Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm 9780271093505

Table of contents :
CONTENTS
FOREWORD
PREFACE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1 ORWELL AND ANIMAL FARM
2 OPC, THE SPONSORING AGENCY
3 THE PRODUCER, LOUIS DE ROCHEMONT
4 GENESIS, AND GETTING RIGHT WITH SONIA ORWELL
5 THE ANIMATORS, HALAS & BATCHELOR
6 CREATING ANIMAL FARM, THE MOVIE
7 ENVISIONING A POLITICALLY CORRECT FILM VERSION OF ANIMAL FARM
8 THE POLITICS OF FILMING ANIMAL FARM
9 FINALIZING A POLITICALLY CORRECT FILM VERSION OF ANIMAL FARM
10 RECEPTION OF THE FILM
11 THE AFTERLIFE OF THE FILM AND ITS CREATORS
12 PROPAGANDA AND PROPAGANDISTS
NOTES
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
INDEX

Citation preview

ORWELL SUBVERTED

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ORWELL

SUBVERTED THE CIA AND THE FILMING OF ANIMAL FARM

DANIEL J. LEAB W I T H A F O R E W O R D B Y P E T E R D AV I S O N

THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY PRESS UNIVERSITY PARK, PENNSYLVANIA

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library of congress cataloging-in-publication data Leab, Daniel J. Orwell subverted : the CIA and the filming of Animal farm / Daniel J. Leab ; with a foreword by Peter Davison. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 987-0-271-02978-6 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-271-02978-1 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Animal farm (Motion picture : 1954) 2. United States. Central Intelligence Agency. I. Title. PN1997.A425L43 2007 791.43⬘72—dc22 2006030316

Copyright 䉷 2007 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. This book is printed on Natures Natural, containing 50% post-consumer waste, and meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ANSI Z39.48–1992.

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For K. K. L.— consort battleship

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CONTENTS

Foreword by Peter Davison, OBE

ix

Preface xiii Acknowledgments xxi

1 Orwell and Animal Farm

1

2 OPC, the Sponsoring Agency

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3 The Producer, Louis de Rochemont

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4 Genesis, and Getting Right with Sonia Orwell 5 The Animators, Halas & Batchelor

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6 Creating Animal Farm, the Movie

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7 Envisioning a Politically Correct Film Version of Animal Farm 8 The Politics of Filming Animal Farm

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9 Finalizing a Politically Correct Film Version of Animal Farm 10 Reception of the Film

12 Propaganda and Propagandists

CNTS

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Select Bibliography Index 189

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11 The Afterlife of the Film and Its Creators

Notes

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FOREWORD P E TE R D AV I S O N , O B E

When it comes to security, especially national security, there are two kinds of people. There are those within the world of security who don’t want anyone outside to know anything of what goes on behind the scenes, and there are those outside who are desperate to know what those supposedly operating in their interest are up to—and whether they are being misled. As if that were not patently obvious already, it has been made so in the United States, and perhaps especially in the United Kingdom, in the past three years or so. It ill becomes me to underestimate the difficulties and dangers faced by those who trade in the dark arts of security and counterintelligence. In such a shadowy world, certainty must be difficult and the legitimate need to protect the interests of those one serves, whether individuals or nations, must be paramount. That accepted, it is as mysterious to me as the actual operations themselves why, long after the events, those in elected office in democracies, and those who serve them, should be so unwilling to let it be known what actually happened. The excuse that they must protect their sources wears thin after half a century—and long before that. I suspect that what motivates such self-defensiveness is an unwillingness to be shown to have been not merely mistaken but downright stupid. No one likes to be shown to be a fool. Professor Leab has done a cracking job in revealing what really happened behind the scenes in getting the animated film of George Orwell’s Animal Farm onto the screen. And cracking is the right word in another sense, for, despite all the odds and all sorts of hindrances, he has cracked open the oyster to reveal precious pearls of wisdom. I come to Professor Leab’s enthralling study with an obvious interest in Orwell but also a wholly insignificant experience of official deception. Nearly sixty years ago I was one of a group of servicemen upon whom a deception was practiced. It was not in any way momentous—no one lost his life, though one or two sweethearts at the other side of the world might have given up and married another sailor. After a couple of years of service in the home forces, I was called into the Royal Navy at the end

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of 1944. Like tens of thousands of British servicemen, I was still serving in the forces nearly four years later. For whose aggrandizement such huge forces were still being deployed was not clear to us. In mid-1947 I was serving as a petty officer radar mechanic in Singapore, ostensibly taking my turn in ensuring that its huge radio station kept transmitting twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Note: radio—radar, a distinction we came to think the authorities in London were unable to make. They are not the same. To our fury we discovered that radio mechanics were being demobilized while radar mechanics were being retained long beyond their demobilization dates and doing radio work. It was then (and may still be now) a serious offense for a rating to contact his Member of Parliament. I suppose that is what defending democracy is all about. However, one rating had a personal friend who was a Member of Parliament and he was put up to ask a question in the House of Commons as to why we were being so held back. After some delay, the MP was told that it was nonsense to suggest that radar mechanics were manning radio stations. The MP, feeling he had been misled, was furious, but, quite suddenly, we were told to pack our kit-bags and get down to the harbor to board a Dutch merchant ship, the Sloterdijk, and set sail for England, home, and sweethearts (and mine was still waiting). There was no explanation and we didn’t risk our chances by seeking one. No Dan Leabs we! This is a trivial tale, but I sometimes suspect that when one learns of the impenetrability of MI5 and MI6 institutions in the United Kingdom, what lies at the bottom is not danger to secret informants or protecting sources but downright stupidity—those who in this case probably could not distinguish between radar and radio. Professor Leab’s trail has been far more wearisome and infinitely more important. He has doggedly searched for documents, overridden resistance to his inquiries in almost every instance—the cia still holds out in what are annoying but probably insignificant matters—turned up hard evidence, and, above all, told an enthralling story. In one sense he did have a stroke of luck: the opening up of the Louis de Rochemont papers at the American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming. There were fifty boxes of largely uncatalogued materials, but as a result of diligently searching through them he came across his treasure, usually at the bottom of boxes: documents about the production of the Halas and Batchelor animated version of Animal Farm.

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Anyone who has worked through such files, suffering the eye and back strain, not to mention the dust, will know that the sheer physical effort involved is not inconsiderable. But this amounts to only a small part of Professor Leab’s work. By digging, digging, digging, he has, with industry and insight, revealed precisely what happened in the tortuous history of the production of this film. It tells a great deal not just about its production, not just about the efforts to turn George Orwell’s story to serve different ends, but also about the personalities involved. Furthermore, as an experienced film historian, Professor Leab gives a splendid account of film production, scriptwriting, and film marketing. This is done in the finest traditions of democratic investigation and, what is more, makes a fascinating read. Time after time I was prompted by the desire to follow up some of those involved—Finis Farr, for example—in their other work and especially, in his case, his novels. After all, the man who seems to have coined Farr’s Law—the more eminent the man, the more insufferable the widow—must be worth pursuing! No credit on the film (nor it seems elsewhere) is given to the input of John Stuart Martin. As a man and in his part in the story, he is worth further attention. Having made the film, no one seemed to know how to get it onto the world’s screens, but Professor Leab traces its widespread success in recent years and he is also very good on what happened after, especially to those involved, such as de Rochemont, Farr, Martin, Lothar Wolff, Halas, and Batchelor—and the rest of this varied behind-the-screen cast. The whole story is told with vigor and clarity, and I cannot express too warmly my appreciation and enjoyment of Orwell Subverted. Read, Enjoy—and Learn!

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PREFACE

That the cia paid for the first filming of George Orwell’s Animal Farm has become gospel. It was rumored in the 1950s, when the film was made, and has been much discussed since then. A few years ago two books were published that specifically addressed this question. The authors, Frances Stonor Saunders and Tony Shaw, both stated categorically that the cia had paid for the filming of Animal Farm. And right they were. But while they had reached the correct conclusion, they lacked many of the details to construct the full story, including the influence of the agency on how Orwell’s ideas were to be presented on the screen.1 Some of that information remains buried in the cia’s impenetrable files. More than a third of a century ago an investigative journalist complained that ‘‘the cia continues systematically to withhold information by claiming that it cannot otherwise protect its sources and methods, though it has never shown why.’’ More recently a political scientist studying congressional oversight of the cia complained that, with ‘‘one notable exception,’’ despite his best efforts over the course of a decade, his attempts to obtain material under the Freedom of Information Act (foia) failed. And given what one scholar has accurately described as the agency’s routine practice of denying most foia requests on ‘‘national security grounds,’’ that documentation—even though its files on the movie version of Animal Farm deal with data from the early 1950s— continues to remain buried in the cia’s archives.2 As one Cold War historian argued in 2003, no information generated more than half a century ago ‘‘could possibly endanger or even pose the most theoretical threat to the security of the most powerful nation in the world in the 21st century.’’ And in this instance, given the subject matter—that is, the production of a movie—one has to agree with this historian’s judgment that the real reason for refusing access to public documents is simply ‘‘rote habit.’’ There is no question, as another scholar has stated angrily, that the ‘‘cia’s attitude towards declassification at times has approached civil disobedience.’’3 The welcome proffered by the cia’s website is a joke. In response to

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my inquiries to the agency about the film and the persons I had learned from other sources were involved in its production, I received nothing. As for George Orwell, the cia’s information and privacy coordinator informed me that ‘‘the cia can neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence of any cia Records responsive to this portion of your request. The fact of the existence or non-existence of records containing such information—unless it has been officially acknowledged—would be classified for reasons of national security.’’4 The information I requested might just as well have gone down Orwell’s ‘‘memory hole.’’ The cia, despite my repeated efforts, has never confirmed or denied the existence of any Orwell records, either on the basis of Executive Orders issued in the ‘‘interests of national security defense on foreign policy,’’ or on the basis of legislation allowing the agency’s director ‘‘to protect from disclosure intelligence sources and methods.’’ What the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) dubbed ‘‘the routinization of concealment’’ continues apace.5 Occasionally, what has been described as the cia’s ‘‘haze of secrecy’’ can be pierced. The writer Evan Thomas, who was given access to some usually restricted cia material (but whose manuscript nonetheless was subsequently vetted), has pointed out that, even though the agency ‘‘hangs on to the illusions of secrecy’’ about early operations, ‘‘many cia records leak.’’6 Despite the agency’s lack of assistance, I was able to find such leaks, and to document in detail just how the agency twisted and tweaked Orwell’s ‘‘fairy story’’ for political reasons. The cia provided the American filmmaker Louis de Rochemont with the initial funding to begin work on a film version of Animal Farm. He hired Halas & Batchelor, a fledgling animation firm in London that had undertaken some propaganda films for the British government. Much of what Halas & Batchelor did in making Animal Farm has been written about; there is a substantial Halas & Batchelor archive in the United Kingdom, on which Tony Shaw drew, intelligently if not completely, in his British Cinema and the Cold War. But the de Rochemont part of the story had never been unearthed. I stumbled onto the paper trail of that story while researching another Cold War film. For some time I had been working on the production history of Cold War films, drawing on studio records to lay out why they were made and to discuss their impact.7 One of the movies that I wished to deal with was the de Rochemont film Man on a String, released by Columbia in 1960

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and drawn from a penny-dreadful memoir by Boris Morros, a lesser Hollywood type who after serving the Soviets became a double agent, working with the fbi.8 A friend drew my attention to the de Rochemont papers, housed in the American Heritage Center at the University of Wyoming. They had never been used, since the family had kept them closed since donating them, but the university was determined to open them for use by scholars. Happily, I was among the first to be able to use them. This was not easy. There had been no reason to process the papers while they were closed; the mass of materials in more than fifty boxes were catalogued in only the most basic fashion. In the course of going through these boxes, looking for material on the Morros film, I found— buried at the bottom of various boxes—information about the production of Animal Farm. Since then, the de Rochemont family has settled any differences with the American Heritage Center and, at the end of 2004, the collection was properly processed. What I found was fascinating, especially in terms of the input that a U.S. government agency had on the scripts. Even more illuminating were the lengths to which de Rochemont and his associates went to accommodate that agency, even after its initial funding ran out and the de Rochemont firm had to invest substantial monies of its own to finish the film. The material I found at the University of Wyoming is important, and it is virgin information.9 Happily, it fit well with the other archival documents, correspondence, interviews, oral histories, published sources, and hundreds of pages of fbi material garnered under the Freedom of Information Act. I benefited especially from the material I found at the International Museum of Photography at the Eastman House in Rochester, New York, the Orwell Archive at the University of London, and the Halas & Batchelor Collection, which, when I used it, was temporarily housed at the Southampton Institute, Southampton, England, and now is permanently ensconced at the splendid Animation Research Centre of the Surrey Institute of Art and Design in Farnham, England. This book began as an article for a proposed collection to be edited by Peter Davison, the greatest of Orwell scholars. As I began to work my way through the materials I’d uncovered, I realized that what I had discovered in the United States and the United Kingdom enabled me to provide intimate detail on matters that until now have been mostly conjecture or dubious repetition. It has also been possible for me to correct

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some assertions others have made on the basis of earlier bits of evidence that must now be reconsidered. For all the value and quality of their work, it is necessary to recast various conclusions drawn by Frances Stonor Saunders and Tony Shaw. Their efforts on the subject of the film of Orwell’s book, and the work of those who drew on them, cannot be ignored, but they must be reconsidered because of the archival material that has newly come to light. Stonor Saunders, a successful independent British TV producer and journalist, caused quite a stir in 1999 with her book about the cia’s cultural offensive during the heyday of the Cold War. She gave an exhaustive and riveting account of how the cia in the mid-twentieth century mounted a wide-ranging propaganda war against the Soviet Union, a multimedia campaign that included helping to finance a film version of Animal Farm, restructured to fit the agency’s political agenda. Her overall contentions are highly critical of the cia’s activities, which were governed by what she calls a ‘‘Jesuitical ends justified the means argument,’’ and have been judged to be stark. It is true, as some reviewers claimed, that her argument was strident at times, but it was not insubstantial. There is no question that she made what one reviewer called ‘‘a real contribution’’; but in dealing with the filming of Orwell’s book she relied too heavily (and at times solely) on a tainted source, the recollections of E. Howard Hunt, at the time of the film’s production in the 1950s an employee of the cia. Her shrewd reading of her source material failed in this instance. Hunt’s claims to have been involved in the filming do not hold up.10 And in any event she should have been aware that over the years his veracity has been challenged more than once; Gore Vidal had characterized Hunt as a daydreamer. A not unfriendly reviewer of Hunt’s memoirs (cited by Stonor Saunders) said they should be used with caution, and another, even friendlier, reviewer found them ‘‘badly flawed.’’ Various websites that deal with Hunt quote his epigrammatic statement that ‘‘no one is entitled to the truth.’’11 Stonor Saunders’s colorful but substantially erroneous account of the film’s production has influenced subsequent writers. The formidable critic Louis Menand, who has raised serious questions about what he calls the ‘‘popular understanding of Orwell,’’ unhesitatingly accepted Stonor Saunders’s version of the genesis of the movie version of Animal Farm. So too have the authors of a recent spate of Orwell biographies. Even the astute and indefatigable Orwell scholar John Rodden unfortu-

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nately relies too heavily on Stonor Saunders, and as a result mistakenly asserts that the cia ‘‘distributed’’ the film. An English academic discussing ‘‘Animal Farm: Sixty Years On’’ for History Today intelligently summarizes all that has been written about Orwell’s book and the film, but instead of ‘‘rescuing them from the distortions of Cold War propaganda,’’ his reliance on Stonor Saunders as well as his own embellishments only muddy the waters further.12 The English historian Tony Shaw is more narrowly focused than Stonor Saunders in dealing with what he calls ‘‘the efforts made by the British government between 1945 and 1965 to integrate the cinema with their anti-Soviet and anti-Communist propaganda campaigns.’’ His concentration on the effects of the Cold War on British cinema allowed him to treat the movie version of Orwell’s book in much more detail than Stonor Saunders had. Thanks to his diligent efforts, his broad-based study of film production in the United Kingdom during the Cold War comes closer to the mark. But he does rely in part on Stonor Saunders and on Hunt’s recollections, with the result that some of his dates and information on personnel involved in the making of the film are mistaken.13 Neither Stonor Saunders nor Shaw, despite their intense critiques of the cia, falls into the ideological trap exemplified by the Briton Nick Cohen’s journalism, which makes poor use of some of the material found in their books. Cohen—lovingly described by his publisher as a ‘‘consistently sharp and witty scourge’’—includes in a ‘‘coruscating barrage of dispatches from his sniper’s post’’ (more publisher hype) a 1998 Observer (UK) column on the 1950s filming of Orwell’s book. In fewer than two thousand words he manages to overlook seminal changes between the book and the film, misspells the name of one of the Americans involved, insults the integrity of Orwell’s widow, Sonia, mistakes the film’s producer for its director, displays a poor grasp of the organizational structure of the cia in the early 1950s, and confuses ‘‘espionage’’ with propaganda. His column is written without fear or research, except for misreading and misunderstanding Shaw, to whom, it seems to me, he owes an apology.14 Exactly who fomented the Cold War and when precisely it began remain matters of historical debate. But there can be no question that at the moment of the cia’s birth, in late 1947, American government officials and influential private citizens feared that Italy might go Commu-

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nist in the upcoming elections of April 1948. James V. Forrestal, a Wall Street executive who became the first secretary of defense (as a result of 1947 legislation reorganizing the U.S. military establishment), became so concerned ‘‘about a Communist takeover in Italy’’ that he arranged for private funds to combat the Reds through his contacts in the American corporate world. Ray Cline, a veteran cia bureaucrat, recalled years later, ‘‘it is symbolic that the very first numbered document of the newly established National Security Council on November 14, 1947 (nsc 1/1) was a report entitled The Position of the United States with Regard to Italy.’’15 To aid the Italian anti-Communist parties, especially the Christian Democrats (the chief foes of the Communists and their leftist allies), American institutions and individuals undertook ‘‘a crash program of persuasion and propaganda, overt and secret funding, sabotage and strong arm tactics.’’ cia agents ‘‘blitzed Italy with anonymous pamphlets and printed matter.’’ All this activity paid off at the polls. The agency had specifically targeted more than two hundred constituencies, and the antiCommunists won all but two. Overall the Christian Democrats won 48.5 percent of the vote and an absolute majority in Parliament, an outcome that, according to a study of the election, ‘‘stunned all observers.’’16 The success in Italy emboldened those in the U.S. government who supported covert action against Communists. Of course, not everything subsequently undertaken by the United States in the cultural arena was covert. And many of the covert activities went much further than just financing and influencing the content of a movie. U.S. government agencies, especially the cia, in support of the U.S. Kulturkampf against Communism and the Soviet Union invested in big-ticket covert activities such as ‘‘the Radios’’ (i.e., Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty), which under the guise of voluntary organizations ceaselessly blasted propaganda messages into Communist Central and Eastern Europe as a major part of a psychological warfare offensive. Many of the activities, such as the Radios, that the U.S. government undertook in prosecuting a cultural offensive during the Cold War had more impact than the cia’s involvement in the production of Animal Farm. But charting the genesis and development of this film is a useful case study of Cold War propaganda. It also provides a necessary corrective to some of what has been written about the film and the agency’s involvement in its production. The cia’s influence was pernicious and deserving of criticism, but Orwell, especially, would not have wanted that

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criticism to be weakened by a lack of data or the riding of a political hobby horse. Writing about George Orwell and his works has become a cottage industry. Orwell did request, in a will drawn up just days before his death on January 21, 1950, that ‘‘no biography of me shall be written.’’ And his widow, Sonia, fought tenaciously and in the main successfully to enforce this request for a quarter-century after his death. Then she commissioned Bernard Crick, professor of politics at Birkbeck College, London, to write a life of her husband. She was dissatisfied with the finished manuscript—one writer asserts she ‘‘hated’’ Crick’s work—and tried unsuccessfully to stop publication. The biography, published in 1980—the year Sonia Orwell died—has overall received high marks, however, and has been called an ‘‘exceptionally fine book,’’ an indispensable benchmark, ‘‘the best estimate of the kind of writer and thinker Orwell was.’’17 Even before Crick’s biography appeared, Orwell and his work had been the subject of many analyses, commentaries, interpretations, and memoirs. In recent years the outpouring has been torrential. As Peter Davison has pointed out, Orwell continues to be ‘‘of interest to friends, enemies, and scholars.’’ The topics discussed at a 2003 conference celebrating the hundredth anniversary of Orwell’s birth suggest the many sides of this idiosyncratic, complicated man. Held at Wellesley College, an elite American college for women, the conference featured panels that described him as the conscience of his generation, a prophet, a rebel, a misunderstood Christian, an early gay rights advocate, a latter-day Tocqueville, possibly the first blogger, and an obvious misogynist. And certainly Orwell’s politics have been an unending source of debate. The remarkable diversity of opinion about the man and his writings, as well as a willingness over the years to broadcast it in one form or another, has meant, as one biographer aptly put it, that ‘‘Orwell has received more academic and popular attention than any British writer of the 20th century.’’18 Recent years have seen the publication of a great many detailed accounts of Orwell’s life and work. In accounts of Orwell’s personal life, some writers have delved into his sex life, although what Crick calls their ‘‘sexsational tales’’ tend to be conjectural in the extreme. Whether dealing with the man or with his work, ‘‘the more Orwell is written about, the more elusive and protean he becomes,’’ as one critic has wisely re-

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marked. In attempting to paint a full picture of Orwell, biographers have been assiduous in seeking out new material about his life. But in their accounts of the filming of Animal Farm, they have been less diligent.19 Thanks especially to the material in the de Rochemont Papers, it is now possible to provide an important new perspective, as well as to correct some old errors. My goal is to lay out in detail what happened and why, to achieve what Richard Evans, the respected Oxford historian of Germany, once so splendidly reasoned: to deal with the past as it ‘‘really happened . . . [so that] we really can, if we are very scrupulous and careful and self-critical . . . reach some tenable conclusions about what it all meant.’’20 The story behind the transformation of Orwell’s book into a cartoon feature film is admittedly a very small part of the history of the cia and the cultural war it orchestrated against Communism. But, because George Orwell has become such a towering cultural icon, the agency’s ties to the production of this film have in recent years attracted considerable media attention. This book cannot of course be the last word on the subject, for I presume (and hope) that the cia files dealing with the film will eventually become available. That day certainly cannot come too soon. Until then, please read on and learn what I discovered about an American government agency’s input, as part of the U.S. cultural offensives during the Cold War, into the first filming of Orwell’s Animal Farm. I hope that this study may be a useful contribution to our understanding of a chapter in America’s prosecution of the cultural Cold War.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Decades ago, T. S. Eliot said that ‘‘History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors, and issues.’’ For a historian, Eliot’s observation was never more true than in dealing with such government agencies as the cia. Fortunately, my attempt to throw some light on the darker corridors and passages was aided and abetted by a splendid array of archivists and librarians, as well as by interested individuals and concerned friends. I owe a great debt to Carol Bowers, archivist at the American Heritage Center of the University of Wyoming, who helped me gain access to the Louis de Rochemont Papers and who facilitated my use of other collections at the Center. Her assistance was vital and remains much appreciated. I also benefited enormously from the assistance provided by veteran de Rochemont associate F. Bordon Mace, who graciously, both in person and through correspondence and telephone conversations, answered a veritable storm of questions, and who proved to be a discerning reader of several chapters. Peter Davison was a fount of encouragement, a Golconda of information, and an extremely perceptive reader. His is the last word on almost anything to do with George Orwell. I owe him a great deal. As I do also Vivien Halas, who allowed me access to various files and put up with endless questions; she never lost patience or interest. James Walker was a first-rate cicerone to the Halas & Batchelor Collection, first at the Southampton Institute, Southampton, UK, and subsequently after its move to the Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Farnham, England. During this project’s initial stages, Frances Stonor Saunders was extremely helpful, both with advice and with providing materials such as Psychological Strategy Board memos. My friend Nicholas Pronay, despite a hectic professional schedule, took the time to ‘‘chase up’’ some materials for me at the Public Records Office (now the National Archives), and to instruct me in the intricacies of their language. In the United States, various individuals provided very helpful assistance. John D. Gordan III made it possible for me to speak with colleagues of de Rochemont’s lawyer, in the course of which I had a most

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inconclusive exchange with Lawrence Buttenwieser. Historian and journalist Evan Thomas made time in a very busy schedule for some useful discussions. Thomas Wallace and Williston R. Benedict, friends of long standing, undertook a very detailed reading of the manuscript and made some very positive suggestions. Daniel Bell granted me permission to use the American Committee for Cultural Freedom papers, held at the Tamiment Library, New York University, and provided some interesting leads. John Rodden gave the manuscript a very detailed reading and his comments improved it considerably. Libraries, as Nikki Giovanni says, may ‘‘house our dreams,’’ but they and archives also house a broad range of necessary research materials. Vital to their use are librarians and archivists, and I was most fortunate in my dealings with them. Kristine Krueger and Barbara Hall guided me intelligently in the use of the collections at the Herrick Library in Beverly Hills, California, as did Christine Kitto at the Seely G. Mudd Manuscript Library, Princeton University, Alex Rankin at Special Collections, Boston University, Cathy Henderson at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, and W. R. Thompson at the W. E. B. DuBois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst. I was also helped immeasurably by Professor Gerald D. McFarland, a friend of many years, of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, History Department, and Richard Gasson, at the time a graduate student in that department who now teaches in the United Arab Emirates. Paolo Cherchi Usai, then a senior curator at the George Eastman House, Rochester, New York, provided an inventory of Eastman’s Lothar Wolff holdings at a difficult time for both him and the institution. Through Samuel A. Streit at the John Hay Library of Brown University, I was able to make e-mail contact with E. Howard Hunt. At the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, archivist Dennis Bilger provided worthwhile insights, as did David Haight at the Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas. Gillian Furlong, of the Orwell Archive at the University of London, was generous in terms of time and access. Michael Bott at the Reading University Library, Reading, England, saved me a trip when he was kind enough to look through the Secker & Warburg Archive and discover that it contained no relevant materials. I also benefited from many kindnesses in the United Kingdom. Ian Angus, who had worked with Sonia Orwell on her four-volume edition

