Meryl Streep passes along a rumor...

[Archae]

Meryl Streep was doing a tribute to Emma Thompson, and she said Walt Disney was a racist and an anti-Semite.

Problem is, there is no first-hand confirmation of this rumor.

[RandySF]

1. Walt Disney's Grandniece Agrees With Meryl Streep: He Was 'Racist'

That morning, Abigail, whose grandfather Roy O. Disney was Walt's older brother and co-founder of The Walt Disney Company, posted: "I hadn't heard a word about this Meryl Streep/Walt Disney flap till this morning. Funny how no one mentioned it to me.... Like I was living in some kind of information bubble and nobody wanted to hurt my feelings or something. But if anyone is going to have mixed feelings about a cultural icon, wouldn't it be a member of the family??? More than anyone else???

"And if you are going to have mixed feelings about a family member (and we all do) take it from me, you really need to be as honest as possible about those feelings, or else you are going to lead yourself into many a blind alley in life!! ... Anti-Semite? Check. Misogynist? OF COURSE!! Racist? C'mon he made a film (Jungle Book) about how you should stay 'with your own kind' at the height of the fight over segregation! As if the 'King of the Jungle' number wasn't proof enough!! How much more information do you need? But damn, he was hella good at making films and his work has made billions of people happy. There's no denying it. So there ya go. Mixed feelings up the wazoo."

Abigail posted again 10 hours later: "I feel I have to clarify. I LOVED what Meryl Streep said. I know he was a man of his times and I can forgive him, but Saving Mr Banks was a brazen attempt by the company to make a saint out of the man. A devil he was not. Nor an angel. That's the point and if you read ALL her remarks you'll know that's exactly what she was getting at. She said exactly what I said about how in spite of it all, his vision was amazing and he brought joy to so many around the world. So I say Brava Meryl. I don't believe in bashing for bashing's sake but whenever we see a misplaced attempt at hagiography we need to speak our minds!"

The Walt Disney Company declined to comment on the Facebook posts. This is not the first time that Abigail has spoken out to criticize Walt or the studio he founded.

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/race/walt-disneys-grandniece-agrees-meryl-670039

[Archae]

3. Looks like this "source" is going by third-hand hearsay...

Maybe she didn't get any money in Great-Uncle Walt's will.

[Iggo]

5. Sounds first-hand to me.

[JDPriestly]

11. I've also heard that he was a racist, heard it for many years. So long that I don't remember where,

but as his family member says, that was a common attitude prior to the Civil Rights Movement.

Martin Luther King, Jr. changed a lot of hearts.

[MADem]

14. I should think a niece would know...!

And she doesn't need any of "Walt's" money--huge chunks of it passed to her grandfather, who controlled the corporation, when he died. Disney now is worth way more than it was when Walt bit the dust.

All you have to do is watch Walt's movies to see what an inveterate racist he was. He even managed to create the soft side of slavery with his Zippity Doo Dah shit.

[Cha]

4. thanks for that..interesting.

[The Second Stone]

10. I had an aunt who was very prejudiced. She was a product of a world that made her

and gave her limited opportunities. She was a right wing ignorant bigot, but knew it and wasn't proud of it. She didn't want her lady friends at the old folks home to know "we are Jewish" because her mother was (she was converted and I never was). She wanted better for herself and her kids and the world. But she also admired education and making oneself better. I let it go. I let my grandmother's (her mother's) racism go. They were born in 1885 and 1912 for heaven's sake. Walt Disney was another. He was a racist. But he eventually grew to understand that his feelings of prejudice were wrong. "Son of the South" is in the vault and staying there only for serious academics to view.

[Dorian Gray]

18. Good for Abigail

[NightWatcher]

2. I really want to make an "it's a _____ small world after all" joke, but can't/won't

[nolabear]

6. Yeah, that rumor has always been out there.

Don't know myself but I know people who think very little of him.

[brush]

7. That's been out there a long time

It's been said he was also a Nazi.

[Kablooie]

8. I knew a man who was one of Walt's top artists and closest friends in the early days of the studio.

He had lunch with Walt often and his wife and Walt's wife used to go out shopping together.

He was unabashedly Jewish.

[Duer 157099]

9. Please don't start a thread with "Meryl Streep passes..."

holy heart rate batman

[MurrayDelph]

12. Meryl Streep may occasionally play a smart person

but that does not automatically mean she is a smart person.

I have it from one of the last remaining old-school animators that Walt Disney was not a racist. Unlike Roy's granddaughter, this person actually worked with Walt ON the Jungle Book. I think it is safer to take the word of someone who actually worked with Walt, rather than one who heard something that someone told her that he/she had read in a book.

Btw, the gentleman I am quoting is named Floyd Norman:

[justiceischeap]

16. Yes, because people never act differently in front of employees than they do their family.

Never, ever.

[MurrayDelph]

21. ...and her great-uncle Walt

died when she was six years old.

Probably not enough time to develop social consciousness and remember things she might have heard first hand.

Now, it's possible Disney was a racist asshole. It's also possible he was a business coward who was afraid to stand up to McCarthy-era pressure.

What I do know is that those people who are speaking the loudest on the subject these days are doing so without ever having met the man.

[Behind the Aegis]

13. She did not say he was an anti-Semite.

She said he was involved with an anti-Semitic lobbying group, which is true. This was one of the movie association groups associated with the McCarthy "Red hunt", which included communists, gays, and Jews.

[JNelson6563]

15. Thanks for bringing some facts to the discussion.

[Bluenorthwest]

20. I posted some more information down thread, including the fact that Ayn Rand wrote

materials for that group and was also a member.

[PCIntern]

17. No confirmation?

You did not look very hard or long. This was a given in the old days and there were articles which intoned that when the Disney Company was presided over by Jews after Walt's death, the term: 'spinning in his grave' was used freely. I saw those screeds when they were published.

Like Dupont before Shapiro was made President for critical reasons, Disney was famous for this prejudice.

[Bluenorthwest]

19. Walt was one of the founders of a conservative anti communist film industry group called

The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, other members included Ayn Rand and John Wayne. The group supplied the McCarthy witch hunts with 'witnesses' and Walt himself 'testified' for HUAC, naming names of animators he claimed were communists. Yes indeed.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motion_Picture_Alliance_for_the_Preservation_of_American_Ideals#Ayn_Rand_pamphlet


Walt also claimed the Screen Cartoonist's Guild was a communist front group when they struck in 1941, he claimed the strike was a communist attempt to control Hollywood.