Drawing the Line: The Untold Story of the Animation Unions from Bosko to Bart Simpson

by Tom Sito

Some of the most beloved characters in film and television inhabit two-dimensional worlds that spring from the fertile imaginations of talented animators. The movements, characterizations, and settings in the best animated films are as vivid as any live action film, and sometimes seem more alive than life itself. In this case, Hollywood's marketing slogans are fitting; animated stories are frequently magical, leaving memories of happy endings in young and old alike. However, the fantasy lands animators create bear little resemblance to the conditions under which these artists work. Anonymous animators routinely toiled in dark, cramped working environments for long hours and low pay, especially at the emergence of the art form early in the twentieth century. In Drawing the Line , veteran animator Tom Sito chronicles the efforts of generations of working men and women artists who have struggled to create a stable standard of living that is as secure as the worlds their characters inhabit. The former president of America's largest animation union, Sito offers a unique insider's account of animators' struggles with legendary studio kingpins such as Jack Warner and Walt Disney, and their more recent battles with Michael Eisner and other Hollywood players. Based on numerous archival documents, personal interviews, and his own experiences, Sito's history of animation unions is both carefully analytical and deeply personal. Drawing the Line stands as a vital corrective to this field of Hollywood history and is an important look at the animation industry's past, present, and future. Like most elements of the modern commercial media system, animation is rapidly being changed by the forces of globalization and technological innovation. Yet even as pixels replace pencils and bytes replace paints, the working relationship between employer and employee essentially remains the same. In Drawing the Line , Sito challenges the next wave of animators to heed the lessons of their predecessors by organizing and acting collectively to fight against the enormous pressures of the marketplace for their class interests―and for the betterment of their art form.

Genres: History, Labor, Nonfiction, Film

440 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2006

Reviews

[Christopher Saunders · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lively history of labor organizing in the cartoon industry, written by a veteran cartoonist. Sito (whose resume includes Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Osmosis Jones and various Warner Bros. and Hanna Barbera cartoons) shows that animators, writers and storyboard artists struggled from the beginning to achieve respect in a field often mocked and dismissed, even within the confines of Hollywood. The hero for much of the narrative is Herbert Sorrell, the veteran labor organizer whose leadership of the Screen Cartoonist's Guild in the '40s caused a series of strikes at Disney, Fleischer Studios and Terry Toons, which in turn hastened unionization of other Hollywood studios. Sito's account of these early strikes is bracing, showing the animation industry's pioneers (Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, in particular) as paternalistic penny pinchers who readily resorted to strikebreaking and Red-baiting when it suited them. Indeed, the animation studios used the Red Scare of the '40s and '50s to purge the industry of activists (Disney co-founded the Motion Picture Alliance, the leading promulgator of the blacklist, and "named names" to HUAC) and destroy their unions. Dramatic though they are, these early showdowns, Sito shows, are merely prelude to another half-century of struggle. Animators and artists continue to organize, with mixed success; while The Animation Guild succeeded in forcing contractual protections of their workers, through the '70s, '80s and beyond animation studios skirted their demands by contracting work to low-paid overseas animations, or co-opting particularly successful animators with lucrative payouts. In many ways, a depressingly typical capital-labor story; yet it's still striking, and instructive, to see how deep-rooted such attitudes and conflicts remain, even in the entertainment industry.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Eye-opening. Grateful to finally read an account from the workers' perspective, and not at all surprised that their version contains muuuuuuch more information than management's side. I wish there were more books like this.

[Jose Anguiano · Rating 5 out of 5]

A Must Read For Animators and Hisdtorians

Auto did his research on the history of animation unions. If you're A historian or aspiring animator, this is a required reading for your future.

[Teri Temme · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting. Good background info on the Animation Unions.