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of Orwell’s writings, made several useful suggestions. The late Giles Gordan, literary agent, and Neal Belton of Granta Books were both of assistance in tracking down various individuals. Elizabeth Coulter-Smith, a member of the faculty at the Southampton Institute, generously shared some of her work on the Animal Farm film with me. I had some very useful e-mail exchanges with historian David Eldridge, of the University of Hull, United Kingdom, who has researched cia involvement in Hollywood filmmaking. Bill Hamilton of A. M. Heath, ‘‘Authors Agents,’’ made available one of the key contracts between Louis de Rochemont and Sonia Orwell. Bernard Nyman, a solicitor who at one time represented Vivien Halas in her legal actions regarding her parents’ version of Animal Farm, provided some interesting corporate details. I had useful telephone conversations with Hilary Spurling, supplementing what she said in her first-rate book on Sonia Orwell. In his usual fine fashion Ian Willison, one of the first Orwell scholars, assisted me with names and addresses. Harold Whitaker happily showed no hesitation is speaking about his days with Halas & Batchelor. I owe a great debt to Professor Hans Beller, Kunsthochschule fu¨r Medien, Cologne, Germany, for making available transcripts of his interviews with Marshall Plan filmmakers, some of whom are now dead. Once again I am delighted to offer profuse thanks to Joan-Marie Freitag and Roslyn Jenkins for their invaluable assistance in turning my scrawl into a readable manuscript. Is there an author who would not want to work with Peter Potter? This is my second book to be published by Penn State University Press, and the second one to benefit from his guidance. His comments on various drafts were definitive without being caustic, insightful without being cutting. He knows how to encourage authors and also how to induce them to revise and revamp. Since he has moved on to greater responsibilities at Cornell University Press, Cherene Holland has skillfully overseen publication of the book. Without all of these people, this book could not have been written. Needless to say, I am solely responsible for any failings or deficiencies. My wife, Katharine Kyes Leab, has lived with this book for almost a decade, and the dedication to her is insufficient recompense for what she has been forced to put up with. This book, like my others, could not have

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been written without her support, her companionship, her patience, and her love. Kathy is a vital part of my life. She really is that ‘‘consort battleship’’ Henry Higgins talks about in Pygmalion. Washington, Connecticut August 2006

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The cia was attracted to George Orwell because of his political slant and antitotalitarian novels. Orwell had become an icon of the anti-Soviet, antiStalinist Left. His friend George Woodcock, the anarchist pacifist critic, later recalled that by 1948 one could ‘‘ask any Stalinist what English writer is the greatest danger to the Communist cause, and he is likely to answer George Orwell.’’ For Woodcock and many others, Animal Farm (first published in the United Kingdom in 1945 and in the United States a year later) played a significant role in establishing Orwell’s anti-Communist reputation.1 Justly described as the most famous allegory of the twentieth century, Animal Farm certainly exhibited an anti-Soviet animus and clearly was hostile to Stalin. According to Orwell, ‘‘this book was first thought of, so far as the central idea goes, in 1937.’’ He had gone to Spain to fight the Fascists who had risen against the legitimate democratic government of that country. The Communists, under the supervision of the Soviets, had assumed control of that government and forcibly suppressed the leftwing forces Orwell had joined and fought with against the Fascists. He had to flee Spain to save his life. His experience in Spain informed his anti-Communism and his view of the Soviet Union as totalitarian. The genesis of Animal Farm lay in his desire, ‘‘upon my return from Spain,’’ to expose ‘‘the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by anyone.’’2

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While the main outlines of the book were clear in Orwell’s mind for several years, he did not begin writing it until November 1943. The author-translator Michael Meyer, then in his early twenties and a new friend of Orwell’s, recalls him describing Animal Farm as a ‘‘kind of parable, about people . . . blind to the dangers of totalitarianism, set on a farm where the animals take over.’’ John Rodden asserts that the ‘‘point of departure for Orwell’s fable was a statement from Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844: ‘The worker . . . no longer feels himself . . . anything but animal. What is animal becomes human and what is human becomes animal.’’’ It struck Orwell that ‘‘men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat,’’ and he proceeded to analyze Marxian theory from that point of view.3 Orwell had finished a draft of what has sometimes been called his ‘‘animallegory’’ by the end of February 1944. In March he wrote his publisher, the fellow-traveling Victor Gollancz, about the book, which he described as ‘‘anti-Stalin’’ and as ‘‘a fairy story’’ with political meaning, of only about thirty thousand words (the book was less than a hundred pages when finally published). A tentative Orwell sent a copy of the manuscript to Gollancz, although he thought it was not ‘‘the kind of thing that you would print.’’ In the 1930s Gollancz had taken what proved to be a costly chance on Orwell the indifferent novelist, whose books did not sell. One critic called them ‘‘stories of defeat.’’ The militantly leftist publisher had passed on Orwell’s anti-Stalinist Spanish Civil War reportage (Homage to Catalonia), and he now did likewise with Animal Farm, reporting to Orwell’s agent that the firm ‘‘could not possibly publish a general attack of this nature.’’4 That attack certainly impeded publication of the book. It was not just the ‘‘left-wing carriage trade’’ (to use Dame Rebecca West’s pungent phrase) that proved hostile to Animal Farm. In wartime Britain the establishment was firmly committed to that country’s Soviet ally in the struggle against Nazi Germany. The average citizen was full of admiration for the hard-fought success of the Red Army on the eastern front, and referred affectionately to Stalin as ‘‘Uncle Joe.’’ The publisher Frederic Warburg later referred to ‘‘the Communist influenza that ravaged so many households.’’ The year 1944 has rightly been called the ‘‘most inappropriate moment possible’’ to try to publish a thinly camouflaged attack on Stalin and the Soviet Union.5 Gollancz was far from alone in his unwillingness to publish such a

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book. T. S. Eliot, in his capacity as a senior editor at the British firm of Faber & Faber, wrote a letter of rejection with what has been termed ‘‘Jesuitical courtesy’’; while commending Orwell for his distinguished writing and clever handling of the fable, Eliot concluded regretfully, ‘‘we have no conviction . . . that this is the right point of view from which to criticize the political situation at the present time.’’6 The manuscript also encountered more sinister forces. The respected publisher Jonathan Cape, reported to be initially keen on the manuscript, bowed out after consulting an ‘‘important official’’ at the Ministry of Information, who advised against publication. The official is presumed to be Peter Smollett, who during the war headed the ministry’s Russian section, earning an OBE for his services to the Crown. He may also have served another master, for he was thought to be a Soviet agent and, according to a Russian spymaster, was controlled by the same man to whom such Soviet spies as Kim Philby reported. Smollett’s family has vigorously denied suggestions that he was a spy. Born Hans Peter Smolka in Vienna in 1912, he wrote pro-Soviet travel journalism for various UK outlets during the 1930s, became a naturalized British subject in 1938, changed his name, and after the war’s outbreak joined the Ministry of Information, where he energetically organized pro-Soviet propaganda and suppressed ‘‘unfavorable comment’’ on Stalinist Russia.7 A concerned and depressed Orwell, fuming about Cape’s ‘‘intellectual cowardice’’ and acutely aware of the opposition to the book, at one point considered publishing it himself. In late July 1944, however, Secker & Warburg, which in 1938 had published Homage to Catalonia, agreed to bring out Animal Farm, even though the earlier book had proved ‘‘a bad risk,’’ in Orwell’s words. The last of the fifteen hundred copies that made up the first UK edition were not sold until 1951, according to Peter Davison. But Warburg was not put off by these meager results or by Animal Farm’s political implications, and despite what he recalled as strong opposition within the firm and from his family, he carried the day— Secker & Warburg published Animal Farm.8 In 1936 Warburg, not yet forty, borrowed £5,000 from a well-off relative to buy out Martin Secker and establish a new imprint. Over the years Warburg built up a wide-ranging, respected, and important list of authors, including Andre´ Gide, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Mann. The firm quickly gained a substantial reputation for ‘‘publishing books from a Left viewpoint that had been turned down elsewhere,’’ which led some critics

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to dub Warburg a ‘‘Trotskyite publisher.’’ At his eightieth birthday dinner Warburg declared that, his other successes notwithstanding, Animal Farm ‘‘made me as a publisher.’’9 Because of wartime paper rationing in the United Kingdom, Secker & Warburg was short the paper needed for printing Orwell’s book, and it went on sale formally only on August 17, 1945, just days after the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan and ended World War II. Because of Animal Farm’s political stance, the book became part of the postwar debate about the future of the peace. That debate notwithstanding, the book received fine reviews overall and was out of print in a matter of days. A second impression of ten thousand copies, more than twice the original printing, appeared some three months later, and it also sold extremely well.10 It has never been out of print since then. Orwell was not unknown in some American literary circles. His contributions to journals such as Partisan Review and Commentary (he appeared in its first issue) won him admirers in the United States. Orwell’s ‘‘London Letter’’ column (he wrote fifteen for Partisan Review between 1941 and 1946), according to one historian of that publication, was particularly important to the journal’s evolution. And a New Republic critic wrote in September 1946 that the news that ‘‘Orwell had written a satirical allegory telling the story of a revolution by farm animals . . . was like the smell of a roast from a kitchen ruled by a good cook, near the end of a hungry morning.’’11 Still, despite Animal Farm’s enormous commercial success in the United Kingdom, it had a hard time finding an American home. Orwell had anticipated this, writing his agent, ‘‘I don’t fancy it will be easy to find an American publisher for this book.’’ Suggestions and recommendations from American friends led nowhere. Warburg’s assertion that there were ‘‘twelve or more rejections’’ has been questioned by Crick, who nonetheless believes that certainly there were ‘‘a lot.’’ Some of the rejections were straightforward, made on the grounds that the book was ‘‘too short for adequate marketing.’’ At least one rejection was patently foolish: Orwell reported to a New York correspondent that the Dial Press ‘‘rejected it on the ground that ‘the American public is not interested in animals’ (or words to that effect).’’12 Orwell (and some of his supporters) were aware that, as in the United Kingdom, some American publishers had rejected Animal Farm on political grounds. Partisan Review editor Philip Rahv, who considered himself

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a great admirer, warned Orwell in January 1946 that a lot of left-wing opinion in the United States was ‘‘almost solidly Stalinist.’’ There is some basis for historian and polemicist Peter Viereck’s charge that Orwell’s book suffered because of ‘‘the brilliantly successful infiltration of Stalinoid sympathizers in the book world.’’ Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. remembers returning from wartime service in Europe with copies of Animal Farm, which had enchanted him; he attempted to interest his American publisher, but the firm quickly turned it down because, intimates Schlesinger, the editor-in-chief was ‘‘a defender of Stalinism.’’13 In any event, the book’s commercial success in the United Kingdom led to its publication in the United States by Harcourt, Brace. Frank Morley, an editor there who had worked for Faber & Faber before the war, visited England in the fall of 1945 to scout the book trade. In a Cambridge bookshop he encountered customers seeking to purchase the sold-out Animal Farm. He managed to get a copy, and he made a deal in January 1946 to publish the book in the United States. On returning home his deal, as he recalled, received ‘‘a far from enthusiastic reception’’ from his colleagues, an attitude that changed dramatically when Orwell’s book became a Book-of-the-Month Club selection in September 1946.14 The Book of the Month Club News enthusiastically endorsed the book, recommending it to its members as ‘‘one of the great political satires.’’ This review was written by the popular writer and critic Christopher Morley, brother of the man who had acquired the book for Harcourt, Brace and a member of the club’s board of editors since its organization in 1926. Another member of the selection committee called Animal Farm ‘‘the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of our time.’’ And Harry Scherman, the club’s president, recommended that subscribers ‘‘pick Animal Farm rather than any other alternative Club choice’’; for him Orwell was a ‘‘fearless individual’’ who spoke ‘‘for the people of a troubled time’’ through a ‘‘little gem of an allegory.’’ Such endorsements, and a plethora of favorable reviews, helped the club sell more than 450,000 copies between 1946 and 1949, when a ‘‘dirty tricks’’ section of the cia undertook to create a film version.15 Harcourt had released the book in August 1946 and, like the Book-ofthe-Month Club, experienced terrific sales. Animal Farm was a publishing sensation. A few reviewers, mostly on the Left, were, Orwell noted, ‘‘not very friendly.’’ The New Republic’s critic found the book ‘‘dull,’’ the allegory a ‘‘creaking machine’’ that consisted of ‘‘stereotyped ideas.’’ The

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Nation’s reviewer found the book ‘‘troublesome’’ and ‘‘inadequate,’’ concluding that ‘‘its political relevance is more apparent than real.’’ As might be expected, the Communist-controlled New Masses savaged the book and its author, who was said to have a ‘‘warped fascist-Trotskyite mind’’ that seethed with hatred.16 Happily, the favorable reviews far outweighed the negative. The influential critic Edmund Wilson lauded the book in the New Yorker as ‘‘absolutely first rate’’ and praised Orwell as ‘‘one of the ablest and most interesting writers that the English have produced in this period.’’ A reviewer in the iconoclastic left-wing journal Politics found the book ‘‘amusing’’ and ‘‘brilliant,’’ correctly gauging that it would ‘‘infuriate all those who believe in Stalinism.’’ Surprisingly, Vogue, the stylish fashion magazine, ran an engaging profile of Orwell, which, in discussing Animal Farm, trenchantly concluded that much of the book’s ‘‘success comes from its fortunate choice of . . . subject . . . , the policies and philosophies of Soviet Russia,’’ about which the book, it was said, is as ‘‘pointed as a pin.’’17 No reader, then or now, with even a smattering of knowledge of Soviet history from 1917 to 1944 could miss Orwell’s obvious targets. Orwell’s ‘‘code,’’ as John Rodden has put it, is easy to crack. Using animal figures, the book sketches various aspects of that unhappy history, and does so, as a fascinated American reviewer wrote, in a way that raises ‘‘goose pimples.’’ The parallels drawn by the book are not always exact, and some of Orwell’s more arcane points may now be lost on readers not well versed in Soviet history, as for example his analogy between the pigs’ appropriation of milk and apples for their own use and the crushing of the 1921 Kronstadt revolt against the Bolsheviks by former supporters disheartened by the policies of the newly established Communist state. But with regard to the main characters and events there can be no doubt.18 The revolt of the animals at Manor Farm against Farmer Jones is Orwell’s analogy with the October 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. The assistance Jones receives from neighboring farmers in his attempt to regain control of what the animals have renamed Animal Farm is equivalent to the Western powers’ efforts in 1918–21 to crush the Bolsheviks. Animal Farm’s symbolic hoof and horn are the hammer and sickle. The pigs’ ascent to power mirrors the rise of a Stalinist bureaucracy at the expense of everybody else. The ruthless and tyrannical boar, Napoleon, who emerges as the farm’s sole leader, is Stalin. And Trotsky’s counterpart,

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the pig Snowball, his valuable contributions to Animal Farm notwithstanding, falls prey to Napoleon/Stalin, and remains a scapegoat in exile and after his death. The painful efforts of the animals to build the windmill recall the various Five Year Plans, which industrialized the USSR at great human cost. The puppies taken over by Napoleon, who become his fierce enforcers, are the secret police. The pigs’ deplorable treatment of the other animals echoes the internal terror faced by Soviet citizens during the 1930s. Indeed, as Orwell biographer Jeffrey Meyers points out, ‘‘virtually every detail has political significance in this allegory.’’19 The end of the book (a noisy, somewhat fragile and contentious rapprochement between pigs and men) reflected Orwell’s view of the 1943 Teheran Conference between Stalin and the leaders of his World War II allies, American president Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill. ‘‘Everybody,’’ Orwell later recorded, thought the conference ‘‘had established the best possible relations between the USSR and the West,’’ but, as he noted, these relations had deteriorated, and, as he presciently predicted, they would continue to unravel.20 Some critics argued, and still do, that Animal Farm was more than just an attack on Stalinism and the Soviet state. In their view the book’s target is totalitarianism of any stripe, including that practiced by capitalist states. These critics point to Orwell’s self-proclaimed Socialism and his contempt for what he called ‘‘the ordinary stupid capitalist.’’ By their lights Orwell remained committed to Socialism until his death in 1950, even as he ‘‘became extremely frustrated with both the follies of left wing intellectuals in Britain and the limited achievements of the Labor government’’ after its election in 1945.21 It is true enough that neither the Labor government in the United Kingdom nor the Russian Revolution per se was Orwell’s sole target. In explaining his purpose in writing Animal Farm, Orwell made it clear that he meant for the book to have ‘‘wider application.’’ He wrote Dwight Macdonald that his target was ‘‘violent conspiratorial revolution, led by unconsciously power hungry people.’’ For Orwell, ‘‘that kind of revolution . . . can only lead to a change of masters.’’ Benevolent dictatorship, as far as Orwell was concerned, was an oxymoron.22 Certainly Orwell never forgot his Socialist roots. For all his condemnation of Stalin’s brand of Marxism (which he made very clear: ‘‘I hate the Stalin regime’’), Orwell wanted people to realize that they must build their own Socialist movement, and he expected democratic Socialism in

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the West to exert a ‘‘regenerative influence.’’ Orwell knew he lived in ‘‘an evil time,’’ but he never lost his passion for social justice. For Orwell, as many have argued, the story of the animals serves as a warning about a stratified society without limitations.23 Moreover, for all Animal Farm’s anti-Stalinism, it is worth remembering that the book still celebrates the Soviet defeat of the powers that wished to crush the Bolsheviks and the state that they created. The farm animals, moreover, after defeating Farmer Jones and his allies, work together harmoniously for a time. They enjoy life on the farm, and their condition improves significantly despite numerous severe hardships, before Napoleon and his pigs take over. Orwell, a keen and thoughtful critic, was not condemning ‘‘the benevolent intentions of Socialism’’ but the tendency of nearly any utopian movement to lead to the ‘‘extinction of individuality, culture, and emotion.’’ Although the fact seems obvious, we must not lose sight of Orwell’s own Socialism. The historian Ben Pimlott, having reviewed much of Orwell’s writing, unequivocally states that we must remember that ‘‘Orwell was a Socialist.’’ And Pimlott forcefully and convincingly argues that this point needs underlining, ‘‘for there are many who have preferred to ignore this fundamental aspect of his life and work.’’24 A good example is C. M. Woodhouse’s introduction to a 1956 American paperback edition of Animal Farm. Woodhouse praises Orwell for his political insights and acumen and quotes one of Orwell’s more famous essays (‘‘Why I Write’’): ‘‘Every line I have written since 1936 has been against totalitarianism.’’ As John Rodden points out, however, Woodhouse leaves off the end of the sentence, which continues, ‘‘and for democratic socialism.’’25 Monty Woodhouse, who bowdlerized Orwell, was an eminent historian, decorated war hero, Conservative MP, successful business executive, and a man, in the words of one historian, with ‘‘a secret service past’’ (he had served British intelligence as a ‘‘station chief ’’ in the Middle East). His shortening of Orwell’s sentence is an act of deception and distortion designed to adapt Orwell’s book to a particular point of view.26 Like Woodhouse, the cia personnel involved in making Animal Farm into a propaganda film may have found aspects of Orwell and his book less than palatable. But they ignored these inconvenient aspects of the man’s politics and proceeded as if Orwell’s target was Soviet totalitarianism, pure and simple. Certainly it was clear to them, and to others in-

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volved in producing the film, that Orwell’s parable was all about Stalinism and the USSR. They saw no complexity, no duality of view, and, like Woodhouse, certainly no Socialist vision. What interested them was Orwell’s stated intention of ‘‘exposing the Soviet myth in a story that could be easily understood by almost anyone,’’ his having written what Orwell himself described as ‘‘a satirical story against Stalin.’’27 What the writer Timothy Garton Ash has dubbed ‘‘the Orwell effect’’ had a powerful impression and lasting impact on these people, as it has had on anticommunists ever since the publication of the book. The cia people saw Animal Farm as a detailed, powerful, convincing ‘‘allegory of corruption, betrayal, and tyranny in Communist Russia’’—one that would serve well and effectively as a ‘‘propaganda weapon.’’ The film version was but one aspect of the American government’s cultural offensive in the heyday of the Cold War, an offensive integral to a number of U.S. policies and strategies.28

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More than five years intervened between the idea of a movie version of Animal Farm and its 1954 theatrical premiere. During those years the cia, and the ‘‘dirty tricks’’ division within the agency responsible for initiating the project, changed dramatically. In part these changes resulted from what an analyst has described as America’s ‘‘ever-grimmer’’ responses to the escalating Cold War, and from a restructuring of the agency during the Truman administration, which established it.1 The government personnel directly involved in making Orwell’s book into a movie remained constant, but the bureaucrats directing the agency changed, as did the approach to the kind of covert action that financing a movie entailed. However, the Truman and, after January 1953, the Eisenhower administrations remained committed to the psychological warfare underlying the production of such propaganda, even if the ‘‘psywar’’ decision makers changed. President Harry Truman supported the establishment of a Central Intelligence Agency in 1947 because, as he recalled, ‘‘I needed . . . a central organization that would bring all the various intelligence reports . . . into one report.’’ A former cia director believes that the president ‘‘never made clear exactly what he had in mind’’ but did not want the kind of intelligence service the United States had had in the past. The establishment of the cia was but one aspect of the National Security Act of 1947, which in the main attempted to deal with the bitter, often public fights

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for resources among America’s military services. The legislation’s primary purpose was to end ‘‘interservice rivalries,’’ placing them, as a Truman biographer put it, ‘‘under a single head . . . rather than allowing [them] . . . to compete for scarce funds.’’ The unification issue overshadowed all others. Indeed, as one scholar has pointed out, ‘‘discussion of the cia occupied just 29 of the 700 pages of House committee testimony.’’2 The legislation also called for the establishment of a National Security Council (nsc), chaired by the president, whose seven members included the secretaries of defense and state. For the first time in U.S. history, as a later assessment of the nsc pointed out, there existed an official forum for discussion and debate among the president’s chief policymakers.3 Described by defense expert Adam Yarmolinsky some years after its establishment as an ‘‘inner cabinet’’ and later as ‘‘the hub of all U.S. international engagement,’’ the nsc, per its establishing statute, would among other tasks ‘‘assess and appraise the objectives, commitments, and risks’’ faced by the United States in relation to its ‘‘actual and potential power.’’ In so doing the nsc would spur on but maintain only limited oversight of the cia.4 In the later 1940s an alarmed Truman administration feared the impact of Communist subversion in a devastated Western Europe whose citizens still suffered from the aftereffects of World War II. Given the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union, it may well be difficult to understand how threatening and brazen the Soviets then seemed to U.S. leaders. The nsc’s escalating response to what the Truman administration characterized as an increasingly menacing Soviet Union led almost inevitably to the legitimizing and institutionalizing of U.S. covert activities, almost all of them much less benign than making a movie version of Animal Farm. For the nsc a bureaucratic pattern was set that lasted not only until Truman left office in January 1953 but also through his successor’s two terms: ‘‘draft nsc papers [were] written primarily by the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff (pps), discussion at an nsc meeting, approval by the President resulting in an nsc Action, . . . dissemination to the relevant parts of the bureaucracy.’’5 The Policy Planning Staff, formally created in May 1947, was almost immediately dubbed by the press ‘‘the new ‘brain trust’ for foreign policy,’’ partly because its first head, George Kennan, had established him-

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self as a vital force in American diplomacy vis-a`-vis the Soviet Union. A career Foreign Service officer posted to Moscow in mid-1944, Kennan, in 1945 with the war still raging, agitated for a ‘‘realistic’’ approach to the USSR and its rulers that would abandon the ‘‘chimera of postwar collaboration’’; he was convinced, as a 2005 obituary put it, that ‘‘it would be folly to hope for extensive Soviet cooperation in the postwar world.’’6 In February 1946, in what came to be known as ‘‘the Long Telegram,’’ Kennan analyzed Soviet policy in detail for his superiors in Washington, argued that ‘‘the whole basis of American policy toward the Soviet Union during and after World War II had been wrong,’’ and urged ‘‘containing’’ the Soviets. Scholarly consensus is that ‘‘Kennan’s cable exercised a catalytic effect’’ on American policy. If not containment’s sole father, Kennan was among its most vociferous proponents.7 His article ‘‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct,’’ which appeared in the July 1947 issue of Foreign Affairs (the authoritative quarterly of the Council on Foreign Relations), attracted widespread attention, ‘‘introducing the word ‘containment’ to the world,’’ as one account has put it. Drawing heavily on the Long Telegram, the article has been described by a veteran U.S. diplomat as ‘‘the most influential . . . ever written on American foreign policy.’’ The article had been attributed to a ‘‘Mr. X,’’ but ‘‘within a week [Kennan’s] thin cover had been blown.’’8 Kennan remained pps director until mid-1950 (in October 1947 he was formally designated the Department of State’s representative to the nsc). Although his influence waned toward the latter part of 1949, Kennan (seen as ‘‘a happy and invigorating mixture of diplomacy and buccaneering’’) pushed hard for plans that led to the institutionalization of covert action. He seemed at that point truly to have believed that ‘‘in the interests of world peace and U.S. national security, the overt foreign activities of the . . . government must be supplemented by covert operations.’’9 At its fourth meeting, in December 1947, the nsc acknowledged what it called the ‘‘vicious psychological efforts of the U.S.S.R.,’’ and partly at the behest of Kennan adopted initiatives to combat them. These initiatives would later support activity such as filming Orwell’s book. nsc 4, a policy statement, discussed the need to coordinate America’s public information activities in order to wage a successful propaganda war.10 Over the next months, Kennan—known for his ‘‘intellectual fecundity’’ (as a senior cia intelligence analyst later put it) and recognized as

