Stuffed Duck?

From the swank Disney Studios in Burbank, Calif, came a new wave of raucous sound effects. It was no sign of new life in Walt's celebrated cartoon creatures. It sounded more like Donald Duck in a tizzy of indecision.

Most of the noise came from representatives of 27 unions protesting last week's layoff of 450 Disney employes, almost half the studio's staff. Replied General Manager John F. Reeder: the new pay schedule (a 25% increase--an estimated $1 million-a-year boost in the payroll) put into effect on the demand of the Screen Cartoonists Guild would not allow the studio to keep on going full blast with a reasonable hope of profit. Work would have to stop, said he, on all but four feature productions (Song of the South, Fun and Fancy Free, How Dear to My Heart, All in Fun). Workers on all other projects would have to go.

Actually the situation had been boiling up for years. Since 1940, cartoon costs have jumped 165% (due almost wholly to increased labor costs) while revenues have increased only 12%. Distributors have cold-shouldered efforts to increase rentals, which are still at the 1940 rate. Full-length cartoons, for all the fanfare about them, have only dug the hole deeper. As a result, most cartoonmakers (e.g., Lantz, Pal, Quimby, Selzer) are wondering how long they can go on.

Some of them hope to last for a while with the support of the big studios with which they are allied. But Disney, who has a genius for running up costs, is an independent. He now owes about $4 million to banks, has $7.5 million sunk in current productions. His average shorts, which cost $60,000 to $65,000 to produce and over $25,000 for prints, advertising and distribution, gross only $75,000 to $90,000 over a five-year period. Unless some drastic adjustments are made, Donald, along with his cartoon cousins, might soon be a stuffed Duck.

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