollywood folks, they took the time to do their homework and worked on several films with Latin American themes. So when this whole idea evolved into a trip in the spring of 1941, they already had a lot of information under their belts so it was a bona fide research trip, it wasn’t just a handshake tour."
(In Part #2 of this exclusive interview, Ted Thomas discusses some of the innovative techniques he used to tell the story of Walt & El Grupo).
Walt & El Grupo poster
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