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the State Department’s ‘‘chief strategist’’—pushed hard for adoption of plans of action defining ‘‘covert’’ ever more broadly. Unfortunately, the legislation creating the cia had not even provided statutory authority for what it had undertaken during the 1948 Italian elections.11 But proponents of such action found that the legislation allowed the agency to ‘‘perform such other functions . . . related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may . . . direct.’’ This language, in the eyes of one chronicler of the cia’s history, ‘‘has resisted authoritative interpretation.’’ As a later cia head cheerfully recalled, the nsc had ‘‘the sudden stroke of ingenuity’’ to use the ‘‘other functions’’ clause to justify clandestine operations. Critics of the agency subsequently pointed out that the ‘‘other functions’’ proviso had been stretched to encompass actions ‘‘not even hinted at’’ in the enabling legislation, and was ‘‘one of the vaguest statements ever written into law.’’12 On June 18, 1948, in nsc 10/2, the nsc authorized the implementation of most of Kennan’s covert action recommendations. The agency’s Office of Special Operations continued to research, evaluate, and analyze information, and to work both overtly and clandestinely to recruit and exploit agents in pursuing information. Covert action (ranging from paramilitary efforts to propagating misinformation) was placed in the hands of a newly created Office of Special Projects, quickly renamed the Office of Policy Coordination (opc), an ‘‘anodyne name’’ for what became a powerful policy instrument that in the late 1940s ‘‘was almost as secret as the Manhattan Project had been while producing the atomic bomb.’’13 opc, a hot potato if ever there was one, was lodged in the cia ‘‘but as a completely separate entity.’’ The cia supported it logistically with ‘‘quarters and rations’’ but formally and practically had little say over it. The secretary of state selected opc’s head. Policy guidelines for opc were laid down by a special ‘‘10/2 Panel’’ of representatives from Defense and State; any policy conflicts were ‘‘mediated’’ by the nsc. The chain of command did not include the cia’s director, but, while wearing a hat as director of central intelligence, that person received reports of opc’s activities.14 These unusual arrangements stemmed from nsc 10/2’s introduction of the concept of ‘‘plausible deniability into the lexicon of American foreign relations,’’ which, it was hoped, would allow the U.S. government to evade responsibility for covert activities if they were exposed. When the cia’s early days came under intense negative scrutiny during the

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1960s and 1970s, the anomalous bureaucratic structure of opc proved to be an inadequate fig leaf.15 The cia had been envisioned as an agency for research, analysis, and the collection of intelligence. opc pursued covert action. Indeed, according to one history, it initiated ‘‘thousands of covert action projects at various stages at any one time; forty by somebody’s account in one small Eastern European country alone.’’ An agency veteran recalled that because of the manner of its organization, opc’s ‘‘operations were featured by duplication and confusion.’’ As another intelligence expert later argued, opc may well have been a ‘‘bureaucratic master stroke,’’ cutting as it did through red tape, but senior cia officers later condemned the setup as ‘‘organizationally disastrous.’’ A cia head who later reviewed the bureaucratic arrangements called them ‘‘a lame compromise.’’16 In September 1948 Frank Gardiner Wisner, whose friend Kennan had placed him ‘‘at the head of the list,’’ took charge of opc. Not one of those who was concerned about ‘‘being beastly to the Bolshies,’’ Wisner, who has been lauded as an authentic Cold War hero, was fiercely antiCommunist. The son of a well-to-do Mississippi family, he earned college (1931) and law (1934) degrees at the University of Virginia, practiced with a Wall Street law firm, and in 1943 joined the Office of Strategic Services (oss). Like so many oss veterans, he seems to have preferred his wartime experience, where he was ‘‘in his glory,’’ according to one account. Unhappy with the ‘‘ordinary routine of civilian life’’ and, as a southerner, feeling ‘‘an outsider in New York society,’’ he left a lucrative Wall Street legal practice for Washington, D.C., and government service. Before becoming head of opc he was a deputy assistant secretary of state.17 Arthur Schlesinger Jr., who served with Wisner, found him ‘‘sharp, intense, high strung.’’ By all accounts Wisner was charming, confident, ‘‘a seemingly easy-going man with a steel-trap mind,’’ and ‘‘so enthusiastic that he often missed the point where bright ideas crossed over into lunacy.’’ He craved action; as one history of the cia asserts, ‘‘the times and the man had met.’’ Within weeks of assuming office he had proposed diverse opc projects, including ‘‘media operations, support of resistance movements, economic warfare, the creation of anti-Communist front organizations, and the development of covert organizations called ‘stay-behinds’ to conduct sabotage and intelligence operations if the Soviets overran Western Europe.’’ A later cia director, looking back at the

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agency’s early days, remarked with some awe that ‘‘he landed like a dynamo’’ and started ‘‘operating in the atmosphere of an order of Knights Templar, to save Western Europe from Communist darkness.’’18 In pursuit of his anti-Communist objectives Wisner wanted ‘‘to influence the opinions, emotions, attitudes, and behavior of enemy, neutral, and friendly groups in such a way as to support’’ American national policy and aims. Psychological warfare, or ‘‘psywar,’’ was a buzzword at the time; a State Department official recalled that ‘‘psychological was a fashionable word’’ in those days. Wisner’s psywar operations, though often implemented on an ad hoc basis, did yield some important results.19 He likened his covert propaganda activities to a ‘‘mighty Wurlitzer’’ (a type of large pipe organ found in movie theaters in the early decades of the twentieth century), boasting that he could ‘‘play just about any tune . . . from eerie horror music (Moscow is planning a purge . . . !!) to light fantasies.’’ Many of his colleagues dismissed his concept as being over the edge. But his Wurlitzer did prove to be a ‘‘wondrous machine.’’20 A superb political concert was given by the Radios, which blasted the Wurlitzer’s propaganda messages ceaselessly into Communist Europe, to the consternation of the regimes there, which complained vigorously of ‘‘subversion by radio.’’ Radio Free Europe, which began broadcasting in July 1950, and Radio Liberation from Bolshevism (later changed to Radio Liberty), which went on the air in March 1953, have justly been described as ‘‘the most famous examples of U.S. psychological warfare.’’21 A committee of interested, well-to-do, civic-minded citizens allegedly got together and underwrote a Kennan plan to put exiles from these countries on the air to broadcast in their own languages to Eastern Europe. Decades later the Radios’ true origins and funding became fully known: ‘‘non-governmental sources covered a miniscule share of the costs,’’ according to one Kennan biographer. A friendly chronicler of their operations reported that Wisner was a key participant who supplied the initial funds and was regularly consulted on organization matters and policy questions.22 Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty demonstrated the ability of Wisner, opc, and later the cia to keep covert such operations as funding the filming of Orwell’s book. Rumors about such activities circulated for years, in part because those who knew of the charade chose to ‘‘hide the agency’s connections.’’ Secrecy took priority.23 Typically, in 1950 Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Ed-

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ward Barrett—who, like most of Wisner’s peers, got along well with him—lauded Radio Free Europe as ‘‘a private organization . . . assisting the West’s job of persuasion’’ and as part of the American private sector’s contribution to a ‘‘Campaign for Truth.’’ And a few years later the formidable Barrett, once more a private citizen, continued to perpetuate this lie fluently, describing Radio Free Europe as a ‘‘private organization . . . assisting the West’s job of persuasion.’’24 In carrying out such operations Wisner, during his opc days and later, spent a lot of money. He did so with little concern about official oversight, thanks to provisions in 1949 legislation allowing the cia ‘‘to receive, exchange, and spend’’ funds for ‘‘confidential, extraordinary, or emergency operations’’ without accounting to Congress, as other government agencies were required to do.25 The Central Intelligence Act of 1949, ‘‘essentially a series of amendments to the National Security Act of 1947,’’ in the apt words of one historian, exempted the agency from disclosing ‘‘functions, names, official titles, salaries, and numbers of personnel employed.’’ This legislation, which was passed in what the New York Times called ‘‘an atmosphere of dense mystery’’ and with what one critic has termed ‘‘Congressional Undersight,’’ gave Wisner and the agency great latitude to expend funds unvouchered.26 In Western Europe Wisner used Marshall Plan counterpart funds. In June 1947 Secretary of State George Marshall, drawing on various proposals, set forth in a Harvard University commencement speech a plan to resuscitate a Europe ravaged by World War II. A New York Times columnist, describing the state of the continent in early 1947, could claim without exaggeration that ‘‘there has never been such destruction, such disintegration of the structure of life.’’ The United States already had provided millions of dollars of assistance, channeled through international agencies. But much more was necessary, and Marshall laid out a plan for a massive infusion of American aid ‘‘directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.’’27 For various reasons the Soviet Union and the countries it controlled, although invited to participate, chose not to do so. The focal point became Western Europe. Congress voted the necessary funds at the end of March 1948, President Truman signed the legislation into law on April 3, 1948, and Marshall Plan aid immediately began to flow through a European Recovery Program administered by the European Cooperation

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Administration (eca). For each dollar in aid received, as a top eca administrator later explained, ‘‘the recipient had to contribute an equal amount in local currency, 95% would be used for Marshall Plan programs, and 5% (the counterpart of the dollars provided) would be used by the U.S. government . . . to finance administrative and other miscellaneous costs.’’28 That 5 percent has been estimated to be close to $200 million a year, much of which Wisner appropriated for opc. Altogether, between 1948 and 1951 it is estimated that the eca funneled millions of dollars to opc. An October 1949 cia internal memo to him rather wistfully recommended that he observe ‘‘the normal financial policies, practices, and procedures for the handling of these . . . eca funds.’’ Wisner, ‘‘awash with funds’’ (as a cia-approved account puts it) gleaned from the cia’s regular budget as well, ignored this recommendation. eca administrator Paul Hoffmann, a successful U.S. auto executive who fervently believed in the power of economic development, being headquartered in Washington, D.C., may not have known or may have distanced himself from this clandestine aspect of the Marshall Plan.29 But opc and Wisner got tacit support from W. Averill Harriman, the eca’s field director in Paris. Harriman, a former ambassador to the Soviet Union, agreed with Kennan’s views about that country and was one of his strong supporters. Like many in the Truman administration, Harriman saw the Marshall Plan not only as well-intentioned, if selfinterested, benevolence but also as ‘‘an element in a . . . security strategy designed to contain Soviet expansion.’’30 And the eca, during the first years of the European Recovery Program, propagandized to obtain support not only for the program but also for U.S. plans and policies. As one scholar has succinctly put it, ‘‘propaganda described as ‘information’ was central to the operations’’ of the Marshall Plan. In pursuit of this goal the eca used ‘‘books, brochures, posters, exhibitions, competitions (for photographs or drawings which would be suitable to represent the Marshall Plan), and radio.’’ There was also a wide-ranging and highly successful film program, some of whose participants helped create the movie version of Animal Farm. eca counterpart unvouchered funds were used by opc to initiate production of that film. How aware of this the eca staff was remains unclear.31 To help develop covert propaganda projects, Wisner established a psychological warfare workshop. Not all the projects these ‘‘cool warriors’’

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developed enjoyed the success of Radio Free Europe. Indeed, this group spent a fair amount of time on high jinks. One of their pranks, which some histories take seriously, was ‘‘Operation Penis Envy,’’ which called for ‘‘extra large condoms’’ to be dropped by the millions from planes all over the Soviet Union. On them, printed in Russian, would be ‘‘Made in U.S.A.—Medium Size.’’32 More substantial was the workshop’s ‘‘Winds of Freedom’’ campaign, which sent thousands of propaganda-carrying balloons into Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. The leaflet-bearing balloons sometimes fell prey to shifting winds, but the tactic, undertaken for some years, proved successful enough to become an issue before the United Nations and to engender some bitter debates.33 Wisner and his opc associates recruited for the psywar workshop from what a later cia administrator characterized as ‘‘our inner circle of people,’’ which meant, as a policy wonk subsequently explained, that they had begun their careers in many of the same places. As a Yale professor later put it, this cohort was ‘‘heavy with Ivy League, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Chicago’’ and ‘‘elitist by educational background.’’ A number of these people played key roles in the production of the movie version of Animal Farm.34 Joseph J. Bryan III, chosen by Wisner to head the workshop, was a Virginian child of privilege and a Princeton graduate. Among Bryan’s recruits was fellow Princetonian and close friend Finis Farr, an intense fan of Orwell’s. And their friend Carlton Alsop, although lacking such educational credentials, was remembered as ‘‘a sophisticated, gracious, stylish bon vivant deliciously malicious in the same spirit as Alice Roosevelt Longworth.’’35 According to one knowledgeable observer, this ‘‘emergent elite . . . combined brains, ambition, style, and a thoroughly modern view of America’s role as a world power.’’ A contemporary Soviet observer, far from considering these individuals to be elite, said ‘‘they were just social climbers.’’36 Interestingly, Finis Farr—despite being a staunch anti-Communist—in his correspondence and the novels he wrote after resigning from the agency was a harsh critic who agreed with the Soviet. Farr attacked the ‘‘youngish men who hold appointed administrative posts . . . in government offices and . . . are characterized by the possession of social credentials . . . and what is known as ‘a little money’ . . . with perhaps an equal amount on the wife’s side.’’ Farr said that by the early 1950s the largest

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crowd of such people ever seen in Washington had ‘‘colonized’’ the Central Intelligence Agency; for him that represented one of the things that was wrong with the agency. Another was the increasing bureaucracy: ‘‘the amount of detail was so appallingly great that one had to float on top of it or be smothered.’’ Farr maintained there was ‘‘stupidity and bad manners . . . at the C.I.&A.,’’ and that ‘‘rudeness was common.’’37 Wisner’s ‘‘people,’’ according to a former Marine Corps counterintelligence officer, ‘‘were untouchable, there were no rules for them.’’ A veteran American diplomat, concerned about the impact of the recruits to opc on policy, for all his admiration of their intelligence, dedication, and charm, presciently expressed concern to his State Department superiors about an ‘‘in-bred outlook’’ that could lead to ‘‘unfortunate policy decisions.’’ True enough, many of these individuals would prove in time to be blindsided by their inability to deal with disparate views.38 In any event, the lifestyle of these ‘‘Young Turks’’ differed dramatically from that of many other government employees, including less well-off senior colleagues. One writer reported that the ‘‘curbs closest to opc offices were clogged with sports cars or late model fancy machines whereas the rest of the area would be filled in with the usual hodgepodge of older, sometimes battered vehicles.’’ The wives organized ‘‘the Cooking Class’’ in order to enhance their skills, and would whip up fancy meals and invite their husbands’ friends; Wisner was disinvited, despite his status, ‘‘for breaking the one inviolate rule, which was that the food would never be criticized or ridiculed.’’39 However one ultimately judges this group, either collectively or as individuals, and notwithstanding Farr’s harsh insider’s view, many of them did work well with Wisner at opc and later. The genesis of the idea to make a film of Orwell’s book lies with these men and with opc’s psychological warfare workshop, although others had also considered the use of Animal Farm for moving image propaganda.

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Many of Wisner’s associates had worked with the talented, respected, award-winning filmmaker Louis de Rochemont, and it was to him that they turned to produce a film version of Orwell’s book. Certainly that choice seemed smart and worthwhile. Louis de Rochemont was an extremely complex individual, with enormous energy and vitality, and he had demonstrated over the years an exciting capacity for dealing with innovative works successfully and with panache. His style has been likened to ‘‘the momentum of a maddened elephant crashing through the underbrush.’’ A longtime associate characterized him as ‘‘work obsessed.’’ The darker side of life fascinated de Rochemont; according to one member of his staff, he loved intrigue and espionage. Indeed, in 1953, during one of his stays in England, where he oversaw the production of Animal Farm, de Rochemont took an option on (and discussed with various official British sources) the story of the missing UK diplomats Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean, who had fled Great Britain in 1951 as presumed Soviet agents and whose whereabouts remained unclear until 1956, when they surfaced in Moscow.1 Although the de Rochemonts were descended from Huguenot ancestors who settled in New Hampshire early in the nineteenth century, Louis was ‘‘a distinctly New England product,’’ in the words of one of his biographers. Born in 1899, the son of a Boston attorney, he grew up in small-town Massachusetts, and, whatever the wide range of subjects de

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Rochemont dealt with during his long filmmaking career, ‘‘the values, imagery, and expectations that he brought to his life and work derived substantially from his New England experience.’’2 His movie career had begun when, as a teenager, he filmed his smalltown New England neighbors in their everyday pursuits and sold the footage to local theater owners and managers under the title ‘‘See Yourself as Others See You.’’ He scored a coup by persuading a jail official to reenact the incarceration of a prominent prisoner. Other newsreel companies cried fraud, but the young de Rochemont was able to sell the footage, and he used this kind of ‘‘re-creation’’ very successfully in his later career. His formal education ended at age eighteen, when he joined the navy in 1917, on America’s entry into World War I. He remained in the navy after the end of hostilities in 1918, resigning his commission in 1923. Despite his varied navy duties (at one point he served as executive officer aboard the flagship of a division of destroyers), de Rochemont maintained his interest in filming newsworthy events, and marketed much of the footage he shot.3 After leaving the service he worked for various newsreel companies, first as a cameraman and later as a film editor. He had a flair for dealing with difficult subjects and with authority. In 1930 he captured the appalling violence in Bombay, one of the centers of British rule in India, that followed Gandhi’s march across India to the sea to protest the British rulers’ tax on salt. As John Gunther reported, ‘‘a fire of rebellion followed’’ in Gandhi’s wake, despite his emphasis on nonviolence, and de Rochemont managed to circumvent government censorship and smuggle out of India film footage of ‘‘white police and dusky soldiers beating back the turbulent native mob,’’ as a New York Times film critic put it.4 In the early 1930s he worked for Fox Movietone, the world’s largest and best-financed newsreel organization at that time, and oversaw production of a well-received series of eight- to ten-minute one-reelers, ‘‘Magic Carpet of Movietone’’—the company’s ‘‘first adventure in the short subject field since the advent of sound.’’ His eclectic interests led him to film a variety of subjects, including rites in a lama temple in Peiping, the sacred grottos at Lourdes, an orthodox Jewish high holy day service in New York City, life aboard the English naval ships in the harbor of Gibraltar, and a massive Hindu revival meeting in India. The scenes in Wandering Through China are a fascinating glimpse of a country in transition and range from traditional village craftsmen at work to

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the terrace of a modern Shanghai hotel, where sleek young men and women (‘‘nearly all of them . . . habitual hashish eaters,’’ according to de Rochemont) danced to the strains of American jazz.5 At least some of this footage was staged or re-created, as were parts of his Cry of the World, a sixty-two-minute 1932 compilation film that drew mainly on Fox Movietone footage to present what was called ‘‘a film record of world events since 1918.’’ In MTV fashion, de Rochemont hopped around with film segments dealing with the final days of World War I, the effects of Prohibition, the Russian Revolution, Mussolini’s Fascism, advocates of peace speaking out for disarmament, Communist ‘‘hunger marches’’ in the United States, Hitler campaigning for office, the effects of women’s suffrage, and pictures of the recently kidnapped Lindbergh baby, among other subjects. Although some of the trade reviews admired the film’s ‘‘fearful reality,’’ overall it was a critical and commercial failure (Variety called it ‘‘dry and pointless’’), and cost de Rochemont a considerable amount of his own money. Interestingly, in light of his later activities in the 1950s and 1960s with educational films, the nontheatrical rights to this film were vested in an International Film Foundation (headed by the president of Clark University) formed to produce ‘‘specialized teaching films.’’6 The fledgling producer had more success with March of the Years, a series of one-reelers that re-created interesting events often involving celebrated people. These shorts dealt with an eclectic group of subjects, from Boss Tweed to Lizzie Borden, Commodore Perry to the Wright Brothers, and touched on the impetus for Prohibition as well as The Black Crook—the first successful American musical comedy. These ten-minute shorts, marketed as the ‘‘first different short feature since Mickey Mouse,’’ were successfully released by Columbia in 1933 and 1934.7 This series, according to de Rochemont, was based on the highly successful radio series The March of Time, which owed its development and success to Roy Larsen, an innovative executive at Time, Inc. In effect a radio newsreel, The March of Time dramatized colorful current events in the iconoclastic Time magazine style. Begun in 1931, the show featured a narrator who led listeners into the dramatized events, accompanied by marvelous imaginative special effects (‘‘a decapitation . . . suggested by the quick slicing of a cantaloupe which then fell into a box of sawdust’’) and a deft musical score played by an accomplished orchestra. The se-

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quences were punctuated by the narrator’s somewhat bombastic tagline, ‘‘time—marches on,’’ which became part of everyday parlance.8 Actors who mimicked people in the news often played more than one character. In one broadcast an actress played the president’s wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins; in another, Ted de Corsia, who after World War II enjoyed a long movie career as a tough villain, played both Herbert Hoover and Mussolini. A young Orson Welles, then very active in radio, fondly remembered the series as ‘‘great fun’’ and a ‘‘marvelous show to do.’’9 In 1934 Larsen induced de Rochemont to join him in developing a film version of the corporation’s successful radio show. The two men patterned the film series on the radio programs, and the success of the enterprise was largely due to their combined efforts. The film March of Time, which premiered in February 1935, was very unlike the newsreels of the day. The five newsreel companies then active (Paramount News, Fox Movietone, Hearst mgm’s News of the Day, rko-Pathe News, and Universal Newsreel) presented ‘‘a headline service’’ described by one commentator as a jumble of unrelated stories that ‘‘jump-cut . . . through national news, foreign pageantry, bathing beauties, baby shots, animal antics, and the off-beat candid shot, publicity stunt, or celebrity sighting.’’10 Initially, each twenty-minute monthly issue of The March of Time included three or four separate stories designed to be comparable to the feature article of a news weekly. Writer Louise Tanner remembers them as ‘‘a mixed bag . . . that covered a lot of ground’’: one issue (March 1936) dealt with Japanese militarism, Devil’s Island, and commercial fishing. By the end of 1938 each issue of this monthly screen magazine dealt with only one topic, such as the Maginot Line (October 1938) or the Vatican (February 1940). One historian notes that all of de Rochemont’s ‘‘expertly edited’’ issues were unhurried and expansive, providing an attractive blend of ‘‘background information, . . . historical footage, and editorial opinion.’’ Under de Rochemont’s aegis these techniques were also used in longer works.11 The first feature-length film produced by The March of Time was The Ramparts We Watch. Released in September 1940, a year into World War II, the film was anti-isolationist and anti-German, in the spirit of the ‘‘messianic globalism’’ that had led Henry Luce to mobilize Time, Inc., against the Nazis. It was filmed in New London, Connecticut, with a

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mainly nonprofessional cast acting in the main at locations chosen to represent World War I small-town America. This film used March of Time’s familiar techniques of putting together historical re-creation with actuality film and included such footage as President Woodrow Wilson asking for a declaration of war against Germany in 1917.12 The film’s final scenes used material from a German propaganda feature, Feldzug in Polen (U.S. title Baptism of Fire), depicting the quick, brutal, decisive German invasion of Poland in September 1939; through complicated, devious, and to this day not totally clear means, de Rochemont had managed to obtain the film. He used only carefully edited excerpts, the narration of which he altered in order to heighten the antiNazi stance of The Ramparts We Watch. The German government strenuously objected. Although not a commercial success, this feature did receive generally favorable reviews. Two other features caused less of a stir. The fifty-three-minute Story of the Vatican, released in the summer of 1941, was an extension of an earlier March of Time issue. Monsignor Fulton J. Sheen, for decades the Catholic Church’s outstanding media personality, handled the narration, for which, according to Variety, he was given ‘‘full leeway’’ by the producers. Generally well received, the film seems to have broken even. Work began on the seventy-minute We Are the Marines before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 1941. The film released in December 1942 begins with a foreword that reads: ‘‘We who are shown in this picture are not actors, but United States Marines. Most of us whom you see will now have been in battle . . . many of us are now bravely dead.’’ The Hays Office, the movie industry’s self-censorship body, insisted that the word ‘‘bastards’’ be removed from a Marine officer’s order ‘‘to blow the bastards out of the water’’ during one of the film’s reenacted battle scenes. A newspaper reviewer found the film an ‘‘absorbing . . . often exciting account of the marines’ ‘American way of doing things,’’’ and in 1978 it was summed up as ‘‘a competent if not artistically distinguished documentary.’’13 Just as de Rochemont’s use of cartoon techniques to film Animal Farm’s serious issues would be heralded as a novel approach, so too through The March of Time he became known for bringing ‘‘fresh and revolutionary ideas’’ to the presentation of news. Luce boasted of de Rochemont’s use of reenactment, location shooting, and manipulation of stock footage as ‘‘fakery in allegiance to truth.’’ During de Rochemont’s

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tenure with The March of Time he oversaw at least a hundred productions, and no matter who made these films, de Rochemont put his stamp on every one.14 There is no denying that thanks in large part to de Rochemont’s determination, innovation, and expertise, The March of Time became a ‘‘smash success,’’ and was recognized as such early on. It won a special Academy Award in 1937 ‘‘for having revolutionized . . . the newsreel.’’ Larsen’s involvement notwithstanding (one staffer recalls that because of his commitment during the series’ early days, one of Time, Inc.’s largest stockholders and chief officers ‘‘was working in the cutting room like everybody else’’), de Rochemont more than anyone else was and has continued to be identified with The March of Time. His New York Times obituary recognized the contributions of others but described him as the originator of the series.15 rko distributed the series almost from its inception. In 1942 Time, Inc., decided to switch to Twentieth Century Fox. This change, damaging to the series, was not favored by de Rochemont. And he had other problems with his employers. They recognized and valued his talents but became somewhat dissatisfied with some of his actions and attitudes. He at one time suggested moving much of the operation up to his farm in New Hampshire. He failed to pay sufficient attention to critiques of his sometimes excessive spending. And he seems to have grown bored with churning out two-reel documentaries; one of his associates, the erudite Arthur Tourtellot, later said it seemed that de Rochemont ‘‘wanted to prove a whole lot of things with regard to the making of features, and Time did not see fit to underwrite such things.’’ In August 1943 de Rochemont resigned.16 He soon found a home at Twentieth Century Fox and flourished there for some years. His first assignment was to pull together thousands of feet of actuality footage of carrier warfare in the Pacific. In early 1942 the navy had commissioned a veteran travelogue filmmaker to record operations aboard the aircraft carrier Yorktown. When the task proved too difficult for one man, a group of armed forces cameramen headed by the noted photographer Edward Steichen shot between 60,000 and 120,000 feet of film (sources vary) about the carrier’s activities. From this mass of film de Rochemont, aided by some former colleagues from Time, Inc., such as the writer John Stuart Martin, put together a color film of some 6,000 feet (a little more than an hour).

