The CIA's choice of George Orwell's Animal Farm to produce as an animated film almost makes sense. Almost, but not quite, because the book's ending shows both the pigs and humans joined together as corrupt and evil powers. To use Animal Farm for its purpose, as Stonor Saunders reveals, the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination, which directed covert government operations, had two members of their Psychological Warfare Workshop staff obtain the screen rights to the novel. Howard Hunt, who became infamous as a member of the Watergate break-in team, is identified as head of the operation. His contact in Hollywood was Carleton Alsop, brother of writer Joseph Alsop, who was working undercover at Paramount. Working with Alsop was Finis Farr, a writer living in Los Angeles.
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Besides having Philip Stapp and Lothar Wolff working on the script with Joy Batchelor, De Rochemont had another friend from their days in the Navy's film unit working on the project. Borden Mace became president of the company set up to produce Animal Farm by De Rochemont, his mentor. Mace told Vivien in an interview in 2002 that De Rochemont had the ultimate say about script changes. While it isn't clear who suggested the ending used, it was certainly what the CIA needed. To meet the CIA's objectives, the ending was changed to show that only the pigs had become totally corrupt. The film ends with other animals mounting a successful revolt against their rulers. There is no mention of the humans in the film's conclusion.
Vivien recalls, "The changes came about as the film evolved. There were at least nine versions of the script and heated discussions about the end. My mother especially felt it was wrong to change the ending." She has a tape recording of her father saying that the ending they used offers a glimmer of hope for the future. In an interview on British television in 1980, he defended the ending as being necessary to give the audience hope for the future. "You can not send home millions in the audience being puzzled."
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Thanks to Saunders's research we now know that Orwell's 1984 was made into a live-action feature with funds from the CIA. Work on the British production began in 1954, and, as with the animated Animal Farm, the ending was changed. We also know that the British government saw Orwell's work as useful for propaganda purposes: in March 1998 the Public Record Office declassified documents revealing that the government funded a newspaper comic strip in the early 1950s based on Animal Farm. It ran in several countries including Brazil, Burma, Eritrea, India, Mexico, Thailand and Venezuela.
http://www.theguardian.com/culture/2003/mar/07/artsfeatures.georgeorwell
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