“The first people to smear me and put me on the unfair list were all of the commie front organizations. I can’t remember them all, they change so often, but one that is clear in my mind is the League of Women Shoppers, The People’s World, The Daily Worker, and the PM magazine in New York.” ~ Walt Disney
John Wayne served four one year terms as president of the Alliance starting in March, 1949.
The Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals (MPAPAI) was an American organization of high-profile, politically conservative members of the Hollywood film industry. It was formed in 1944 for the stated purpose of defending the film industry, and the country as a whole, against what its members perceived as Communist infiltration.
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Prominent members of the Alliance included Robert Arthur, Ward Bond, Clarence Brown, Charles Coburn, Gary Cooper, Cecil B. DeMille, Walt Disney, Irene Dunne, Victor Fleming, Clark Gable, Cedric Gibbons, Hedda Hopper, Leo McCarey, James Kevin McGuinness, Adolphe Menjou, George Murphy, Fred Niblo, Ayn Rand, Ronald Reagan, Ginger Rogers, Morrie Ryskind, Norman Taurog, Robert Taylor, Barbara Stanwyck, King Vidor, John Wayne, Frank Wead and Sam Wood.
Statement of Priciples (MPAPAI)
We believe in, and like, the American way of life: the liberty and freedom which generations before us have fought to create and preserve; the freedom to speak, to think, to live, to worship, to work, and to govern ourselves as individuals, as free men; the right to succeed or fail as free men, according to the measure of our ability and our strength.
Walt and Lilian Disney at Smoke Tree Ranch, Palm Springs California
Walt Disney’s testimony to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC)
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DISNEY: It came to my attention when a delegation of my boys, my artists, came to me and told me that Mr. Herbert Sorrell …
SMITH: Is that Herbert K. Sorrell?
DISNEY: Herbert K. Sorrell, was trying to take them over. I explained to them that it was none of my concern, that I had been cautioned to not even talk with any of my boys on labor. They said it was not a matter of labor, it was just a matter of them not wanting to go with Sorrell, and they had heard that I was going to sign with Sorrell, and they said that they wanted an election to prove that Sorrell didn’t have the majority, and I said that I had a right to demand an election. So when Sorrell came, I demanded an election.
Sorrell wanted me to sign on a bunch of cards that he had there that he claimed were the majority, but the other side had claimed the same thing. I told Mr. Sorrell that there is only one way for me to go and that was an election, and that is what the law had set up, the National Labor Relations Board was for that purpose. He laughed at me and he said that he would use the labor board as it suited his purposes and that he had been sucker enough to go for that labor board ballot and he had lost some election — I can’t remember the name of the place — by one vote. He said it took him two years to get it back.
He said he would strike, that that was his weapon. He said, “I have all of the tools of the trade sharpened,” that I couldn’t stand the ridicule or the smear of a strike. I told him that it was a matter of principle with me, that I couldn’t go on working with my boys feeling that I had sold them down the river to him on his say-so, and he laughed at me and told me I was naive and foolish. He said, you can’t stand this strike, I will smear you, and I will make a dust bowl out of your plant.
CHAIRMAN: What was that?
DISNEY: He said he would make a dust bowl out of my plant if he chose to. I told him I would have to go that way, sorry, that he might be able to do all that, but I would have to stand on that. The result was that he struck. I believed at that time that Mr. Sorrell was a communist because of all the things that I had heard, and having seen his name appearing on a number of commie front things.
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