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Titled The Fighting Lady (for ‘‘security reasons’’ the ship was described as a composite of all Pacific Fleet carriers), the result was a very effective, moving record of everyday life on an aircraft carrier and of the missions flown by its planes. As one critic noted, the film’s narrative structure was ‘‘very similar to the generic conventions of the fictional war film’’ of the time, dealing with ‘‘the creation of an effective fighting unit out of a group of regionally, ethnically, and socially diverse group of civilians who represent America in microcosm.’’ Very well received at the time, The Fighting Lady won an Oscar for Best Documentary Feature of 1944.17 This film’s success enabled de Rochemont to persuade Twentieth Century Fox production head Darryl Zanuck to proceed with what were termed ‘‘journalistic features.’’ The seeds of de Rochemont’s subsequent falling out with the creative Zanuck seem to have been planted almost at the beginning of their relationship. Zanuck admired de Rochemont’s capabilities but subsequently maintained that the ‘‘semi-documentary’’ (a catch phrase of the day) style of de Rochemont’s Twentieth Century Fox features actually ‘‘came out of my noodle.’’ The autocratic Zanuck vetoed de Rochemont’s original concepts, and together they devised the idea of ‘‘factual dramatization’’ in order to produce a feature that was not just an extended March of Time but an entertainment that would attract an audience; for Zanuck it was ‘‘not enough just to tell an interesting story.’’18 Three features were produced by de Rochemont for Twentieth Century Fox: The House on 92nd Street (1945, directed by Henry Hathaway), 13 Rue Madeleine (1946, also directed by Hathaway), and Boomerang (1947, directed by Elia Kazan). Regardless of director, all had what was called ‘‘the de Rochemont look,’’ which featured extensive location shooting. Given the auteur slant of contemporary film studies, more attention has been paid to the directors of these features than to their producer, but in the 1940s, as the perceptive critic James Agee pointed out, de Rochemont’s films ‘‘represented a new and vigorous trend in U.S. filmmaking.’’ All these films were, in Agee’s words, ‘‘a well-crafted blend of fact, real people, actors, and fiction.’’ Each included a title card stating in effect that their exterior and interior settings ‘‘were photographed wherever possible at the actual locations.’’ Even at his best, however, de Rochemont fudged more than a little: on 13 Rue Madeleine, for instance, ‘‘scenes in London were shot in old Boston, French backgrounds were shot in Quebec, and a Massachusetts mansion doubled as an English training base.’’19

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The House on 92nd Street, drawn from an actual fbi case, dealt with the Bureau’s use of William Sebold (real name Wilhelm Georg Debrowski) to round up a German spy ring. The Abwehr (German intelligence) had pressed this naturalized American into service in 1939 through Gestapo threats against his family while he was visiting them in Nazi Germany. Once back in the United States he worked with the fbi, which set him up in an office where the Bureau filmed and recorded his encounters with German agents, gave him ‘‘vital un-truths’’ for transmission to Germany, and tracked all those with whom he came into contact. In July 1941 the fbi arrested more than thirty of the German agents; all but one either pleaded guilty or were convicted of espionage. Sebold, as one history notes, ‘‘was given the thanks of his adopted country and faded into American society with a new name and new life.’’ Even one of the fbi’s sternest critics found its record in this case ‘‘a good one.’’20 For the film, de Rochemont fictionalized parts of the story: Sebold became Bill Dietrich, a German-American college student promised a good job in Germany. Like his real counterpart, he contacts the fbi and at its behest attends a spy school in Hamburg. On returning to the United States he opens—as Sebold had done—a decoy office. At the end of the film, in a departure from the real-life story, an exposed Dietrich faces danger but the fbi rescues him and rounds up the German agents. In the film their Nazi superiors order them on concentrate on ‘‘Process 97.’’ The film’s makers, taking advantage of the first use of nuclear weapons in 1945, just before the film premiered, announced in a foreword to the film that the fictional ‘‘Process 97’’ was ‘‘the U.S. military’s most carefully guarded and important secret: the development of the atomic bomb.’’ The House on 92nd Street earned splendid reviews and more than double its million-dollar cost.21 At war’s end in 1945 the ‘‘cloak and dagger’’ activities of the oss became widely known as a result of attempts by its director, General William (‘‘Wild Bill’’) Donovan, to save it as a peacetime agency with himself as chief. He failed, but the exploits used to publicize oss became movie fodder. 13 Rue Madeleine was one of a number that exploited the story. Because the studio clashed with Donovan about the story line, the film referred to an intelligence group it called 0-77, which was ‘‘a feeble and wistful disguise’’ as New York Times reviewer Bosley Crowther put it.22 The first part of the film dealt in what Crowther called ‘‘newsreel exactitude’’ with the training of operatives and made good use of its star,

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James Cagney, as a multilingual scholar who oversees the complex training program and spots a Nazi double agent. The second part finds Cagney parachuting into occupied France to replace a unit member murdered by the double agent. Cagney completes the mission but is captured and interrogated at Gestapo headquarters, located at 13 rue Madeleine. The Cagney character knows the date of the upcoming Allied invasion; in order to protect that secret, American planes obliterate the headquarters while he laughs manically in the face of his torturers, among them the double agent. The film’s two parts do not hang together, and it got mixed reviews. Its $2 million cost, a large chunk of which went to Cagney, was only barely recouped, thanks to overseas earnings.23 Boomerang, another de Rochemont production, is based on a 1924 incident. This well-received movie, described as a ‘‘you-are-there newsreel,’’ dealt with the unsolved murder of a Connecticut priest. A maladjusted young man is arrested and charged with the crime, and an outraged community judges him guilty. After assessing the evidence, the prosecuting attorney concludes that the man is innocent. Despite considerable pressure and the implication that his future is at stake, the prosecutor at the trial, as depicted by the movie, presents a forceful case for the man’s innocence (one critic called it ‘‘a dramatic [but implausible] case’’), resulting in acquittal of the indicted man. At the end of the movie the prosecutor is identified as Homer Cummings, who served from 1933 to 1939 as Franklin D. Roosevelt’s attorney general. Elia Kazan, the film’s director, found de Rochemont ‘‘an agreeable and intelligent man, agreeable enough and intelligent enough to leaving the filmmaking to the film makers.’’ Boomerang generated positive reviews but only a small profit.24 The House on 92nd Street had benefited from de Rochemont’s professionally close relationship with the publicity-savvy fbi director, J. Edgar Hoover. The final screenplay, in addition to drawing on the Sebold story, represented ‘‘an amalgam of fbi cases’’ made available to de Rochemont. Thanks to what the film’s foreword called ‘‘the complete cooperation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation,’’ The House on 92nd Street included not only shots of Hoover, fbi headquarters in Washington, and the Bureau’s fingerprint offices and crime laboratory, but also secret fbi footage of the German embassy and its employees (including the ambassador). Thanks to the fbi’s input, the film at the time of its release was seen as much more than routine spy fiction.25 The ties to Hoover were formed during the March of Time days. Two

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of its releases (Men of the F.B.I.: 1941, and The F.B.I. Front [1942]), filmed with the Bureau’s ‘‘official cooperation,’’ had dealt reverentially with Hoover and the fbi. For de Rochemont these films marked the beginning of a long symbiotic relationship with Hoover. The fbi cooperated fully with de Rochemont, to his great benefit professionally and personally. In 1952, for example, Hoover wired fbi agents attached to U.S. embassies abroad ‘‘to extend any courtesies to de Rochemont’’ possible. That same year de Rochemont produced for Columbia release Walk East on Beacon, which dealt with the failed efforts (thanks to the fbi) of a foreign Communist agent’s efforts to spur a slow-moving Boston apparatus to acquire details about a top-secret American project. Later characterized as a ‘‘commercial for the fbi,’’ to whom all ‘‘loyal citizens’’ should report ‘‘anything suspicious,’’ the film, a contemporary critic wrote, portrayed Communists as ‘‘ruthless and powerful foes.’’26 Critics on the Left, especially in the 1930s, assuming de Rochemont shared Luce and his company’s politically conservative point of view, attacked The March of Time for ‘‘a right-wing bias’’ and as ‘‘a deceptive carrier of right-wing values.’’ Whether de Rochemont ever had a coherent political ideology remains open to debate. He loathed the Fascists and Nazis, believing in the 1930s and early 1940s that they threatened the American way of life. He felt the same way about the Communists and the Soviets in the postwar years. In his correspondence he expressed great concern about ‘‘the general indifference to Communism’’ in the West, and dismay at ‘‘the Russian espionage infiltration into U.S. government, education, and industry . . . on a scale that seems incredible.’’27 In December 1950 de Rochemont reacted angrily to President Truman’s moderate response to the Red Chinese intervention in the Korean War, wiring him ‘‘your speech lacks the inspiration and leadership the american people must have. . . . you have sold us short.’’ He also attacked publicly contemporary documentary filmmakers who, he maintained, had ‘‘tried to sneak in a little message . . . trying to sell us on the idea that our private property system was all washed up.’’ He developed for a while a vigorous knee-jerk anti-Communism, so much so that in 1953 a Columbia Pictures executive rejected a de Rochemont proposal because, as he put it, ‘‘in my opinion, this is entirely an anti-Russian . . . anti-Communist film without the face saving grace . . . that wins audiences.’’28 Certainly nothing in his attitude would have caused opc’s overseers

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concern. In 1950, responding to a Hollywood executive’s concern about ‘‘having a picture killed by engagement of subversives who may still be unknown,’’ de Rochemont reported that, since 1947, ‘‘we have investigated the background . . . of all principal artists used . . . , directors or writers, . . . we make as thorough a loyalty check as a private organization can accomplish.’’ In the same vein de Rochemont urged a screenwriter with ‘‘problems’’ who wired him for assistance ‘‘to help the fbi—and your country by supplying information . . . before it is too late.’’ He exhorted his correspondent to have faith in the fbi, which, he wrote, ‘‘is extremely fair in dealing with matters such as yours provided that you . . . demonstrate your own sincerity by complete frankness.’’29 The success of de Rochemont’s Twentieth Century Fox features notwithstanding, he had felt fettered creatively and otherwise by studio head Daryl Zanuck. Neither seems to have lived up to the other’s expectations. The supremely self-confident Zanuck believed that ‘‘there was only one boss . . . and that was me.’’ That kind of attitude did not sit well with the independent de Rochemont. Inevitably they clashed, ever more seriously over time. In order to sever his ties to the studio de Rochemont took the unusual step of hiring an agent to get him out of his contract. What he remembered as a ‘‘short unsatisfactory interlude’’ with mgm followed.30 Thereafter de Rochemont created various companies for the purpose of producing educational, instructional, and industrial films, allying himself with various sponsors. The U.S. Information Service (usis) distributed many of these short subjects. A usis Filmdienst Filmkatalog (Film Service Film Catalogue) of the time included more than a dozen de Rochemont shorts, dealing with such disparate subjects as Abraham Lincoln, a Milford, Connecticut, grade-school civics class, Eskimos, and the functioning of an American union local. He and his associates also produced films like The History of Communism for government agencies such as the State Department. One of his associates believes that such activity may have played a role in recommending de Rochemont to opc.31 The de Rochemont company that formally oversaw production of Animal Farm was rd-dr (an acronym for Reader’s Digest–de Rochemont). After leaving mgm, de Rochemont had joined forces with the Reader’s Digest to form this company, which would serve, in the words of its letterhead, as ‘‘Producers of Reader’s Digest on the Screen and Dramas of Real Life from the Reader’s Digest.’’ It was through the Reader’s Digest, then,

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that de Rochemont became involved in one of his most notable productions. At the end of the 1940s, when he and the magazine began working together, the treatment of mature subject matter in films was paying off at the box office. Movies dealing with formally taboo subjects such as anti-Semitism and mental health attracted what Variety called ‘‘Top Coin.’’ Soon various filmmakers were vying to make movies dealing with America’s racial problems. Although not the first to benefit from the profitable controversy that would result from a ‘‘racially aware’’ film, de Rochemont did produce a significant entry. Lost Boundaries, which he completed in mid-1949, showed sensitivity and intelligence, for that era, in dealing with the subject of ‘‘passing’’ as white. This film, which shocked its audiences, now seems preachy and inconsequential. Unfortunately, critic Pauline Kael’s dictum that ‘‘it’s doubtful whether a movie could have as intense an impact now as it had in its time’’ applies not only to the de Rochemont film but to almost all of the socially committed films of the 1948–50 cycle.32 Reportedly de Rochemont learned by accident about the events on which Lost Boundaries is based, which took place in New Hampshire. He took the story to De Witt Wallace, who ran Reader’s Digest and who assigned the first-rate journalist W. L. White, a Digest roving editor, to write up the tale of a midwestern light-skinned black couple who had ‘‘passed’’ as white. After training as a radiologist at Harvard, the husband became a respected doctor in New Hampshire. Before Pearl Harbor he volunteered for service with the navy, which twice had approached him because he was one of some twenty-two hundred radiologists in the United States. Like all prospective officers, he was investigated, his African heritage was discovered, and the navy rejected him on the grounds that he was unable ‘‘to meet physical requirements.’’ At the time, as one historian reports, ‘‘the Naval Academy . . . refused to allow its lacrosse team to play against Harvard if a black member of the university’s team appeared on the field.’’ The navy admitted blacks only ‘‘as mess men, assigned to make officers’ beds, serve their meals, clean their rooms, shine their shoes, and check their laundry.’’33 The doctor returned to New Hampshire and, despite rumors about his racial background, managed to explain away the navy’s failure to induct him and successfully continued his medical practice. When his children and the community learned the truth about the couple’s heritage there

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were some problems, though none as melodramatic as those presented in de Rochemont’s film version of the story. White later expanded his article, ‘‘Document of a New Hampshire Family,’’ into a favorably received book, Lost Boundaries, which served as the basis for the film. Produced by rd-dr, the movie was seen as even more ‘‘outspoken’’ than the article or the book in ‘‘its attack on racial prejudice.’’34 In producing this film de Rochemont made use of his traditional and economical techniques of location shooting, using mostly nonprofessionals and comparative unknowns. He also benefited from his ability to win the cooperation of townspeople in and around his Newington, New Hampshire, farm home. But costs ran higher than expected. Ultimately he had a large personal stake in the film, having ‘‘put up $145,500 of the total $518,000 production cost . . . and mortgaged his home, car, tractor, farm insurance policies, and short film company as security for a loan of $300,000,’’ according to one report.35 Lost Boundaries received good notices and did well at the box office (for a while its domestic rentals were alleged to be ‘‘phenomenal’’), but the film’s distributor went bankrupt and, as Variety reported, this was a blow to de Rochemont and meant that the film made him very little money despite its critical and commercial success. While de Rochemont did recover in the long run what he had laid out for Lost Boundaries, because of the bankruptcy of the initial distributor and unfortunate deals with its successors, he was left with very little in the end.36 His finances continued to deteriorate, even though he and his associates had managed in January 1950 to sign a distribution deal with Columbia Pictures that would bring feature financing but would allow them to continue making the less costly but reasonably profitable documentary and educational films—an arrangement that made it possible for him and the studio to part ways on Animal Farm (treated as an educational film). Unfortunately for de Rochemont, the first feature he made as part of the Columbia deal was a bust. The Whistle at Eaton Falls, although well meaning, dealt ineptly with labor-management relations at a struggling plastics factory in a small New Hampshire town. A fairy tale ending with big new orders for the factory allows the bitter squabbles to be settled even though issues are not really resolved. Later de Rochemont recalled that ‘‘this feature encountered more resistance than any I ever made,’’ and he wrote one well-wisher, ‘‘we have taken a staggering loss on the project.’’37

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The Cold War political views of de Rochemont made him attractive to those who were interested in filming Animal Farm, while his difficult economic situation made him receptive to their overtures. Just who picked de Rochemont to film Orwell’s book remains an open question surrounded by misinformation and partial truths: the various answers are fragmented and subject to the special interests of the respondents. Exactly how and when the links between de Rochemont and opc were forged remains a mystery (and will remain so until the cia is more forthcoming). In a way, however, the answer is simple: de Rochemont was seen as a real Cold Warrior who made no bones about his anti-Communism, and his close rapport with J. Edgar Hoover underscored that view. Moreover, de Rochemont’s track record proved his ability to deal with unusual subjects, gaining him a well-deserved reputation as innovative and imaginative, even though he was also known as ‘‘a careless administrator.’’ In addition, all the key opc players had crossed paths with him either at The March of Time or in the tightly knit New York media world.38 Well before the release of The Whistle at Eaton Falls, the treasurer of rd-dr had warned de Rochemont of the need for a ‘‘tightening of the belt,’’ and subsequently had informed him and key rd-dr personnel that given ‘‘the state of our financial affairs . . . I feel that our present position is of such moment that we need to take immediate steps.’’ This dire need for funds certainly made de Rochemont receptive to the opc offer, though arguably, given his interests and ambition, he would have been equally receptive even without financial problems.39

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opc was not the only government agency interested in converting Orwell’s book into moving-image propaganda. The Information Research Department (ird) was a clandestine branch of the British Foreign Office, closely linked to the United Kingdom’s secret intelligence service (MI6). The ird, during its nearly thirty-year lifespan (1949–77), managed to keep from public scrutiny most of its activities in a ‘‘dirty tricks department’’ whose mission was ‘‘to combat Communist propaganda.’’ Covert activities included not only organizing counterpropaganda (the ird tried unsuccessfully to get the BBC to use the phrase ‘‘police state’’ whenever a reference was made to the Soviet Union), but also ‘‘character assassination, false telegrams, putting itching powder on lavatory seats.’’ By the early 1950s the ird was the largest department of the Foreign Office, although much of its effort went into domestic affairs.1 Although the ird has been seen as ‘‘an ill-defined outfit, with a very diverse group of people fumbling their way . . . into the new ‘cold war’ against . . . Britain’s recent wartime ally,’’ the Soviet Union, the ird’s importance is difficult to overestimate. The ird vigorously and successfully promoted the antitotalitarian novels of Orwell. Like its American counterparts, the ird bought up foreign rights to Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four and offered them ‘‘free of charge’’ to select publishers, as well as providing considerable help with translation costs. According to Tony Shaw, the ird worked with an American agency ‘‘to produce

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under the cover of a private company in Cairo a cheap illustrated version of Animal Farm in Arabic.’’2 The ird also commissioned a comic-strip version of Animal Farm, distributed to the press throughout Britain’s still considerable sphere of influence. Lesley Sheridan, ostensibly a public relations consultant but really a veteran intelligence officer, oversaw this venture. ‘‘Sherry’’ enjoys the dubious distinction of being the person who, at the outbreak of World War II, was sent to ask Kim Philby (later unmasked as a successful Soviet spy) to ‘‘join’’ MI6. Among Sheridan’s duties in overseeing the comicstrip version was advising the cartoonist to correct drawings of animals that looked ‘‘too pansy’’ or ‘‘cretinous.’’3 Some months after distribution of the comic-strip, Sheridan— reporting that ‘‘it had been well worth the comparatively modest sum we spent’’—suggested making a film strip based on the drawings that, like the comic strip, would be distributed throughout Britain’s still substantial sphere of influence in Asia and Africa. This idea drew a tepid response from his superiors. Sheridan, noting that Orwell’s literary agents had been ‘‘extremely helpful and generous,’’ expressed concern that delay might interfere with acquiring the rights. Such proved to be the case (since these had been obtained by de Rochemont), and Sheridan had to scupper the project, although subsequently the ird acquired prints of the movie, which were distributed to ‘‘top priority’’ locations.4 Among the other organizations interested in filming Orwell’s book was the U.S. Army, which cabled Orwell’s American agents to ask the price of movie rights. The $50,000 price quoted in reply led army representatives to request rights free of charge for Japan only, on the grounds that a film version of Animal Farm would ‘‘aid in re-orienting and reestablishing the Japanese people’’ to democratic ideals. Orwell’s U.S. agents did not accede to the request. More commercial considerations motivated an inquiry by the Walter Lantz Company (perhaps best remembered as producer/creator of the Woody Woodpecker cartoons), which inquired of the agents about the availability and price of the rights, and as a result of ongoing negotiations with de Rochemont were informed—as were others who inquired—that ‘‘the rights are not free.’’5 In early October 1950, in obvious ignorance of the American government agency’s interest in and dealings with Louis de Rochemont, Orwell’s literary agents in London had written to their U.S. counterpart that ‘‘we should be glad if you would do anything you can to dispose of Ameri-

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can motion picture rights in this property.’’ By then a de Rochemont employee had already begun work on translating Orwell’s words into something that could be put on screen. Leonard Heideman, who later became a successful, prolific journeyman writer for such popular American TV shows as Bonanza and Highway Patrol, penned for de Rochemont a fascinating, intelligent, reasonably sophisticated synopsis (dated September 24, 1950, and obviously requested some weeks earlier) of Orwell’s book, intended to serve as the basis for a movie.6 There is no reason to doubt the early commitment of de Rochemont. A little more than a year after Heideman completed his synopsis, F. Bordon Mace—the president of rd-dr—informed a screenwriter who came to the company with a plan for filming the book that ‘‘we have been at work for over a year on the adaptation of Animal Farm.’’ At that time he also apprised an agent whose client had expressed an interest in working with de Rochemont on filming Orwell’s book that work was already under way, and that ‘‘we started our treatment in November of 1950.’’7 The divided response that Heideman’s effort received in house foreshadowed a number of the problems in dealing with the book’s politics in a style satisfactory to the film’s ‘‘financial sponsors,’’ one of various euphemistic terms used by de Rochemont and his associates in memos and letters when referring to opc and its representatives. In reviewing Heideman’s effort, Lemist Elster—a co-screenwriter, along with de Rochemont’s wife, on The Whistle at Eaton Falls, praised him for doing ‘‘an excellent job,’’ but—as Elster told de Rochemont in an obvious reference to the government agency’s interest—given what ‘‘you have told me of the primary purpose,’’ changes would have to be made in order ‘‘to project its significance as counter-propaganda for greatest impact upon all classes of society.’’8 Elster’s comments, made even before negotiations for the right to film Animal Farm had begun in earnest, discussed the project and a possible screenplay in terms of typical Cold War buzz phrases such as ‘‘Tsarist Russia,’’ ‘‘Old Bolsheviks,’’ ‘‘Marxian dialectics,’’ and ‘‘the Stalin-Trotsky row.’’ Elster argued that a major difficulty in transferring the book to the screen was that Farmer Jones, while meant to symbolize the ‘‘ancien regime against which the animals rebel,’’ as developed in Heideman’s effort ‘‘unfortunately cannot be identified as the Tsar.’’ In his comments Elster also argued that Orwell’s book ‘‘is written at least for quasi-intellectuals,’’ and that if the proposed screen version was to be effective, ‘‘to

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bring its message to the peasantry and proletariat as well,’’ it must ‘‘be much more obvious’’ in its use of symbols than Heideman had been.9 Elster made various suggestions that he believed would achieve the necessary symbolism. Among his suggestions for ‘‘having the film reach all grades of intellect,’’ for example, was the inclusion of a sequence not in the book that he thought would appeal to ‘‘the still fairly numerous Trotskyites . . . outside the USSR.’’ This sequence would show Snowball, Orwell’s Trotsky figure, having fled to ‘‘a tropical country (Mexico?),’’ being visited by ‘‘a benign looking pig,’’ who gains admission and is warmly greeted as a visitor from ‘‘the old country.’’ Suddenly, ‘‘the pig flings aside his disguise, revealing himself as a fierce dog, who viciously tears open Snowball’s throat.’’ This sequence, maintained Elster, would ‘‘emulate’’ Stalin’s murder of Trotsky. The Heideman effort and Elster’s memo were discussed in detail by de Rochemont and his associates and played a role in their belief that a movie could be made from Orwell’s book.10 These developments played out against a reining in of Wisner. The friction between opc and other sections of the cia, as well as diverse factors such as President Truman’s unhappiness with the agency’s failure to anticipate the June 1950 Communist invasion of South Korea, led to the appointment of General Walter Bedell Smith as cia director. Described as ‘‘the quintessential organization man’’ and an ‘‘authoritarian taskmaster,’’ he had made his way from humble beginnings in the Indiana National Guard to the top of the officer corps without the benefit of service academy or even a college degree, earning his stars, as one peer put it, ‘‘by furiously hard work, an iron self-discipline, and relentless attention to business.’’11 Smith had served superbly as General Eisenhower’s chief of staff during World War II at shaef, and subsequently spent three years as U.S. ambassador to the USSR. His executive assistant at the cia remembered the general as having ‘‘a photographic memory, an encyclopedic mind, and a formidable personality.’’ An intelligence service veteran has described Smith as ‘‘imperious’’ but wanting ‘‘to hear opposing views.’’ However, as one of his chroniclers has averred, he was not a manager who ‘‘would tolerate an independent entity under his command.’’ Within days of becoming cia director in early October 1950, he informed the State and Defense Departments that he had unilaterally assumed administrative control of opc.12 The hardboiled Smith, who, one observer noted, ‘‘ran the organization

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as though it was a barracks full of green recruits,’’ decided, in the admiring words of a cia officer, that ‘‘if he were responsible for opc, he was going to run it.’’ With this kind of attitude, as President Eisenhower later asserted, Smith ‘‘assured the realization of the ideal of a coordinated intelligence effort set forth by Congress in 1947.’’ An official cia history credits Smith with bringing the cia ‘‘into effective existence.’’ As part of a general reorganization, opc was folded into a Directorate of Plans (with the well-connected Wisner in charge; in time he moved on to other functions before committing suicide in 1965). The fusion of opc with other branches of the agency gave the supporters of covert activism control. Already by 1952 the clandestine collection of intelligence and covert operations absorbed 60 percent of cia personnel and 74 percent of the agency’s budget.13 As far as the movie version of Orwell’s book was concerned, opc people such as Joseph J. Bryan and Finis Farr remained on the job. Their plans remained in force, only now the acronym involved was the cia instead of opc. Both Bryan and Farr were much consulted during the production of the film. In April 1951 de Rochemont—assured of cia funding and determined to transfer the book to the screen—signed a letter of intent. The British animator John Halas, who was well acquainted with Orwell’s British literary agent and who knew some of de Rochemont’s group (having worked on Marshall Plan films for Lothar Wolff, a longtime close associate of de Rochemont), subsequently reported that the introduction between the parties came from him.14 Wolff negotiated the deal. For £5,000 ($14,000 at the contemporary exchange rate) the American company was given an option on the right to film Orwell’s book, subject to Sonia Orwell’s approval. According to the terms of the deal, de Rochemont had to provide her by mid-June 1951 with a storyboard outlining in detail just how the book would be treated and with sample drawings of the major characters. Halas, working with his partner-wife Joy Batchelor and some others, prepared the storyboard presentation, for which their firm was paid £10,000. The initial efforts passed muster, as did further drawings and designs, based on the approved storyboard.15 Although negotiations went smoothly, they did drag on. In early October 1951 one of the UK agents handling Orwell’s literary output, concerned about the delays in concluding the deal, anxiously wrote an American counterpart that ‘‘the final contract has yet to be signed’’ and

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asked when that might take place. But not too long thereafter the rd-dr Corporation, some seven months after it had signed a letter of intent, received the rights ‘‘to make . . . a cartoon cinematograph film based on the original novel by George Orwell entitled animal farm.’’16 The cash-strapped de Rochemont had obtained from the cia the funds to pay Sonia Orwell for the option, and to pay Halas and Batchelor for the sample animation work necessary to clinch the deal, as well as the money necessary to proceed with filming. By June 15, 1951, months before the deal was finalized, rd-dr noted $20,000 on its books as ‘‘client costs incurred on Animal Farm.’’ One can glean just how much the cia contributed from de Rochemont’s discussions with Columbia Pictures about whether Orwell’s book fell within rd-dr’s agreement with the studio. For various reasons de Rochemont did not want Animal Farm to be one of the films his company owed the studio, and he reported to Columbia that there was no need for its financial support: ‘‘we have (without a bank loan) raised over $250,000 which is on deposit in this country.’’17 According to rd-dr officer Mace, ‘‘well over one-half of the total costs’’ of the production came from what he, de Rochemont, and their associates in the know often called ‘‘the investors’’ (i.e., opc/cia representatives such as Bryan and Farr). More than half a century later Mace is understandably a bit hazy on some details, but as he wrote Vivien Halas in 2000, ‘‘a corporation, Touchstone, Inc., . . . was set up, and I think that the money was placed from it in rd-dr Corp.’’ Playing a role in all this was de Rochemont’s well-connected attorney, Ambrose Doskow, who for a time was an rd-dr officer. He had been a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Benjamin Cardozo, and in 1933, at the onset of the New Deal, was one of the ‘‘plague of lawyers’’ (as a government administrator grumbled) who poured into the nation’s capital, later becoming a low-profile but first-rank partner at various prestigious New York law firms, a number of whose attorneys periodically served in the higher echelons of the government intelligence apparatus. However opc/cia transferred funds to de Rochemont, significant amounts for filming Animal Farm were paid out, and without that support the venture could not have been undertaken.18 In 1951 and for years thereafter that infusion of funds remained hidden. Nobody questioned, at least publicly, de Rochemont’s assertion that ‘‘frozen Pounds earned by . . . Lost Boundaries’’ financed the production

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of Animal Farm in the United Kingdom, with additional funding ostensibly achieved by ‘‘buying up additional frozen coin from U.S. distribs.’’ The rd-dr Corporation maintained a bank account at a London branch of Banker’s Trust, a major bank headquartered in New York City: that account was said to include ‘‘monies unremittable from the earnings of lost boundaries.’’ However, there is at least a hint of opc/cia funds in rd-dr’s statement that it had transferred to this unremittable pound sterling account monies from ‘‘another company.’’ In 1951 rd-dr used this account to pay Sonia Orwell and Halas and Batchelor.19 Sonia Orwell had to be won over to the making of the film, and she was. Orwell’s widow claimed later to have ‘‘attended all the script writing review sessions to ensure the film kept as closely as possible to the spirit of the book.’’ She may well have attended some meetings, but her participation was sporadic, if not minimal. Her peripatetic lifestyle kept her on the move during the years in which the film was being made.20 Though Halas and Batchelor’s daughter, Vivien, then a young child, remembers fondly Sonia Orwell ‘‘stopping by now and then to chat’’ with her parents during the filming, I found almost no mention of Orwell’s widow in the multitude of letters and memos available dealing with the film’s production. Indeed, she does not seem to have met de Rochemont until after the film had been put together.21 Why did Sonia Orwell sign off on this film? One answer, allegedly involving the movie star Clark Gable, offers a fascinating insight into the writing of contemporary history. Frances Stonor Saunders quotes E. Howard Hunt (without specific documentation) to the effect that Alsop and Farr got Sonia Orwell to sign after ‘‘having first secured their promise that they would arrange for her to meet her hero Clark Gable.’’ Tony Shaw incorrectly asserts that ‘‘in March 1951 Sonia [Orwell] . . . sold the rights to Louis de Rochemont Associates’’; in a reference to Evan Thomas’s book on the cia, which mentions Gable, Shaw cautiously adds the word ‘‘apparently’’ to Sonia’s putative meeting with Gable, which allegedly was arranged by Joseph Bryan (‘‘as a sign of gratitude . . . Bryan apparently arranged for Mrs. Orwell to meet Clark Gable’’).22 The Gable anecdote has appealed to various writers dealing with the American prosecution of the Cold War. Typically, a book dealing with ‘‘the American crusade against the Soviet Union,’’ for example, asserts that ‘‘the head of the [psychological warfare] workshop even arranged for Mrs. Orwell to meet Clark Gable.’’ The America-bashing British colum-

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nist Nick Cohen, in his over-the-top 1998 Observer column dealing with some of Shaw’s very useful discoveries about the making of the film, embellishes them when he writes that ‘‘Orwell’s capricious widow insisted that they [Farr and Alsop] get her a date with Clark Gable before she would sign.’’ Five years later a professor of American studies and Canadian studies in the United Kingdom wrote, ‘‘Sonia . . . set an unusual price: an introduction to Clark Gable. The Americans eagerly delivered.’’ At my request a very forthcoming Thomas was kind enough to check his notes and, while standing by the story in his book, could find no specific reference to Sonia Orwell and Clark Gable. Thomas believes that the story may have come from a still-classified history of opc; my efforts to obtain access to this history for the purpose of confirming or refuting this fascinating story came to naught.23 Now, it may well be that this classified history does mention the bringing together of Clark Gable and Sonia Orwell at her request, but that story also may have just been a product of the wits in the opc Psychological Warfare Workshop, who thought up this story as they did the concept of bigger and better condoms. Farr and Bryan were known to be pranksters. It also may well be that the classified history, while mentioning Gable and Sonia Orwell, does so in perhaps a different context. The historian Tony Judt, discussing the opening of the Soviet archives, warned some years ago of the ‘‘danger of overestimating the knowledge . . . to be gained from newly opened archives.’’ They are not, as he argues, ‘‘a fount of truth’’: it is necessary, as he asserts, to take into consideration ‘‘the motives and goals of those creating the documents, the limits of their own knowledge, the incorporation of gossip . . . into a report for someone senior, the distortions of ideology or prejudice.’’24 The poet Stephen Spender, who knew Sonia Orwell, once wrote that ‘‘there was always some absurd Sonia story floating around.’’ The Gable story strikes the prize-winning biographer Hilary Spurling, who wrote a sprightly, substantial portrait of Sonia Orwell, oversaw her interment, and was very close to her, as just plain ‘‘ludicrous.’’ Spurling also believes that the Gable story was ‘‘the kind of joke of which Sonia Orwell was fond,’’ and that perhaps she spread the story herself—a view shared by one George Orwell biographer, though he is less than sympathetic to the widow. In any event, Spurling believes that the demand to meet Gable is most unlikely. If Sonia Orwell really had wanted to meet this movie star she could have relied on her own network of influential contacts. She

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had no need to rely on intermediaries from America’s psywar establishment.25 Sonia Orwell’s last years were difficult. As she plaintively told a friend not too long before her death, ‘‘I’ve fucked up my life. I’m angry because I’ve fucked up my life.’’ But in the early 1950s the problems that led to her self-recrimination lay in the future, although she seems to have been unsure what being Orwell’s widow meant. A novelist friend of hers records that at dinner parties she would say, ‘‘No, as George used to say . . .’’ But she could afterward apologetically recognize, ‘‘I did it again. I put on my act, my widow of George Orwell act.’’ It is perfectly understandable, therefore, that there are two sharply conflicting schools of thought about Sonia Orwell and her place in the afterlife of George Orwell.26 One school of thought, generally held by the author’s biographers, has summed her up as a ‘‘cold calculating gold digger who short changed her husband . . . squandering his fortune, exploiting his name and copyrights.’’ The contradictory view, based on the memories of George Orwell’s friends, ‘‘a distinguished array of literary and artistic notables,’’ maintains that ‘‘until her death in 1980, she was a loyal custodian of her husband’s memory, an unobtrusive supporter of good causes and deserving causes, good natured—despite well attested bouts of fractiousness—and well meaning.’’ Indeed, even those George Orwell biographers who have treated her harshly appreciated that ‘‘Sonia felt responsible for looking after Orwell’s reputation,’’ that she was a ‘‘diligent guardian of Orwell’s interests.’’ However negatively they have viewed her, they agree, as one put it, that ‘‘she used her influence and her editorial skills to promote Orwell’s reputation.’’27 Perhaps a more likely explanation than the Gable story as to why Sonia Orwell sold de Rochemont the film rights has to do with her perceptions of her late husband, whose reputation in 1950 had not yet reached the near-mythic standing it enjoys today. She may well have thought that a movie version of the book made by the noted filmmaker Louis de Rochemont, then probably at the height of his reputation, would enhance George Orwell’s standing. Ian Angus, her collaborator on an edition of George Orwell’s essays, letters, and journalism, recalled that although she might have been ‘‘flighty’’ in some ways, she ‘‘was never so about Orwell’’; she took him ‘‘very seriously, indeed.’’ In her promotion of Orwell she was really very assiduous and tough, and could be difficult

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as well. Around this time one of the American representatives of Orwell’s work wrote happily to the author’s American publisher: ‘‘she [Sonia Orwell] seems to have sheathed her claws.’’ She seems to have done so during the sale of the Animal Farm film rights to de Rochemont.28 Thanks to newly discovered material, it is possible to track many more of the details leading up to the movie’s production and to shed some light on the false trails and red herrings that have led previous researchers astray. It is worth our time to look at some of these, given that a significant number of writers not only followed these false leads but added their own embellishments. For example, according to E. Howard Hunt, a much quoted and overused source, it was in mid-1950 that Farr and Alsop began ‘‘the initial negotiations with the widow of George Orwell’’ for the movie rights to Animal Farm, and that ‘‘the cia financed and distributed’’ this film ‘‘throughout the world.’’ There are a number of holes in Hunt’s assertions, especially given Sonia Orwell’s travels, the role of George Orwell’s literary agents in both the United States and the United Kingdom, and the chronology of Alsop’s cia career (he was not cleared for service until after the negotiations that resulted in de Rochemont’s obtaining the rights were well under way).29 It is surprising that so much credence has been given to Hunt, for as a source he seems problematical. His memoirs read like a grade-B thriller, and only parts of what he recounts are verifiable. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. recalls serving with ‘‘Howie Hunt when we worked together in the first days of the Marshall Plan in Paris in 1948.’’ By 1949 Hunt had moved from eca to opc on the invitation of Wisner, and over the next years he did participate in various cia ventures, such as the 1954 overthrow of the Guatemalan government and the attempts in the early 1960s to topple the Castro regime in Cuba. A cia colleague later expressed ‘‘amazement’’ at Hunt’s involvement, since he was ‘‘almost the epitome of the kind of WASP . . . not appreciated in Latin America.’’ A biographer finds that Hunt ‘‘seems to have made little impression’’ while at the agency. Hunt is probably best remembered for his involvement in the 1972 burglary at the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the Watergate, which earned him a prison term. Farr wrote Bryan (both kept in touch with their opc colleague, whom they found congenial), ‘‘they have set him up nice as the pigeon in the Watergate caper.’’30 In his memoirs Hunt was more than a little creative about the genesis of the movie version of Animal Farm, but those who have built on his

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not-so-solid foundations have created an edifice replete not only with oversimplifications but also, alas, with factual errors. And this is true on both sides of the Atlantic. To cite just two examples, Karl F. Cohen, a historian of animation of some political sophistication (unusual for writers about Hollywood, he points out that ‘‘a common mistake is to say [Senator] McCarthy was involved with the House’’ subversive hunters), seriously inflates Hunt’s activities with regard to the film, overestimates Alsop’s influence and erroneously identifies Alsop as a brother of the noted columnist Joseph Alsop, repeats the canard about Clark Gable, and neglects Farr—described as ‘‘a writer living in Los Angeles’’ who went with Alsop ‘‘to England to negotiate the rights to the property from Sonia Orwell.’’ Franz Krahberger, a respected Viennese scholar of multimedia studies, asserts that Hunt ran a psychological warfare workshop for the ‘‘Office of Public Correspondence’’ [sic], and that Sonia Orwell did not have much choice about selling the rights to de Rochemont.31 It is important to correct such distortions. The cia is certainly deserving of many of the criticisms that have been leveled at it over the years. But it is most unfortunate in the case of the agency’s involvement with the movie version of Animal Farm that those with a political axe to grind unnecessarily overstate their case, and, in the words of one historian, ‘‘chose the most sinister possible reading.’’ Even the careful Stonor Saunders, whose research and insights are stunning, stumbles in her use of Hunt. The chronology of de Rochemont’s acquisition of the rights to film Orwell’s book gives the lie to much of what has been written by less careful but equally politically committed authors such as Cohen and Krahberger. It is important in the writing of history to avoid what Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has called ‘‘a tabloid culture of expose´ that depends on . . . a series of either/ors.’’ Yet there is no gainsaying that a U.S. government agency underwrote the initial stages of the film version of the Orwell book, and provided the funding that allowed the legendary filmmaker Louis de Rochemont to employ the British animators John Halas and Joy Batchelor to fashion a work that was part of America’s Cold War propaganda campaign.32

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T HE A N IM ATO R S, H A LA S & B ATC H E LO R

John Halas and Joy Batchelor ran a small studio with a big reputation. Before the production of Animal Farm they had not attempted such an ambitious venture. Despite their eclectic interests, the bulk of their output prior to working with de Rochemont had been on a relatively small scale, undertaken at the behest of commercial sponsors and UK government agencies. For decades these were the only consistent underwriters of British animation, and it was through projects commissioned by such taskmasters that Halas and Batchelor were, in the words of their daughter, ‘‘able to make ends meet.’’1 In the United Kingdom the main uses of animation film were instruction in certain scientific and industrial fields, education, propaganda, and especially advertising. In the days before the advent of commercial TV in Britain, the advertisement cartoon, which ranged in length from fourteen seconds to two minutes, preceded the main feature in most movie theaters. In 1953, as Animal Farm moved to completion, the total cost of a ten-minute film ranged from £6,000 to £10,000—inexpensive compared to its American counterpart. The price depended on various factors, such as whether color film was used.2 According to an authoritative source, the ‘‘gross return on a British cartoon circulating for a year in [the United Kingdom] could be as little as 600 Pounds.’’ Attempts to branch out from sponsored films to the American model of charging for distribution of entertainment cartoons

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for theatrical exhibition, even by such a major UK film production force as the Rank Group, had not been a success.3 Both the commercial and the official government underwriters of animation who worked with Halas and Batchelor commissioned propaganda of one sort or another, whether it was designed to sell a product or an idea. They had found Halas and Batchelor an effective husbandand-wife team, clever, earnest, energetic, imaginative, and hard-working. By the end of the 1940s Halas and Batchelor had achieved a certain renown, both as a company and as individuals, recognized and valued for ‘‘their efficient and highly individual artistry.’’4 Joy Batchelor did much of the scut work and oversaw day-to-day creative operations; she often made ‘‘the characters come alive in cartoon form.’’ John Halas was the entrepreneurial ‘‘outside man,’’ though he remained intimately concerned with production and often was responsible for the basic ideas behind a particular project. A longtime associate of Halas remembers him as always being very businesslike; he could be ‘‘off-putting,’’ but if a problem interested him or its resolution was necessary he ‘‘would treat it very seriously, indeed.’’ Their daughter believes that her mother was more pragmatic than her ‘‘socially progressive’’ father, who sometimes thought he ‘‘could save the world through animation.’’ Whatever their particular idiosyncrasies, Halas and Batchelor worked well together.5 Described as ‘‘tall, fair, charming, classically English,’’ Joy Batchelor was born May 12, 1914, in Watford, Hertfordshire. The child of a churchgoing, lower-middle-class family, according to her daughter, Batchelor attended a local grammar school on a merit scholarship (she was first among a large group of candidates her first year there), moved on to art school, and left with no clear aim except that she ‘‘did not want to teach.’’ After working as a design assistant on glossy fashion magazines (she recalls it as little more than ‘‘sweated labour’’), she drifted into animation in 1936, at age twenty-two.6 The vigorous, ambitious, attractive Batchelor was freelancing in London when she was hired by Halas, who, she recalled, had been brought over from Budapest to London by one of the many companies that briefly flourished in the UK cinema world during the apex of mid-1930s British film production. Batchelor recalled years later that there were ‘‘lots of little mushroom companies’’ dealing with animation, and that she and Halas were associated with some of these firms.7

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The slim, dark, handsome, intense, charismatic Halas, a Jew, was born Janos Halasz in Budapest on April 16, 1912 (he did not legally change his name by deed poll until 1952). He was the youngest of seven children and, his daughter records, ‘‘started working as soon as he could,’’ finding a job at a film studio where he had to paint ‘‘1,000 small . . . rats for a German promotional film.’’ His formal design education included an apprenticeship at age fourteen with the Hungarian filmmaker George Pal (who later for his Hollywood work won a special Academy Award for ‘‘the development of novel methods and techniques’’) and a stint at a ‘‘Bauhaus-style academy’’ in Budapest. In the early 1930s he worked in Paris as a freelance artist. His labors included creating ‘‘price tickets for fancy Paris shop windows’’ and sign painting for restaurants. On returning to Budapest with some friends he established a commercial animation studio, and his efforts earned him an invitation, in October 1936, to the United Kingdom by British Animated Films, Inc.8 Batchelor was one of 120 applicants responding to that company’s ad for additional staff, and Halas hired her. In discussing the beginning of their relationship, she noted, it ‘‘began with a look . . . between a cartoon filmmaker and an animator’’; she had experienced her share of ‘‘such engaging looks’’ but found that ‘‘this one was particularly inviting.’’ Subsequently Halas joined British Color Cartoons, Ltd., as art director, and at the end of 1937 the company sent him to Hungary to make drawings there for planned shorts. He took Batchelor with him (her contract called for ‘‘fare to and from Hungary’’).9 Six months later the company, experiencing financial troubles, recalled Halas to the United Kingdom. When the company failed to pay his salary, he and Batchelor set up a commercial art studio in Budapest. Its failure left them, in Batchelor’s words, ‘‘broke in the Balkans.’’ They returned to London not long before World War II began in September 1939. Although they scratched out a meager existence as ‘‘practically penniless’’ freelancers who worked ‘‘all hours for anybody as designers and illustrators,’’ Joy Batchelor remembers that she and Halas enjoyed what she called their Bohemian days. At first, notes their daughter, ‘‘she was the one who kept them going’’ with commercial film magazines and book illustration assignments. They married on April 27, 1940, which saved Halas from wartime internment.10 Their circumstances began to improve around this time, when the UK branch of the J. Walter Thompson advertising agency commissioned

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them to produce some promotional shorts: Train Trouble for Kellogg’s and Carnival in a Clothes Cupboard for Lux Soap. Both were well received, and in September 1940 they set up Halas & Batchelor Cartoon Films, Ltd. One history of animation asserts that, in one form or another, Halas & Batchelor became ‘‘the longest lasting animation production company in Western Europe and one of the most prestigious in the world.’’11 When their company was in its infancy Halas and Batchelor could not, as one observer later recounted, rely entirely on cartoon films for their income and did magazine illustrations and poster work as well. Their superior efforts attracted attention, and they soon began working in support of the war effort. Halas recalled that John Grierson introduced them to officials at the Ministry of Information (moi) and they began producing propaganda shorts under contract to it.12 The moi, formally organized not long after the war’s outbreak, had multiple functions, which included ‘‘telling the British people . . . what the war was about and how they could help win it.’’ The moi’s leadership believed that propaganda could be entertaining as well as convincing, and that cartoons could usefully put across the agency’s message. Although the moi was, with some justification, initially dubbed the ‘‘Ministry of Muddle’’ and the ‘‘Ministry of Disinformation,’’ the Halas & Batchelor films then and later earned praise for being ‘‘a breath of fresh air.’’13 Typical of that praise was the positive response to Dustbin Parade (1941), which was described as ‘‘an entertaining film plea for the collection of scrap materials’’ and lauded by later critics as ‘‘most humorously inventive’’ and ‘‘a delight’’ for its ‘‘joyful ballet of much-need refuse homing into garbage cans for recycling.’’ Also generating positive feedback were four Halas & Batchelor moi shorts (made for showing in the Middle East) featuring Abu, a young Arab boy, who is enticed and misguided by the forces of Hitler and Mussolini; in one film the boy and his donkey are rescued from Axis machinations by a Churchill tank. Another artful example of the team’s wartime work was Filling the Gap (1941), which dealt with ‘‘the effective deployment of garden space for growing vegetables’’ and urged its viewers to ‘‘dig for victory.’’14 Halas and Batchelor worked not only for moi. For the Admiralty they did the longest of their wartime films, the seventy-minute Handling Ships (1945), which Halas recalled was designed to stop ‘‘young people driving

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a ship like it was a car.’’ Using simplified schematic designs and models, the film demonstrated the intricacies and difficulties of dealing with the vagaries of ship movement (this effort, nearly as long as their version of Orwell’s book, never was reckoned by them as a cartoon feature since the subject was so specialized and the audience was limited to certain kinds of naval personnel). Batchelor recalled that at one point during the war she and Halas were so busy that their company ‘‘turned out a minute film every three weeks.’’ Halas later estimated that between 1940 and 1945 the team produced dozens of short films using a multiplicity of styles and techniques, including ‘‘object animation, paper-puppet animation, and cartoon drawings.’’15 For some time after the war ended Halas and Batchelor labored in obscurity and somewhat austere circumstances. In 1947, while restructuring their operations, they were able to buy out the assets of their original company for only £5,000. But thanks to diligence, perseverance, and a bit of luck, their situation improved as the style and content of the team’s output attracted critical attention.16 Halas and Batchelor slowly became better known in the trade for shorts produced for clients such as Book Bond Tea, British Petroleum, and Oxo. They also attracted attention for some striking experimental ten-minute short films. The Magic Canvas (1948) dealt in an exciting, innovative way with what Halas described as giving ‘‘vision’’ to music, as film and music were designed to complement each other (he later pointed out that the film’s music took on a life of its own, having since then been presented at concerts). Working with the then unknown twenty-four-year old artist Peter Foldes, a recent exile from Hungary, Halas and Batchelor, in Flying Free (also released in 1948), used animation, words, and specially written music to create a sensitive and intelligent depiction of ‘‘an artist’s interpretation of the aims of humanity.’’17 Most of their output, however, continued to be commissioned by various government agencies. In 1945 Britain had elected a Labor government. Its leaders recognized the need to sell their Socialist aims at home and abroad, although they phrased this goal in more general terms. The new prime minister, Clement Atlee, told Parliament, ‘‘it is essential to good administration . . . that the public shall be adequately informed about the many changes in which Government action directly impinges on their daily lives.’’ And the war-oriented moi, which formally ceased

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existence in early 1946, was succeeded a few months later by a Central Office of Information (coi), primarily designed to carry out Atlee’s goal.18 Halas and Batchelor proved very congenial to the coi. Its leaders appreciated the team’s economy and flair. They found that Halas and Batchelor ‘‘will seize any problem straight from the mouth of a P.R.O. officer, disappear into their ivory tower to worry it over, and before the commissioning letter is through, they are back with the most charming little fairy tale.’’ The demanding critics of the prestigious Documentary Film News characterized the Halas & Batchelor exposition of the Socialist government’s felt need for town planning as ‘‘lively, imaginative, and having a real sense of fun.’’ It convincingly outlined ‘‘a number of the best reasons for a new attitude . . . to the building of our towns and cities.’’19 Working with and through the coi, Halas & Batchelor produced films for various government agencies, including the Admiralty (Submarine Control, 1949), the Home Office (Water for Fire Fighting, 1948—made to recruit firemen), and the Ministry of Health (Fly About the House, 1949—in which the ministry ‘‘takes up arms against dirt and disease while a germ-ridden fly seeks a way to attack Everyman’s food supply’’). As during the war, Joy Batchelor was important to the creation of these short films. She was more than just an animator. Not only was she the team’s ‘‘front woman’’ but also, her daughter recalls, ‘‘John’s passport to the English language and British life.’’20 Probably their most notable effort for the coi was the Charley series of sixteen-minute cartoon shorts, many made at the behest of Sir Stafford Cripps, a major force in the newly established Labor government. In 1947 Cripps became minister for economic affairs and chancellor of the exchequer and attempted to meet the United Kingdom’s postwar economic crisis with a policy of stringent ‘‘austerity.’’ Cripps, who has been characterized as ‘‘an earnest Christian of a pungently evangelical kind,’’ became one of the strongest supporters of Halas and Batchelor because he believed that their cartoons would allow necessary but often unpopular government measures in the new economic life of the nation ‘‘to be explained in an entertaining way.’’21 As designed by Joy Batchelor, the purpose of Charley, a man-in-thestreet cartoon character, a kind of sourpuss blowhard who initially opposes Labor’s proposed reforms but is won over, was to ‘‘help the public to understand and support Socialist intentions in initiating new legislation.’’ The

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series of seven cartoons dealt with the ‘‘new towns,’’ ‘‘new schools,’’ ‘‘new mines,’’ and the newly established National Health Insurance. Cripps, recalled Halas, initiated the series and was a credited ‘‘script consultant’’ on the last film in the series, Robinson Charley, which dealt with the ‘‘absolute’’ need to achieve increased exports, given Britain’s dire economic situation at home.22 The need to increase trade was also the leitmotif of a prize-winning color cartoon that Halas & Batchelor produced for the Economic Cooperation Administration (eca). At the instigation of the U.S. government, the countries receiving Marshall Plan assistance had agreed to a ‘‘European Cooperation Master Plan’’ that called for ‘‘full publicity to be given to the objectives and joint program for European recovery.’’ eca, from its Paris headquarters, pushed hard to publicize the programs being undertaken to achieve that recovery, as well as to foster ‘‘appreciation for American efforts’’ to establish a recovered, self-sustaining Europe. eca’s information division, including an extremely productive film unit, strenuously undertook to persuade the public ‘‘materially, morally, politically’’ that ‘‘We’re building a Better Europe . . . Towards a Better Future.’’ Halas and Batchelor were part of that campaign.23 In pursuit of sponsors and underwriters, Halas had always understood that ‘‘the essential preliminaries to our kind of filming are to know what has to be said and to whom.’’ A former colleague recalled, ‘‘John had an incredible ability to get . . . films funded; he knew which rocks to look under.’’ And Halas and Batchelor did as well with eca as they had with UK government bodies. The team’s sixteen-minute color cartoon parable about the virtues of a common market—The Shoemaker and the Hatter (1949), which one of their film division peers found ‘‘inspired’’— effectively but with good humor underscored eca’s campaign for the lowering of customs duties and increasing export and free trade.24 In this engaging short film, set somewhere in Europe, two neighbors—a shoemaker and a hatter—argue about how best to recover their livelihoods after the war. The shoemaker wants to manufacture lots of shoes and make a profit by exporting them. The hatter wants to limit production and protect his product through high tariffs. After various humorous adventures the shoemaker convinces the hatter that protectionism is not the right way, and in the end the film demonstrates that ‘‘free trade brings prosperity to them both.’’25 This cartoon was commissioned by Lothar Wolff, a long-standing

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close associate of de Rochemont ‘‘furloughed’’ to organize the eca film unit. Its first chief, Wolff commissioned more than fifty films during his eighteen-month tenure, including the Halas & Batchelor cartoon. Wolff played a significant role in the filming of Animal Farm, especially with regard to the involvement of Halas and Batchelor. It was he who introduced their films to de Rochemont, and over the years the team would work with the de Rochemont organization on various other projects as well.26 During much of the filming of Orwell’s book Wolff served as de Rochemont’s chief liaison to Halas and Batchelor. And he did so even while involved in other de Rochemont projects, such as overseeing, as producer, a feature made in Germany underwritten by the U.S. Lutheran Church about the life of Martin Luther. Wolff does not seem to have figured directly in de Rochemont’s decision to undertake the filming of Animal Farm, but his participation certainly helps to explain why Halas & Batchelor received the commission to turn Orwell’s book into a film. There is, of course, what might be termed the ‘‘official story’’ about the choice of Halas & Batchelor. The British media, which gloated over the choice of a UK firm to film Orwell’s book, promoted the story remorselessly, parroting press releases about how a relatively obscure couple had been chosen over more famous American animators such as Walt Disney. A typical UK newspaper story was headlined ‘‘Husband and Wife Team Challenge Disney,’’ and invariably such stories would assert proudly that Disney must be ‘‘jealous.’’ As one overzealous UK reporter wrote: ‘‘in Hollywood Walt Disney must be emulating the . . . squawks of his cartoon character Donald Duck.’’27 Ostensibly, what brought Halas & Batchelor to the fore was that an enthusiastic Cripps, proud of the team’s work under his aegis, had shown Robinson Charley to eca administrator(s) Harriman and/or Hoffman. One or both of them, much taken with this film, took a print of the cartoon along with other eca film material back to the United States. There, at a private screening fortuitously attended by de Rochemont, the filmmaker immediately grasped that Halas & Batchelor could realize his vision for the film of Orwell’s book. Before that screening, de Rochemont’s plan to film Animal Farm, it was said, had stalled because supposedly his ‘‘survey of the world’s cartoon studios . . . had not produced one he could trust.’’28 According to Halas, he and Joy Batchelor had considered turning Orwell’s book into a cartoon feature for some time but were stymied by a

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lack of financial support. Why de Rochemont turned up when he did Halas cannot clearly recall, but turn up he did. ‘‘We were always looking for the money to make the film,’’ Halas told an interviewer, and de Rochemont provided the financial support necessary to undertake the filming. There is more substance to Halas’s recollections than the frenzied PR about de Rochemont’s reasons for producing the film in the United Kingdom, but it is a substance that is like an iceberg—there’s a lot on the surface, but much more underneath.29 The Charley cartoons do figure in the real story of how Halas & Batchelor got the job to film Orwell’s book, but the tale is much simpler than the British press made it out to be. The Charley shorts did bring Halas & Batchelor to the attention of Wolff, who as head of the eca film unit cast his net wide in looking for talent that could produce entertaining and convincing propaganda. Aware, as one Marshall Plan filmmaker later told an interviewer, that the British documentary film industry during World War II had helped ‘‘reshape an entire population,’’ Wolff visited London to ask friends such as the noted documentary filmmaker John Grierson about possible talent. Among ‘‘the Brits’’ Grierson recommended and Wolff engaged were Halas and Batchelor.30 After Wolff finished his eca stint and returned to the de Rochemont fold, he showed him samples of their output, which undoubtedly included The Shoemaker and the Hatter. After minimal negotiation, Halas and Batchelor got the job. Batchelor was quite clear in her recollection that this was a direct consequence of working with Wolff for the eca. Vivien Halas certainly believed in the importance of the Wolff connection, and has said that Wolff ’s ties to de Rochemont were ‘‘the real reason’’ her parents got the contract to film the Orwell book.31 Lothar Wolff, who figures so significantly in the choice of the animators, was born on May 13, 1909, in Bromberg, East Prussia (then part of Germany, now Bydgoszcz, Poland). He began his career as an eighteenyear-old press agent and subsequently worked in the film trade as a cutter, editor, and publicist. Shortly after the Nazi takeover in early 1933, the Jewish Wolff left Germany for Paris, smuggling out a print of director Fritz Lang’s anti-Nazi feature Das Testament der Doktor Mabuse. Wolff edited the French version. In 1936, having worked at the film trade in various jobs throughout Europe, including Denmark, France, and Hungary, he emigrated to the United States and applied for work at The March of Time; de Rochemont responded, ‘‘I shall be very glad to have

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you try out as a cutter for an eight week period at $25.00 a week.’’ By 1943 Wolff had risen to chief film editor/associate producer, when he enlisted in the Coast Guard (about the time de Rochemont left for Hollywood).32 Previewing his turn at eca, Wolff became ‘‘film officer’’ for the Coast Guard, heading up its motion picture unit. He did not turn out training films but produced such propaganda efforts as the monthly screen magazine The Coast Guard at War, as well as short booster films such as Beachheads to Berlin. He left the service in early 1946 as a lieutenant commander, and after returning briefly to The March of Time joined up with de Rochemont. Except for the interlude with eca and two years in the mid-1950s as a film consultant to the Indonesian government, Wolff worked closely with de Rochemont into the 1960s as an integral part of his production team on a variety of projects. These included not only features such as Lost Boundaries and Animal Farm but also endeavors such as overseeing production of thirty-six short ‘‘international, educational, and theatrical geography films’’ in a series called The Earth and Its Peoples.33 Described as ‘‘urbane, modest, whimsical, humane, and unfailingly diplomatic,’’ Wolff could handle the mercurial de Rochemont, who could be erratic in handling projects such as the Orwell book and was inclined to pursue his vision without always thinking through the consequences. This was a great strength but also a weakness. Wolff knew how to deal with de Rochemont. An rd-dr executive marveled at Wolff ’s ability to keep things—and de Rochemont—on an ‘‘even keel.’’ A former March of Time staffer recalled that Wolff was ‘‘one of the few people Louis respected, who never felt required to agree with Louis about everything.’’34 On being appointed to eca in 1948, Wolff underwent an fbi ‘‘applicant type investigation’’; the agents elicited almost nothing but laudatory comments, the only negatives coming from the Office of Naval Intelligence, which expressed concern about Wolff ’s contacts with Nazi officials in the late 1930s. A Coast Guard flag officer for whom Wolff had worked during the war, however, considered such contacts ‘‘quite logical’’; the Jewish Wolff, who was very close to his mother, was trying to get her out of Germany, and to know some ‘‘bigwigs’’ was helpful. (Wolff got his mother to England in 1939 and managed to bring her to the United States in 1941.)35 Wolff ’s sophistication in this matter underscores why he was an ideal

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choice to work on the filming of Orwell’s book. As a result of his background he had the political savvy necessary to appreciate the complexities of Animal Farm, and his advice proved invaluable during the long shoot. Moreover, he was well connected, as was proved during the wartime vetting of prospective Coast Guard officer Wolff. The assistant director of the fbi, Louis B. Nichols, phoned the investigators and gave Wolff his personal ‘‘okay.’’ Nichols, who for most of his Bureau career from the mid-1930s to 1957 served as ‘‘the fbi’s amiable press agent,’’ in the words of newsman Drew Pearson, had worked closely with Wolff on the two March of Time issues about the fbi in the early 1940s.36 Nichols and Wolff were again in close contact during the early shooting on the Orwell book, as the de Rochmont organization (with Wolff as associate producer) was preparing, with the fbi’s cooperation, to film a counterespionage feature—Walk East on Beacon, which gave ‘‘a reassuring gloss on how effectively national security worked,’’ thanks to the fbi. Until his retirement from the fbi Nichols remained a key liaison between the Bureau and the de Rochemont people. It was to him that stories and reviews of the movie version of Animal Farm were sent for transmission to Hoover.37 Halas and Batchelor provided the storyboards and sketches that enabled de Rochemont to obtain the rights to the film version of the book. The contract was signed at the end of October 1951 (around the same time that Halas went to New York City to discuss the project). Seven weeks later, on December 14, 1951, the rd-dr Corporation formally contracted with Halas & Batchelor Cartoon Films Limited for ‘‘a film based on a certain novel entitled Animal Farm.’’ This contract specified that the ‘‘writing of the script . . . drawing [of] animation, photography, and scoring of the film shall be done under . . . personal supervision . . . [of] John Halas and Joy Halas (professionally known as Joy Batchelor).’’ The production schedule, outlined in detail by the contract, called for delivery of the completed print by May 15, 1953 (work on the film would continue well into 1954). The contract also provided that ‘‘in no circumstances . . . will the film be made to run for more than sixty-eight minutes’’ (the released film ran more than seventy).38 These were not the only areas where events failed to conform to the contract. rd-dr committed itself to Halas & Batchelor for £84,355 for ‘‘a film to run for sixty minutes,’’ and to pay £1,099 for any additional costs ‘‘incurred for each minute or part of a minute over sixty-one for which

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the film is made to run at the request of ’’ rd-dr. In any event, the American company’s total financial exposure was supposed to be limited to £92,790, but with the caveat that if rd-dr considered it ‘‘desirable to cut or to re-edit the film in any part thereof,’’ then those costs should be borne by the American company, for then the ‘‘provision defining the maximum costs to be borne’’ by rd-dr ‘‘shall not apply.’’39 Thanks in part to cia interference in the production of the film, the finished film cost more than double the cap in the contract, well outrunning de Rochemont’s funding from the agency, and the production played havoc with rd-dr’s finances. Once the admittedly substantial sums from the ‘‘investors’’ had run out, rd-dr paid the balance to complete the film. Even though much of the additional cost resulted from the changes insisted upon by the ‘‘investors,’’ who had very definite political considerations in mind, the agency, recalls F. Bordon Mace, sent auditors to check the books.40 In 1951, though, such considerations lay in the future. And while political exigencies certainly did play a role in the ensuing difficulties, production delays and the need for more funds also arose from the diverse problems caused by undertaking such a massive, pioneering animation effort. As film historian Roger Manvell notes, before 1951 fewer than twenty-four animated features had been completed in the whole history of the cinema, and Walt Disney had made most of them. The filming of Orwell’s book as a cartoon feature took place in uncharted waters. Animal Farm would be the first cartoon feature to be made in the United Kingdom for commercial distribution and the first feature-length cartoon anywhere that dealt seriously with a significant subject. John Halas gloried in the fact that ‘‘the medium of animation had never tackled such a subject.’’41

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Making an animated film in the early 1950s was time-consuming and labor-intensive. Halas, commenting on the process some years later, said that few people knew ‘‘how difficult it is to make a feature-length animated’’ film or appreciated the technical understanding, energy, and determination that were necessary. And, of course, said Halas—ever mindful of his studio’s precarious finances—one must not forget the financial resources necessary to maintain the production company. In 1950 the typical ten-minute cartoon film still needed more than 14,400 different drawings.1 On its completion in November 1954, Animal Farm ran just over seventy minutes, which meant it was approximately 6,500 feet of film long. At that time, as one study has noted, ‘‘even the most experienced and rapid worker’’ in the animation field could produce only ‘‘some twenty to thirty feet of film a week’’ (emphasis added). It is estimated that the completed film required more than 250,000 drawings, the bulk of them animal figures, the drawing of which was ‘‘one of the most difficult feats in animated film-making.’’ A newspaper reported that to present a horse walking two paces took thirty drawings, and that for scenes involving fire it was necessary to draw each tongue of flame hundreds of times.2 Typically, animation in the United Kingdom during the late 1940s and early 1950s, as in most of the world, meant undertaking a series of complex steps. In discussing these, a film historian pointed out that a

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drawing was ‘‘moved functionally between each single frame exposure made by the cameras,’’ with as many as twenty-four ‘‘infinitesimal adjustments made for each second of movement on screen.’’ Every time a character moves, it meant an individual drawing.3 Animating Animal Farm was a laborious, often tedious job. According to one contemporary estimate, putting the film together took ‘‘300,000 man hours (almost a complete life-time) . . . to create 250,000 drawings, and over 1,000 coloured backgrounds.’’ To create the ‘‘series of coloured drawings . . . that presented the illusion to a movie viewer . . . of continuous action’’ for more than an hour of screen time necessitated, according to this estimate, more than two tons of paint.4 In 1950 Halas and Batchelor operated an animation studio judged to be one of the biggest of its kind in England, but in comparison with American cartoon production units it was small, and inadequate for creating the film they envisioned. After de Rochemont signed with them, Halas and Batchelor had to find, train, and guide an expanding staff, which grew between 1951 and 1954 from fewer than thirty to more than eighty. Even then, their operation, as a Los Angeles newspaper story asserted, was only ‘‘about one-sixth of the normal Hollywood feature cartoon complement.’’5 Halas and Batchelor benefited from two developments in the British animation world that took place as they began work on Animal Farm and afforded them a pool of trained talent from which to recruit. These developments were the retirement, in the early 1950s, of the UK animation veteran Anson Dyer, one of the most important English producers of animated films, and the dissolution—shortly before Halas and Batchelor signed their contract with de Rochemont—of a cartoon studio set up by the J. Arthur Rank Organization, whose animators had failed to make it on their own. Halas and Batchelor aggressively recruited the best of the technicians from these operations. An animator on Animal Farm who concentrated mainly on Boxer and Benjamin had spent fifteen years as a typewriter salesman before being trained at the Rank operation.6 Anson Dyer, an artist skilled at painting stained-glass church windows, was nearly forty years old when, just before World War I broke out, he became involved in animation. He made a number of propaganda shorts during the war, and over the next decades produced various kinds of shorts, including cartoons, educational films, and documentaries, surviving the 1930s by churning out advertising trailers. During World War

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II Harold Whitaker, one of his animators, recalls that Dyer made aircraft recognition and training films, as well as some anti-Nazi propaganda. In the early 1950s Dyer, as he was approaching eighty, closed his small but vital company and retired. Many of his staff, including Whitaker, who in 1946, on returning from war service as an artillery surveyor, became Dyer’s chief animator, joined up with Halas & Batchelor.7 In 1944 the Rank operation set up a small cartoon unit, G. B. Animation, which grew rapidly after World War II from ‘‘six people, including the tea boy’’ to a staff of 150. Heading it was David Hand, a Disney veteran. Hand had worked as a supervisor on such Disney cartoon feature hits as Pinocchio (1940) and Bambi (1942). He had been brought over to the United Kingdom in an attempt to spur British animation, and he taught many novices ‘‘the mechanics of an elusive art.’’ Hand and his company aroused a great deal of enthusiasm but, as he later admitted, their ‘‘films were not as amusing as the filmmakers expected’’ and did not do as well commercially as anticipated. When a financial crisis hit the British film industry in 1949 the unit was disbanded.8 Their expansion of staff meant that Halas and Batchelor needed additional facilities. In addition to three scattered offices in London, the most important one a rundown Georgian house in a shabby part of Paddington (‘‘just around the corner from the train station,’’ in Whitaker’s words), they established another, somewhat larger studio in a drab, colorless three-story Victorian house in Stroud, Gloucestershire. This studio, by an eerie coincidence, was just a few miles away from the sanitarium where Orwell spent several months in 1949, shortly before his death, undergoing treatment for TB.9 During the early days of the war Dyer had moved his studio from London to Stroud in order to escape the Blitz, which may have brought the town to the attention of Halas and Batchelor. By the time Dyer retired, the building housing his studio was beyond repair and was condemned because of dry rot. The studio was demolished, but many of Dyer’s employees (including Whitaker) found employment with Halas and Batchelor, who were looking for talent to help animate Animal Farm. Joy Batchelor estimated that, because Stroud was more than a hundred miles from London by rail, costs could be kept down. The distance was not deemed a handicap because of the crackerjack Red Star train service; packages could be reliably sent from door to door in less than two hours.10

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Animal Farm, like many cartoons of the time, was divided into sequences. Although the script evolved continuously during production, the number of sequences remained constant at eighteen. For each sequence, and sometimes for parts of a sequence, a storyboard outlining the action and what has been termed ‘‘the narrative progression’’ was created and modified as necessitated by changes to the script.11 A storyboard has been well defined as ‘‘a collection of drawings and sketches, looking almost like a comic strip, that traces the course of a movie from beginning to end.’’ Storyboards serve as ‘‘a blueprint . . . as the first visual impression,’’ and provide ‘‘key moments in the animation.’’ As one text notes, ‘‘everything flows from the storyboard . . . , drawing of backgrounds, timing of action . . . arrangement of music to accompany animation.’’ An rd-dr veteran remarked that storyboards can be ‘‘more persuasive than the finished film.’’ In the 1950s, generally speaking, an artist at a British studio such as Halas & Batchelor would create about a hundred storyboard sketches for each minute of film. These small sketches enabled the animators to create the thousands of drawings necessary to create the film, whether a cartoon short or a feature such as Animal Farm. Whatever the end product, animated or not, feature or short, it was projected to the viewing audience at twenty-four frames per second. Ideally, therefore, cartoonists produced twenty-four different drawings (pictures or frames) for every second of screen time. There were imperceptible changes in the drawings, which lasted onetwenty-fourth of a second each, but when properly assembled these repetitive drawings showed characters in a fluid motion against various backgrounds.12 Storyboards were used primarily in planning animation, whether for cartoons or for commercials to be shown in movie theaters or on TV. Various feature film directors over the years have become known for their extensive use of storyboards to prepare different scenes carefully in advance of filming. Alfred Hitchcock was so devoted to storyboarding that one critic remarked that the actual shooting of a film struck him as a chore.13 For Animal Farm Halas did many of the original conceptions of what a character, animal or human, would look like. Some years after finishing the film he and Batchelor recalled that ‘‘the essential incidents in the book had to be planned out’’ in advance so that all the characters could

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be shown to the animators ‘‘in their various relationships to the plot and to each other.’’14 For all the narrative simplicity of Orwell’s book, the movie’s plot lines were much more detailed and complex than those of the average cartoon short. Batchelor, a great admirer of Orwell, would write the initial treatments and the subsequent scripts. Immediately recognizing the complexities of filming the book, she made a master plan, assisted by the advice of Louis de Rochemont, his associates, and Sonia Orwell. Batchelor was delighted to get away from making ‘‘interminable little shorts’’; for her, it all ‘‘came together like magic.’’15 At least some of the associates of de Rochemont to whom Batchelor referred marched to a different drummer than artistic creation, and ultimately their interference in pursuit of political goals would result in more than a dozen treatments during the film’s creation, as well as some serious production delays. But in 1951 those problems lay in the future. The efforts of Joy Batchelor, the persuasiveness of John Halas, and the first fruits of their colleagues had made it possible for de Rochemont to obtain his option and then some months later to obtain the rights to film Orwell’s book. Batchelor’s master plan functioned on two levels. First she prepared a ‘‘breakdown chart’’ that showed all the characters in the book in their various relationships to each other and to the ‘‘essential incidents’’ of Orwell’s story line, and then she developed a ‘‘tension chart’’ on a long scroll of paper, at the top of which was outlined the story line and, underneath it, comments that showed ‘‘how the principle of dramatic expectancy would operate on the audience as the action of the film progressed.’’ Years later Batchelor described the ‘‘tension line’’ simply as a ‘‘guide to transmuting the introvert act of reading a book into the extrovert act of drama capable of holding the attention of a mass audience for 75 minutes.’’16 After the charts had been circulated, discussed, modified, and critiqued by all concerned and deemed satisfactory, Batchelor and her husband began to prepare a first storyboard. The ‘‘first treatment’’ had helped de Rochemont to obtain the film rights to the book, and by incorporating many of the concepts of the charts it set the path along which the treatment of Orwell’s book developed.17 Thanks to the charts, Halas recognized that the visuals were ‘‘very much over length’’ and informed de Rochemont that they would have to

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find ‘‘devices that will save footage.’’ Some of the book’s minor characters—the loyal and maternal mare Clover and Mollie, the foolish white mare who preferred sugar cubes and pretty ribbons to revolution and work—were dropped. Batchelor concentrated on those characters directly involved in the development of the plot. In dealing with them, brief verbal descriptions on the charts aided the drawing of the characters. Boxer, the toiling horse, was defined as ‘‘hardworking, the brave and loyal worker.’’ The villainous Napoleon was characterized as having ‘‘sharp, small, searching eyes, beetling brows, eternally suspicious.’’18 Technological advances in recent years have revolutionized the creation of cartoons as well as other screen material; computer-assisted animation has replaced the frame-by-frame method and styles of presentation have changed dramatically. Even by the time that Animal Farm was created, animators had begun to break away from the ‘‘cozy, nursery-like anthropomorphism’’ once championed by Disney. Some of the Halas and Batchelor output, including the films they made with artists at the end of the 1940s, had been more abstract, but that was not to be the case in the filming of Animal Farm.19 Certainly Halas and Batchelor were familiar with the changing ideas, techniques, and designs. Halas early on became ‘‘one of the foremost supporters of computer graphics,’’ and in 1981 a twelve-minute Halas & Batchelor short, described as ‘‘the world’s first digitized computergenerated film,’’ won a special prize at the Moscow Film Festival. Reflecting on the animation process used in filming Orwell’s book, Halas commented rather sadly some years later, ‘‘now we can get away with four drawings a second . . . a more shorthand style of storytelling has come in.’’ But in 1950 Halas and Batchelor were of necessity committed to the more traditional animation process.20 Understandably, Halas and Batchelor waved the British flag in the film’s publicity material. They always emphasized their challenge to American dominance in the animation field. Their PR portrayed them as ‘‘the couple who are carrying the British flag, single-handed, in a new fight for the world’s lucrative film cartoon markets.’’ They also played up their recruitment of ex-Rank employees, though they looked for expertise elsewhere as well, and with generally sound results brought in some American talent to assist them in the filming.21 Phil Stapp, called ‘‘one of the most original and creative animators ever to work in educational films,’’ collaborated with Halas and Batchelor

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during the initial stages of the project. The reclusive Stapp had been born in 1908 in Madison, Indiana, had taught art at a prep school in Greenwich, Connecticut (among his students was George H. W. Bush), and had worked as a designer with the Martha Graham dance company. He turned to film in the mid-1940s and after winning a Guggenheim Fellowship joined the Marshall Plan film division in Paris, his ‘‘specific mission’’ being to ‘‘train animators in the film unit’s animation studio in Paris.’’22 While in Paris with the eca, Stapp served as a production consultant on The Shoemaker and the Hatter; Vivien Halas recalled that he had worked closely with her mother on this film. Subsequently Stapp helped to create the storyboards and animation de Rochement used to win over Sonia Orwell. Stapp worked with Halas and Batchelor during the summer of 1951, producing more than three hundred sketches. Although de Rochemont had only an option at that time and did not gain the film rights until the autumn, Stapp’s pay on the rd-dr books is charged to the production.23 For all of Stapp’s contributions, what Halas later described as his ‘‘inability to work on the backgrounds’’ led to his leaving the project. The break between Stapp and Halas and Batchelor was not acrimonious. He worked with them again a few years later, directing a sixteen-minute 1956 short that they undertook for the World Health Organization about the impact of excessive alcohol consumption (To Your Health had ‘‘a strong emotional effect on most audiences,’’ according to an informed source). Stapp’s last film, A Game of Chance, made in 1979 for the American Heart Association, warned of ‘‘the perils of poor diet and excess.’’ Stapp spent the last twenty years of his life in Stonington, Connecticut, where he died at age ninety-three, survived by John Bass, his partner of forty-eight years.24 Interestingly, at the time of the film’s release in the mid-1950s Stapp was given a screen credit for story development, as he was on the 2004 DVD (a ‘‘new digital restoration’’) issued by the U.S. company Home Vision Entertainment. But on the UK 1999 ‘‘digitally remastered’’ video of Animal Farm the credits were revised: Stapp’s name was replaced by that of opc/cia psy warrior Joseph Bryan, who initially monitored the filming for the agency and did contribute to the film’s content. Bryan’s involvement followed the cia’s standard operating procedure for ‘‘developing media assets’’ and accounted for its detailed if covert

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participation in the filming of Orwell’s book from the project’s inception. The Psychological Warfare Workshop, especially Bryan and it would seem also Farr, received memos from the production company or was directly copied by the de Rochemont staff ‘‘in the know’’ during the film’s creation. These communications addressed various subjects, including questions about the need to edit those parts of the script that did not hew to the line taken by the U.S. government in foreign policy or (surprisingly) in domestic affairs.25 There was considerable discussion with de Rochemont and some of his staff about the need for possible ‘‘alternative’’ endings more in keeping with the agency’s purposes. Bryan understood that his agency wanted to put across its ideas as if it were selling a bolt of cloth. At one crucial point, when problems with the production’s political stance came to a head, Bryan flew to London for ‘‘script conferences.’’26 This was not his first such visit for the agency. Bryan’s stint with opc/ cia had earlier included a stay in London drafting statements for the ‘‘Committee of Free Albanians,’’ part of an ill-fated covert opc effort that one cia officer later described as ‘‘the first and only attempt by Washington to unseat a Communist regime . . . in the Soviet orbit by paramilitary means.’’ While this effort was not particularly well planned, it was Kim Philby who made sure it turned into a disaster, by passing details about it to his Soviet masters.27 Bryan certainly had the talent necessary to get the agency’s point of view into the film. A consummate wordsmith—one editor described him as ‘‘a writer to be cherished’’ because of the ‘‘unfailingly high quality of his writing’’—Bryan was in demand for magazine articles and wrote bestsellers both before and after his stint with the psywar workshops. Bryan valued at one time or another having held commissions in the army, navy, and air force, but of his tenure at opc/cia he said that despite ‘‘a few small triumphs . . . I never disabused myself of the feeling that we were a bunch of amateurs.’’28 In addition to Stapp, Halas and Batchelor used another American talent on the project. This was John Reed, who was to receive $10,000 for his work, according to the contract between rd-dr and Halas & Batchelor, paid out in the United States at the rate of $833.33 per month. In 1951 Reed was still working on Disney’s ‘‘Pluto’’ cartoons. Described as a native Californian whose first love was electrical engineering, Reed had joined Disney in 1935. Although never as important to that studio as

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Hand, who had been imported to the United Kingdom by Rank and placed in charge of a large operation, Reed had worked as an effects animator with Disney on such films as Fantasia (1940) and Bambi (1942). He had married an English woman in 1948 (his second marriage), and he and his wife had a posh house on the Thames River in Marlow, characterized by Vivien Halas as ‘‘an elite quintessentially English small town,’’ some thirty miles west of London.29 His style of living is remembered more vividly by various participants in the filming of Orwell’s book than is his contribution, substantial though it was. Reed seems to have earned his credit as animation director for his work on Animal Farm. The British animator Harold Whitaker, who joined the project after animation had started and would work with Halas and Batchelor for decades (Halas praised him as a ‘‘key animator of outstanding technical skill’’), recalls that Reed was ‘‘a crucial part’’ of the operation and that the American who dealt efficiently with the film’s day-to-day problems had a ‘‘tremendous . . . influence on the animation.’’30 The house that Halas and Batchelor bought to use as a studio in Stroud had a bay window in front, and there the camera was set up. Whitaker recalls that the main production office remained in London, where Reed and many of the animators were located; only about ‘‘a quarter of the film’’ was animated in Stroud. All the artwork, according to Whitaker, was traced in London and painted in Stroud, where it was also photographed. Keeping the camera in operation continually was a ‘‘necessity’’; any kind of a holdup was a serious setback. Material was constantly being shuttled back and forth between Stroud and London by the fast Red Star train service.31 The artists at Stroud would send their penciled drawings to Reed; he would respond with ‘‘sweatbox notices’’ (a Disney term) to the animators about whether work should go forward (e.g., ‘‘O.K. for Ink’’) or whether more work was necessary (e.g., ‘‘O.K. for Ink, after shadows have been added’’). Many of Reed’s comments were detailed guides, e.g., ‘‘about four frames of anticipation is needed before the dog exits. This means that the dog will leave the scene later than at present.’’ The artists would redo the drawings as necessary. Once Reed, who was very concerned about the ‘‘mood’’ of each scene, approved the drawings, they could be inked, traced, and colored.32 Reed’s efforts built on the groundwork that Halas and Batchelor had

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laid. He carefully scrutinized the timing in the sequences, discussed with the animators how to depict Farmer Jones’s drunkenness (‘‘extremely difficult to animate’’), drew some ‘‘rough extremes’’ to give a better idea of how to present the pigs, and so on. Reed contributed substantially to the crafting of the film, but not all his contributions worked well. Worried about what he considered ‘‘the heavy atmosphere of the film,’’ Reed earned scorn for adding such touches as the antics of a cute, comical yellow duckling that appeared early in the film. Halas and Batchelor put an end to that particular attempt to emulate what one critic of the movie deprecated ‘‘as chuckles Disney style.’’33 Such tensions ultimately resulted in a falling-out between Reed and Halas and Batchelor; a de Rochemont associate recalls that they ‘‘parted on unfriendly terms.’’ It is worth noting that a book celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the Halas & Batchelor studio and the films it produced lists in the ‘‘dedication’’ more than a hundred colleagues, many of them less important to a production than Reed was to Animal Farm, but his name is absent.34 As Halas and Batchelor moved toward completion of the film, de Rochemont learned that in response to Reed’s criticisms and attitude a key member of the staff had resigned, complaining that he did not want the studio and the production to be ‘‘Americanized.’’ On being informed of the resignation, de Rochemont wrote Joy Batchelor that as far as he was concerned Reed was a nuisance and a troublemaker, and that even if he had made an important contribution, de Rochemont felt, ‘‘we will be much better off without having him around.’’35 After release of the film in the United Kingdom, Reed understandably protested that the British newspapers had given all the credit to Halas and Batchelor; they had ‘‘neglected completely’’ the role of ‘‘Disneytrained men,’’ he said. Most intense collaborative artistic efforts, such as the production of a film, result in the kind of creative differences that marred Reed’s relations with Halas and Batchelor, and Reed’s angry response in the press reports further evidenced the feelings that had led to the rift.36 The filming of Animal Farm also caused differences between the de Rochemont group and Halas and Batchelor. These were not always the result of the political agenda of the ‘‘investors.’’ Many were of a technical nature, not unusual in the making of a movie, such as disagreements about sound levels and ‘‘the intensity of some colours.’’ Wolff, for exam-

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ple, wrote Halas in January 1952 that while he had ‘‘some lovely new scenes,’’ some of the visuals of the animals were ‘‘quite weak.’’37 In October 1952, after viewing the footage completed to that date, de Rochemont worried about a number of artistic points and suggested new animation here and there. A year later he viewed the incomplete film and presented Halas and Batchelor with a string of notes dealing with aesthetic considerations: everything from the quality of Farmer Jones’s voice (which ultimately disappeared from the film) to the use of music; and he discussed in detail various dissolves, mixes, and fadeouts (e.g., he complained, ‘‘I cannot understand your system of using fades’’).38 Political as well as aesthetic factors had played a role in the choice of Halas and Batchelor to film Orwell’s book. The extensive work of the team on propaganda pictures for diverse official agencies had certainly influenced Wolff ’s recommendation that they be engaged. And obviously their background had appealed to the men from opc, who also assumed, not incorrectly, a certain level of political sophistication on the part of Halas and Batchelor, given their record of sponsors. Wolff, de Rochemont, and their associates also were strongly influenced in their choice of Halas and Batchelor by the economics of animation filmmaking. They assumed that the team should be able to do the job for notably less than their American counterparts because animation costs in Britain were much lower than in the United States. And even though costs did creep up, that ratio remained constant: in the mid-1950s the average price per foot of film for longer or theatrical cartoons in Britain was £8 ($22.40 at the contemporary exchange rate), as compared to $70.40 per foot in the States. Moreover, Halas and Batchelor had persuaded the British cartoonists’ union to have its members take on the movie at ‘‘non-theatrical rates, which was estimated as a further 10 per cent saving’’ (although as the work progressed that situation changed).39 Before signing with Halas and Batchelor, de Rochemont had reckoned that the cost of a production of Orwell’s book in the United States would be around $450,000. Given the economies to be gained by producing the film in the United Kingdom, cost projections were substantially lower. Press release after press release, during 1951–52, especially in the United Kingdom, announced that the movie would cost only £80,000, or about $225,000. Costs did creep upward, despite a constant emphasis on economy during production.40 In November 1952 Halas announced that although the film’s pro-

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jected budget had grown to £120,000, he still believed it possible to bring it in for closer to £100,000. After the film’s release Halas reported that the final cost was about £179,000, or about $500,000 at the contemporary exchange rate. The cash-strapped de Rochemont had been forced to invest funds beyond those provided by opc/cia. Already by mid-1953 he knew that such investment was necessary; he advised one correspondent that ‘‘the picture in its entirety’’ would cost half a million dollars to produce.41 Vivien Halas believed that the escalation of costs resulted from her parents’ determination to do the best possible job. F. Bordon Mace recalled that Halas and Batchelor had been spending freely, but he also believed that they were doing their best and not being wasteful. Certainly de Rochemont and his associates did not lose patience with Halas and Batchelor. Then and later de Rochemont worked with them on other projects. The business relationship remained mutually supportive until de Rochemont’s career began to wind down in the 1960s, and on a personal level it was always amicable.42 Halas and Batchelor had undertaken a huge and complex task. Animation in the 1950s required a great deal of effort, was extremely timeconsuming, and on such a scale was not easy to organize or to maintain. What Halas referred to as ‘‘teething problems’’ added substantially to the cost of producing the film and also delayed its completion. Many of these problems had to do with the mechanics of animation and creative infelicities.43 But other factors also played a role. Halas reported to Wolff that because of ‘‘political differences’’ two ‘‘rather hard to replace people’’ had left the production. And politics of a different sort hampered the chances for a smooth production: de Rochemont’s ‘‘investors’’—concerned about the production’s emphases, depiction of characters, and general mise-ensce`ne, all of which had Cold War implications for them—interfered in the filmmaking process. At one point an annoyed Halas responded to yet another call for changes in the script (this one to reflect how Orwell would have written Animal Farm in 1952) that ‘‘we have enough trouble to develop what we want to say on the basis of what he really did write!!’’44 Were Halas and Batchelor aware of the opc/cia funding of the film and of the agency’s political agenda? How did they view Bryan, who had been present at early planning meetings in the fall of 1951 in New York to discuss the initial treatments of Orwell’s book drafted by Joy Batchelor

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in order to finalize the contract for creating the film? What did they think of Bryan’s ‘‘intense’’ visit, in early 1952, when he discussed with them the direction of the film? How did they feel about Alsop, who in 1954 paid them a visit to view the nearly completed production (Halas wrote Mace, ‘‘I’m showing Animal Farm to him’’)? And how did they feel about the succession of visitors who came repeatedly to discuss details of the production (among them de Rochemont, Mace, and Wolff; rd-dr’s treasurer, Martin J. Maloney, also paid Halas and Batchelor a visit)?45 Nothing available at the Halas & Batchelor archive or in the de Rochemont Papers answers these questions directly or gives us any clues as to the specific awareness of the animators. Certainly, Halas and Batchelor were not political innocents. They had long experience with government agencies and demanding commercial sponsors. Vivien Halas does not ‘‘believe’’ her parents knew that ‘‘part of the money came from the cia’’ or were aware of ‘‘any cia involvement at the time.’’ But Halas and Batchelor, reckons their daughter, did know that some of the production money ‘‘came from the U.S. government, but the project was something they wanted to do.’’ Recognizing the experiences that her parents had with the commercial and official sponsors of many of their films, Vivian Halas does not think they would have been surprised to learn of the investors’ identity. But she feels that they ‘‘would have left it to Louis to arrange that part of things.’’46 A half-century after the film’s release, Mace said that while he had ‘‘no direct knowledge of whether H & B knew the source of the initial funding . . . they must have eventually surmised the general source.’’ In Vivien Halas’s view, whatever her parents may have known or felt about the source of the funding, ‘‘what interested them was the challenge of turning the book into a full-length animated feature and remaining as close as possible to George Orwell’s fable.’’ In any case, Halas and Batchelor were pressured relentlessly to inject a particular political message into their production of Animal Farm.47

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Even before the final contracts had been signed, the politics of Animal Farm had preoccupied de Rochemont, his American colleagues, the British animators chosen to make the film, and what the rd-dr personnel (those in the know) referred to as ‘‘the investors’’ or ‘‘the financial backers.’’ Among all these individuals there were strong differences of opinion on how the film should present the politics of Orwell’s book, especially on the bleakness of his ending, which found the animals once more exploited, this time not by men but by brutal pigs who had perverted the ideals of those who had rebelled for improvement in their lot in the name of community.1 Nothing better illustrates the impact of de Rochemont’s ‘‘investors’’ than the differences between the book and the film. The departures from the book were reflected in the various treatments, nine scripts, and changing narration that took place during the evolution of the film. A great deal of ink has been spilled over the years on the subject of the film’s final scene, which one critic called ‘‘a wholesale inversion of Orwell’s ending.’’2 The altered ending was just one result of the interference of the ‘‘investors,’’ of their often successful efforts to shape the film to their worldview. Especially during the script development in late 1951 and early 1952, Bryan, Farr, and others in their operation expressed concern about how Halas and Batchelor would present that view. As de Rochemont

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reported to his colleagues, Bryan and his cohort cared deeply about the ‘‘possible consequences of misinterpretation of the allegory.’’ Such concerns, although more muted after 1952, were expressed almost through the end of production in 1954.3 Among ‘‘the investors,’’ Farr probably was the most knowledgeable about Orwell. The product of ‘‘comfortable circumstances’’ (his father was a minister and a professor), Farr graduated from Princeton in 1926, age twenty-two, ‘‘undecided as to his future occupation,’’ but he became a successful literary journeyman. He worked at newspapers and magazines, was employed by advertising agencies, and wrote for different radio shows (including the popular 1930s program Mr. District Attorney). Like many of the opc figures involved with the filming of Orwell’s book, Farr had worked on The March of Time, in his case the radio version.4 During World War II Farr rose through the ranks from an army private to a captain with a Bronze Star, having served, incongruously, with the army’s public relations department and in an OSS detachment tied to local guerilla forces behind Japanese lines in the China-Burma-India theater. After the war he briefly was employed by Time, Inc., before returning to radio work (among his efforts were scripts for the detective show The Fat Man). For a while, just before being recruited by Bryan, he worked as a supervisor for Paramount Pictures.5 A mordant wit (he coined, possibly during the production of Animal Farm, ‘‘Farr’s Law: the more eminent the man, the more insufferable the widow’’), he was very conservative politically and had resigned from the League of American Writers when, after the 1939 Hitler-Stalin pact, ‘‘it became clear [to him] that this so-called league of American writers was a CP front.’’ Farr would later rail against what he condemned as ‘‘professional leftists’’ for their ‘‘familiar chorus of vilification of the United States and applause for the foreign policy of the USSR.’’6 On leaving the cia at the end of the 1950s, Farr devoted himself to writing and turned out some very good biographies, a fascinating social history of Chicago, and a spy novel in which ‘‘the Americans are Not the Villains.’’ Farr often cited Orwell’s work, with which he was deeply familiar. He had a very clear view of the politics of Animal Farm and seems to have pushed that view into the script. Although, so far as I have been able to determine, there is little in the way of a paper trail specifically linking Farr to the script changes, there is some archival material that shows his influence at key moments in the fashioning of these scripts.

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Given his close ties to Bryan, his enthusiasm for Orwell’s politics as he understood them, and his own political beliefs, it is not surprising that Farr would have had significant input into the development of the politics of the film.7 Halas assumed that the treatments he and Batchelor presented to de Rochemont would undergo revisions. As early as July 1951 he wrote Wolff (sending ‘‘very best regards to Joe’’ [Bryan]) that ‘‘while working . . . there will no doubt, be a number of further ideas cropping up.’’ But it is unlikely that Halas and Batchelor, or for that matter de Rochemont and his associates, anticipated the level and intensity of input from the ‘‘investors.’’ Some idea of what de Rochemont and his team faced can be gleaned from a review of the comments they received from the ‘‘investors’’ on the treatments and scripts for the movie in the earliest days of the project.8 In mid-July 1951, well before the de Rochemont team finalized its arrangements for obtaining the film rights, they received a detailed analysis from the opc/cia ‘‘investors,’’ commenting in detail on the third revised screen treatment. The analysis praised it for being ‘‘a great improvement’’ over the second treatment and found its ‘‘excellences too numerous for comment,’’ but also raised concerns (which would be raised again and again during production) about ‘‘dubious’’ aspects of the Halas & Batchelor treatment of Orwell’s book. In particular, the ‘‘investors’’ wanted it made clear that ‘‘Napoleon is Stalin, and Snowball [is] Trotsky.’’ Napoleon should have a pipe and ‘‘black bristles, more or less curved to suggest the Stalin mustache,’’ while Snowball was to be given whiskers ‘‘somewhat suggestive of the Trotsky goatee.’’ The writer of this commentary also felt that, in order to simplify the implications of the book, ‘‘we cannot follow the tortuous twists of the Stalin-Trotsky rivalry too slavishly . . . it is probably good enough . . . that Napoleon has his dogs kill Snowball.’’ In addition, and this would be emphasized over and over again, there was to be nothing positive about Stalin’s Russia: ‘‘We should be extremely chary about this . . . the lot of the average Russian has not improved as fast as it would have under Tsarist government.’’ The memo made various suggestions about how to treat the aftermath of the animals’ successful revolt in such a way as to emphasize the oppressiveness of Stalin’s rule, and argued that the ‘‘message’’ should be ‘‘Stalin’s regime is not only as bad as Jones’s, but worse and more cynical.’’ Napoleon was to

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be shown as a ‘‘brutal, cynical leader of a privileged caste of exploiters . . . not only as bad as jones but vastly worse.’’9 Other aspects of Orwell’s book also received detailed attention then and later in order to forge a particular kind of film. In addition, the memo raised questions about the depiction of Pilkington, the neighboring gentleman farmer, who in the book represented Great Britain. Surprisingly, there were also questions about the uneven depiction of Frederick, a less reputable neighboring farmer, who in Orwell’s allegory represented Germany. Ultimately both men were excised from the film. Indeed, the portrayal of Orwell’s male human characters (there are no women in the film; even Farmer Jones’s wife was excised) was of great concern to Bryan and his cohort. The ‘‘investors’’ seem to have been very sensitive about this from the start and remained so through a succession of scripts. The only farmer given any emphasis was to be Jones. The attack to regain control of the farm from the animals was to be by ‘‘farmhands.’’ There was to be ‘‘only one bad farmer,’’ Jones. There was some feeling among the de Rochemont group that the ‘‘investors’’ did not wish to antagonize legislators, lobbyists, or publicists involved with American agriculture.10 The opc/cia representatives were obviously concerned with more than minutiae, but they scoured the scripts for any nuances that might undermine their political agenda, however unlikely such things were to be noticed by the vast majority of the viewing audience. At the same time the ‘‘investors’’ wanted to add things to the film that would have had the effect of belaboring the obvious or hampering the desired effect. The politically savvy Wolff expressed doubts from the beginning about the investors’ heavy-handedness about using the film as propaganda. Wolff took a different tack because, as one of his peers at the eca film unit pointed out, his was ‘‘a different approach . . . than the average American.’’ Because he did, Wolff had been very successful at the unit in producing the films that were to sell the Marshall Plan; he understood, as one commentator has said, how to reach European audiences.11 In a January 1952 memo he reacted negatively to suggestions that the film ‘‘draw a parallel between socialism and totalitarianism in Europe,’’ and spoke out against this approach, arguing that socialism had become ‘‘a part of the European way of life’’ and that this fact could not be ignored. Wolff also argued for a lighter touch in the film’s anti-Communist message, for ‘‘it is clear that we are pointing the finger at Russia.’’12

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The Halas & Batchelor third revised screen treatment altered the ending of Orwell’s book yet again. In the last scene the animals were to be shown ‘‘approaching and converging on the Farmhouse.’’ The government agency’s memo called this ‘‘a perfect ending,’’ but also argued most urgently, ‘‘for Pete’s sake let’s leave the men out.’’ The role of Orwell’s human characters changed dramatically from script to script, but no matter how their role changed, and no matter how the succession of scripts would vary the ending, it always concluded with an uprising of the animals against the pigs.13 This revolt of the ‘‘captive peoples’’ against their Communist masters was one of the major beliefs underlying Wisner’s opc operations, and subsequently the cia’s covert activities in the first half of the 1950s, especially after General Smith began melding the agency’s intelligence and covert action wings, which led to a twenty-fold budget increase for covert activities between 1949 and 1952 (covert activity became ‘‘so high a priority,’’ according to one cia history, ‘‘as to harm intelligence gathering and analysis’’). The ultimate objective of the covert operations was to use diplomacy and propaganda (both domestic and foreign) to encourage and assist the Eastern Europeans in rising up against their Communist oppressors, and this objective was based on the firm conviction that the ‘‘freedom-loving’’ citizens of the Soviet satellite states would be able to liberate themselves from ‘‘Communist slavery’’ with the right kind of aid.14 All of the endings proposed for the movie, including the one that was finally filmed, symbolized a U.S. Cold War policy that historian Michael Howard has described as ‘‘the doctrine of active liberation of the enslaved peoples of the Communist world.’’ The most dramatic statement of this policy was enunciated by John Foster Dulles, on becoming secretary of state in 1953 in the newly elected Eisenhower administration. Dulles espoused what he touted as a new policy, ‘‘rolling back’’ Communism in Eastern Europe.15 Dulles either did not recognize or chose to ignore that the Truman administration’s ‘‘containment’’ policy, as formulated by Kennan in the later 1940s, was actually undistinguishable from the ‘‘rollback policy’’ Dulles proposed for Eastern Europe. Kennan’s concept of containment had, of course, included aggressive programs such as those undertaken by opc, which included paramilitary efforts to overthrow the Communist government of Albania and psywar propaganda efforts like the filming

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of Animal Farm. There were strong elements of continuity in the approaches of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations.16 The United States was committed to undermining the Kremlin influence ‘‘where it already was established,’’ in the words of one congressman. And thanks to what the ‘‘Radios’’ incessantly broadcast, Eastern Europeans expected more tangible aid from the United States than just words. But such assistance was not forthcoming, not in 1953 to the East Germans, whose rioting and work stoppages threatened the existence of the regime, nor more dramatically in 1956 when (as one writer has well put it) ‘‘liberation met its Waterloo in Hungary,’’ as that country’s citizens rebelled against the Communist regime, a revolt harshly put down by Soviet tanks.17 But already before 1956, within the councils of the U.S. government the tendency had been, even for people like Dulles, whatever his public stance, to back away from ‘‘liberation’’ and ‘‘rollback.’’ Wisner remained a true believer, which may account for the continuing commitment to using Animal Farm as a propaganda vehicle and to twisting the ending to serve political ends. One history maintains that even Kennan got ‘‘cold feet’’ and some years later—having renounced the aggressive stance he took as head of the State Department’s policy planning staff—asserted that his push for covert action was ‘‘the greatest mistake that I made’’ (the ‘‘extreme secrecy which governed covert activities’’ would later allow him to deny that during his tenure ‘‘there had been the construction of a vast edifice’’ for covert prosecution of the Cold War).18 Those responsible for the creation of the movie version of Animal Farm, whether in the revamped cia or the de Rochemont firm, continued to function within the ‘‘liberation’’ paradigm, which goes a long way toward explaining the movie’s differences from the book. Joy Batchelor’s fourth revised script adhered to 1951 psywar principles and in doing so took into consideration many of the points raised by the analysis of her previous effort. The fourth revised script played a significant role in gaining de Rochemont his contract to film Orwell’s book. But the ‘‘investors’’ were still not satisfied. On January 10, 1952, during a two-day conference in New York City with Bryan and others of his cohort, de Rochemont sent a memo to Wolff, possibly just for the record, that read in part, ‘‘John [Halas] should be aware of what has transpired, and the objections . . . pointed out to us,’’ and expressed the hope that ‘‘he and Joy can come up with the answers.’’19

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At this two-day session (January 10–11), with Bryan and possibly Farr present, there were intensive discussions of the fourth revised script. What was decided there has been summed up in a detailed memo forwarded by the ‘‘investors’’ to de Rochemont and his associates, who were expected to take action. The memo indicates that de Rochemont uneasily and unhappily backed down in the face of the pressure exerted by the ‘‘investors.’’ On some issues agreement was reached quickly and without much argument. He and his associates present at the conference readily accepted some suggested ‘‘minor points,’’ such as making Napoleon ‘‘look more cruel’’ and portraying Farmer Jones’s ‘‘worthlessness’’ in greater detail and in such a way as to make it clear why his animals had revolted. There were also ‘‘three major points’’ about which there was serious and extended debate.20 First, the ‘‘investors’’ were greatly concerned that Snowball (the Trotsky figure) was still presented ‘‘too sympathetically.’’ Batchelor’s script, they argued, implied that Snowball was ‘‘intelligent, courageous, dynamic,’’ and that if he hadn’t been assassinated by Napoleon’s minions he might have succeeded in ‘‘creating a benevolent, successful state.’’ The writer of the memo (probably Bryan) said that ‘‘this implication we cannot permit.’’ Snowball, it was argued, must be presented as ‘‘an impractical visionary’’ and a ‘‘fanatic intellectual whose plans if carried through would have led to disaster no less complete than under Napoleon.’’ Wolff again dissented, but de Rochemont accepted this suggestion.21 The treatment of Snowball was clearly very important to opc/cia. Pigs were supposed to represent ‘‘the forces of evil (the men of the Kremlin).’’ Snowball must not be shown in too favorable a light, or the viewer might get the idea that if Napoleon ‘‘hadn’t given Snowball the boot,’’ life on Animal Farm might have been ‘‘hunky-dory.’’ Early on de Rochemont had recognized that it might be necessary to err ‘‘on the side of obviousness,’’ writing, ‘‘on a subject as ticklish as this we cannot risk misunderstanding.’’ And so, now, almost effortlessly, changes in the depiction of Snowball were incorporated into the film.22 The second major point was ‘‘the lack of contrast between the good and bad farmers.’’ The ‘‘investors’’ wanted it spelled out that not all animals had reason to be discontented or to revolt—in the sequence in which the pigeons spread word of the revolution to neighboring farms, it was urged there be differing reactions. Not only, as in the script, should a horse throw its rider and a bull chase a farmer. Another side of things

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should be shown as well; there should be scenes in which ‘‘a sheepdog, walking beside a kindly farmer, hears word of the revolt and laughs it off; so also does a plough horse, driven by another kindly farmer’’; there might also be ‘‘a contented cat, a fat calf, etc.’’ These proposed scenes did indeed make it into the completed film.23 The contrast between the farmers, the memo continued, should be developed and emphasized. A scene at the inn where the farmers meet to discuss the animal revolt should show ‘‘the good farmers . . . sitting apart’’ as they ‘‘scoff at the bad ones.’’ And it was suggested that the innkeeper’s parrot could give the bad ones ‘‘a Bronx cheer.’’ Wolff again responded negatively; de Rochemont said he would consider these suggestions; and some of them did find their way into the film. Wolff also spurned the suggestion that the final sequence (‘‘the third major point’’) be altered further, which he thought unnecessary. The ending had already been revised: whereas Orwell had the animals walk away, defeated, ‘‘in our outline which Batchelor had prepared,’’ Wolff replied, ‘‘they get mad, ask for help from the outside, which they get, and which results in their (the Russian people) with the help of the free nations overthrowing their oppressors.’’24 This dramatic reversal of the book’s downbeat conclusion notwithstanding, the memo argued that, as scripted, the final sequence, which included men and pigs, was ‘‘ambiguous at best’’ and ‘‘at worst’’ was an ‘‘endorsement of . . . anarchism.’’ It was argued that ‘‘we can not afford to leave the smallest doubt of our attitude.’’ The current ending, the memo said, should be considered ‘‘provisional, pending the construction of a better one.’’ Again Wolff dissented; de Rochemont concurred.25 Shortly after the January 1952 meetings de Rochemont wrote to his associates, ‘‘we might as well face up to the fact that our financial backers are more than worried about the picture’s editorial content.’’ He considered the situation ‘‘very serious’’ on the basis of the discussions in New York, and conveyed the concern of the ‘‘investors’’ that the ending, as written, failed to ‘‘point out the similarities between socialism and totalitarianism.’’26 A worried de Rochemont also wrote separately to Mace and Wolff that ‘‘the money interests are now asking for complete editorial control.’’ His main concern seems to have been about the effect of the discussions on the financial arrangements and the possible ‘‘reshaping of the basic

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contract.’’ He wanted Mace to explain to the financial backers just what was involved in the production and distribution of a film.27 Whatever de Rochemont’s attitude, he and his production team, as well as the ‘‘investors,’’ indeed, all involved in these meetings, considered it ‘‘essential that H & B be notified at once.’’ It was also agreed that Halas and Batchelor should be informed personally rather than by cable or letter. Wolff initially declined the mission on the grounds that he could not ‘‘convincingly defend’’ the position given his personal opposition to it. A few days later, however, according to Bryan, ‘‘W promised to incorporate the suggestions to H & B at once.’’ Further discussion between representatives of ‘‘the investors’’ and Wolff had taken place, and he had agreed to ‘‘write H & B a letter enclosing a broad memorandum from deR attributing our objections to ‘the distributor.’’’ (The mention of a ‘‘distributor,’’ which did not yet exist, was a vehicle, as Mace later noted, for presenting the case to Halas and Batchelor.) It was also agreed that if ‘‘H & B’s reply is an outraged squawk, W will notify Farr.’’28 Wolff delayed writing Halas and Batchelor because another meeting was scheduled for February 12. Prior to this meeting, the ‘‘investors’’ had prepared yet another multipage analysis, this one enlarging on what had been discussed a month earlier. Many of the details proposed were finalized at the February meeting. Various script changes were recommended to Halas and Batchelor: Pilkington’s role was to be ‘‘de-emphasized’’; in the ‘‘revolution spreading sequence’’ there were to be ‘‘satisfied animals on prosperous farms [who] laugh off the pigeons’’ who spread the news of the revolt (‘‘cat happily lapping up cream and nice looking farmer feeding carrots to animal’’); in ‘‘battle’’ the men ‘‘aren’t farmers but farmhands.’’29 At this February 12 meeting there was also further discussion about how the film should end. A change to the book’s bleak ending had been discussed with Halas and Batchelor before they signed the contract to film Animal Farm. The ending contemplated in February 1952, however, went much further than the earlier discussion. The proposed new ending bore little resemblance to the ending of the book. The book, as everyone knows, ends with the boisterous, drunken card game between the pigs and the men deteriorating into mutual accusations of cheating, when Napoleon and Pilkington both play the ace of spades simultaneously. The animals, who have walked dejectedly away from the window, rush back when they hear the uproar coming from the farmhouse.

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Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which. The memo proposed that the film version end with the men being cheated at cards by the pigs and leaving the house ‘‘dejectedly, stripped of their money.’’ A ‘‘beaming’’ Napoleon then explains to the other pigs his plans for expansion to neighboring farms; and when the pigs leave the room they are faced by a determined horde of animals ‘‘from all over,’’ who ‘‘move forward threateningly.’’ Although this ending was ultimately rejected, many of those involved in the production of the film were delighted with the revision. It allowed for no ambiguity; the men had been eliminated from the final action: it was the animals (the people) against the pigs (the Communists). The ‘‘investors’’ were pleased with the proposal, but would continue to press for further changes.30 Toward the end of February 1952 Wolff wrote Halas and Batchelor about the proposed revision to the ending and about the suggestions that had arisen out of the January and February meetings. As agreed, he attributed the suggestions to ‘‘a story editor’’ in the ‘‘script department’’ of a company ‘‘interested in distributing the film all over the world.’’ Wolff told the creative team that he, de Rochemont, and Bryan had ‘‘spent a great deal of time in conference with the distributor’s [representatives] . . . and we had to admit a certain validity in some of their arguments.’’ In support Wolff enclosed a copy of the multipage analysis that had been prepared for the February meeting, but without indicating its true source.31 This multifaceted comprehensive review of the book and the proposed film presents fascinating clues to the rationale behind the decision to invest in a movie based on Orwell’s book, as well as the reasons for de Rochemont’s problems. The analysis, in addition to proposing changes to the movie script, praised the book for its critique of the evils inherent in Soviet Communism at a time when ‘‘most of the world including much of our officialdom was still looking at things Soviet through rosecolored glasses.’’ Fortunately, said the author of this analysis, in the seven years since the book’s publication, the West had caught up with Orwell and was increasingly aware of ‘‘the true nature of the beast.’’

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Western governments had not, as Orwell predicted they would, settled down ‘‘opportunistically’’ to do business with Stalin. It was reasonable to assume, the analysis concluded, that ‘‘if Orwell were to write the book today [1952] it would be . . . even more positively anti-Communist.’’32 The opc/cia critique of the film treatment appreciated the ‘‘great imagination’’ that had gone into Halas and Batchelor’s script. The fourth revised script could ‘‘result in a highly entertaining, thought-provoking, and successful picture.’’ But Batchelor’s ‘‘apparent inference that Communism is good in itself but that it was betrayed by Stalin & Co.’’ was unacceptable, as was her portrayal of capitalism and capitalist governments ‘‘in the worst possible light’’ (e.g., the animals in the scripts work, the men loaf ). She had failed to show ‘‘the large scale defections from the Soviet in W.W. II,’’ and there were other false notes in the script that would ‘‘instantly be detected by a viewer with . . . sympathies for the ‘Soviet experiment’ and build up a resistance to . . . the allegory.’’33 Whatever Halas and Batchelor may have thought of Wolff ’s cover story, and it is difficult to believe that they swallowed it, Halas wrote a pragmatic, diplomatic response that did not question the authorship or contents of the memo. Indeed, more than a month earlier Halas seems to have been aware of the need to shift gears. He wrote Wolff in late January that ‘‘we are very aware of what is in Louis’ mind . . . we have revised a number of Snowball’s scenes, making him . . . more dominating and officious.’’ Now, in response to Wolff ’s letter and attachment, Halas (whatever he and Batchelor felt privately) wrote, ‘‘Joy and I had a long discussion’’ and found the ‘‘story editor’s comments . . . very able and discerning . . . generally an improvement on what we had before.’’ He added, however, that ‘‘a very great amount of ground work’’ would have to be ‘‘reconsidered, redrawn, relaid-out, and retimed.’’ 34 Halas raised one objection, albeit in his typically diplomatic way, about the proposed new ending, which he pointed out had already been ‘‘action sketched and timed.’’ The proposed new ending seemed ‘‘highly improbable,’’ he wrote Wolff, suggesting as it did that ‘‘Capitalism cannot hope to do business with present day Communist leaders and can only be swindled.’’ How badly did ‘‘the distributor’’ want the new ending, he asked Wolff, and ‘‘how do you feel about Orwell’s original ending, which is really thought provoking?’’35 In March, soon after this exchange, Bryan and Wolff flew to London to confer with Halas and Batchelor in person about a fifth revised script.

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Although the usual Atlantic crossing at this time was made by ship (which is how de Rochemont traveled), they felt it necessary to fly (then a long and not always comfortable flight), which suggests the importance they attached to this visit. Some of the changes made as a result of this meeting, and of Wolff ’s earlier communications, were aesthetic (redoing the sign of the Red Lion, the inn where the men met to discuss the revolt of the animals, for example); and it was decided to use a narrator where necessary to drive the film along. But most of the changes in the fifth revised script had to do with the politics of the film. Snowball (Trotsky) was made less winning and more officious; Joy Batchelor at one point penciled in on her copy of the script the comment, ‘‘that’s Snowball pushing his way to the front.’’ After Napoleon has taken charge, his spokes-pig, Squealer, in the jargon of 1930s Stalinist Russia, refers to a ‘‘Snowballist rumor.’’ And in an allusion to a then widely held belief that while Stalin practiced ‘‘socialism in one country,’’ Trotsky preached world revolution, Snowball was made to speak out fanatically about the need ‘‘to spread the glorious news . . . so that our down-trodden comrades in other farms . . . will join the animal revolution.’’36 The scenes showing Napoleon’s control of the dogs (the Soviet Union’s secret police) has them already as puppies regimentally ‘‘lined up in front of Napoleon.’’ Other script revisions emphasized ‘‘the easy life of the pigs’’ at the expense of the other animals and changed the profession of Whymper, the man who reopens commerce with Animal Farm, from solicitor to trader and had him make a deal with Napoleon for ‘‘jam’’ (i.e., luxuries).37 Such changes did not arouse much comment or controversy either during production or after the film was released. The one departure from the book that continues to command attention is the ending. Debate among the principals about how to deal with the final scenes of the film continued almost to the end of production. Wolff returned to London more than once to meet with the creative team, as did de Rochemont. Other visitors from America included Mace and Alsop. A continuing barrage of written communications reflected persistent concerns about the film’s political emphases and its depiction of characters, as well as the specifics of the ending. The resulting need for revisions by Halas and Batchelor would delay production significantly.

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In mid-1951 John Halas, while in the United States to conclude the deal with Louis de Rochemont for the filming of Animal Farm, told a New York Times reporter that the film ‘‘would deviate very little from the Orwell story . . . we feel that the film will retain the spirit of the book.’’ In large part what Halas and Batchelor fashioned did just that, incorporating Orwell’s dystopian point of view and reflecting his anti-Stalinism. But it seems that almost nobody involved in the filming of the book ever truly gave much consideration to remaining faithful to Orwell’s bleak conclusion.1 Historian Tony Shaw has argued that Joy Batchelor ‘‘wanted to stick to the book’s conclusion’’ and ‘‘grew increasingly frustrated by tampering outsiders.’’ The evidence supports this conclusion, but it is also true that Batchelor was well aware, almost from the outset, that the ending would have to be changed. Indeed, as noted in the previous chapter, Halas had discussed a more upbeat ending with de Rochemont as early as June 1951. The Halas and Batchelor archive contains various scripts in Batchelor’s handwriting with conclusions different from the book’s.2 Joy Batchelor’s scripts were turned out under the prodding of de Rochemont, Mace, and Wolff (who continued to work on the project in spite of his reservations). They in turn were pushed by Bryan, who also dealt directly with Batchelor, and other of the ‘‘investors’’ who had a political

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axe to grind. The result, as we have seen, was a constant tweaking of the scripts, especially with regard to how the film should end. Orwell wrote with extreme clarity, and there can be no mistaking the meaning of the conclusion to his book: the ideals for which the animals had rebelled, for which they had striven and sacrificed, were systematically perverted and undermined by the pigs. The animals and their egalitarian principles had been betrayed; once more they were exploited, but now by the pigs in whom they had placed their confidence, rather than men. For Orwell, the drunken card game at the end of the book represents the 1943 Teheran Conference. There, in the capital of what was still known as Persia (Iran)—a country jointly occupied by the British and the Soviets during World War II—the Allied leaders held a top-level meeting, well summed up as ‘‘the high point of their political unity during the war.’’ Stalin, U.S. president Roosevelt, and British prime minister Churchill and their staffs met to coordinate policies against a common enemy and to discuss their plans for a postwar world. Orwell considered the outcome of this conference ‘‘a sordid bargain.’’3 The ‘‘investors’’ understandably wanted a different ending. They wanted one that was not downbeat and that was consistent with the ‘‘liberation’’ campaign being waged by America’s cultural Cold Warriors. How the movie should end, with rare exception, always centered on images of ‘‘rollback’’ and ‘‘liberation’’—so much so that Joy Batchelor, in an annotation to a later script version of the revolt of the animals against Farmer Jones, penciled in the words ‘‘liberation . . . sweeping away old regime.’’4 The first treatment did conclude, in keeping with the book, ‘‘with all hope gone from their eyes, they [the animals] wander off into the darkness.’’ But, given the understanding almost from the outset that the ending would need to be revised, there seems to have been no serious discussion of retaining Orwell’s conclusion, Halas’s tentative suggestions to Wolff in February 1952 notwithstanding.5 That the film’s ending would be more upbeat than the book’s became a given early on, but how to structure a revised ending became a matter of much discussion, especially as the ‘‘investors’’ were adamant about who should be included (pigs) and who should not (men). One of the earliest revisions to the ending had the ‘‘animals approaching and converging on the Farmhouse,’’ although exactly what they intended to do remained vague. In the course of the various rewrites, the rebellion of the animals intensified and became more widespread. One

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of the later scripts called for animals from all over the countryside to march on the corrupt pigs; the animation was to have them ‘‘surge over the camera and . . . crash through the windows.’’ In all of the later scripts, the final minutes of the film—Sequence 18—emphasize what was for the ‘‘investors’’ the nub of the tale.6 Apart from the ending and smaller changes to the rest of the script, the film remained relatively faithful to Orwell’s story. Both the book and the movie underscored Napoleon’s tyranny and the deleterious impact of pig rule. In the book, just after the animals successfully rebelled against Farmer Jones, there was inscribed on the barn wall ‘‘the Seven Commandments,’’ to serve as the ‘‘unalterable law’’ by which the animals ‘‘must live.’’ Over time these were modified unilaterally by the pigs, to their benefit. Thus to the commandment ‘‘No animal shall kill any other animal’’ the words ‘‘without cause’’ had been added. And Napoleon and his spokes-pig, Squealer, made clear that sometimes there was cause for killing traitors or those suspected of treason (the validity of the charge being determined by those doing the executing). On the barn wall, and repeated often by the sheep—who mindlessly bleated pig propaganda and untruths—was the slogan ‘‘Four legs good, two legs bad’’—a condensation of the seven commandments made for the benefit of the woolyheaded sheep, who could not seem to memorize the original commandments. One day, years after Jones’s ‘‘Manor Farm’’ had become ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ Napoleon, ‘‘with a whip in his trotter,’’ and other pigs appeared walking on two legs. The slogan on the barn wall had been amended to read, ‘‘Four legs good, two legs better,’’ and this was what the sheep now bleated. While Sequence 18, the final sequence, does suggest, even in the later versions, that the animals’ situation is hopeless, the images at the beginning of the sequence as finally animated have less to do with Orwell’s vision than with Cold War descriptions of the borders of a Soviet satellite state, images widely circulated by American propaganda and found regularly in popular magazines such as those put out by Time, Inc. The animals are enslaved by a totalitarian state. The pigs have ringed the farm with barbed wire and posted vicious guard dogs at every entrance. Halas and Batchelor scripted and later animated the animals at work under the cruel supervision of a ferocious-looking ‘‘dog police squad.’’7 In all of the script versions, Sequence 18 is set years after the pigs gain control of the farm. As the script evolved, the pigs send invitations to

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pigs on other farms to attend a celebration of Napoleon’s domination of Animal Farm. The pig delegates arrive in formal attire, strutting on their two hind legs. In one of the few parts of Sequence 18 that is true to Orwell’s text, the animals discover that the last commandment still standing in its original form—‘‘all animals are equal’’—has finally been altered by the addition of ‘‘but some animals are more equal than others.’’8 At the celebratory party at the close of the action (attended only by pigs; the ‘‘investors’’ had their way, and the men are left out), Napoleon declaims to the gathering, in words that are not found in the book: ‘‘Loyal Followers! On Farms Owned and Operated by Pigs There is Order and Discipline. Our Lower Animals Do More Work and Eat Less than on Other Farms.’’ Napoleon encourages the assembled pigs to ‘‘Make Your Lower Animals Work Harder and Eat Even Less.’’ Napoleon declares: ‘‘To a Greater Animal Farm! To Peace and Prosperity under Pig Rule! To the Day When Pigs Own and Operate Farms Everywhere.’’9 In an earlier version of this scene, the script called for the animals to be attracted by the noise of the party and, looking through the window of the farmhouse, to see the reveling pigs. The pigs were to be shown transformed into Farmer Jones and back again, while a voiceover informed the audience that ‘‘the pigs are changed and that around the table are not pigs but Farmer Jones.’’ As a result of de Rochemont’s discussions with Halas and Batchelor during his visit to London in mid-1952, this sequence, as noted above (beginning with the sixth revised version and continuing in one form or another into the film), concluded with the animals ‘‘surging forward,’’ their movement ‘‘intensified by the music,’’ and overrunning Napoleon and his ‘‘drunken companions.’’10 After de Rochemont returned to the United States, and after further discussions with his colleagues and the cia’s representatives, this part of the sequence was reassessed. Batchelor then wrote the seventh revised version of the ending, which makes Benjamin, the cynical donkey, the vehicle through which the animals come to understand the need to rebel again. When Benjamin reads on the barn wall that some animals are more equal than others, he sends the pigeons off to inform animals ‘‘elsewhere’’ about the change. Benjamin is responsible for ‘‘spreading the news of the pigs’ hypocrisy’’ beyond Animal Farm. Benjamin, attracted by the noise of the revelry, then goes to the window of the farmhouse, sees the pigs at their party, hears Napoleon’s proc-

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lamation and witnesses the visual transformation of pigs into men and back again, and spreads the word to the other animals, both those on the farm and those from afar. Aroused by Benjamin, these animals charge the farmhouse. The movie ends with the destruction of the pigs.11 The decision to excise all men from the party eliminated possible references in the film to those in the West who traded with the Soviets successfully (equivalent to the book’s farmer Pilkington, who symbolized the United Kingdom and had established commercial relations with Napoleon and Animal Farm). The transformation of the end of the book, of the animals being mutated from depressed and docile to rebellious and aware, was the most obvious manifestation of the changes inflicted upon Orwell’s text in order to achieve the kind of propaganda that de Rochemont’s sponsors required. Halas and Batchelor seem to have had few qualms about de Rochemont’s call for ‘‘at least some degree of hope being introduced before the end.’’ Their public comments and private asides appear to be more than just a good face; they apparently agreed that the movie, if it was to be commercially viable, needed at least the hint of a more positive ending. Even before the film’s completion, movie historian Roger Manvell—a sometime collaborator with Halas—in a book about animation centered on this production then in process, noted that the creators preferred ‘‘a happier twist’’ at the end.12 Just after the advance screening for the London press, Joy Batchelor told reporters that she thought the production was ‘‘more effective’’ because it ‘‘ended in action.’’ Commenting on the ending years later, she said that Animal Farm was meant to be ‘‘a movie for all audiences’’ and that the intent was ‘‘to make a film about freedom.’’ Halas explained the changed ending, in retrospect, in terms of the filmmakers’ ‘‘conventional need to have an upbeat, active ending that sent audiences away happy.’’ (He also noted that he and Joy had ‘‘discovered early on that flexibility and adaptability were essential in order to survive.’’)13 Similar concerns have led to changes in the film version of many a literary masterpiece. To cite one notable example, John Steinbeck’s Pulitzer Prize–winning 1939 novel, The Grapes of Wrath, a devastating portrait of Dust Bowl refugees driven from the heartland of America to California a few years earlier, ends with a woman whose baby was born dead nursing a famished old man with milk from her breasts. The award-winning 1940 movie version was given a much more upbeat ending because, as

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the screenwriter put it, ‘‘there had to be some ray of hope—something that would keep people . . . from going out and getting . . . drunk in utter despondency.’’14 That such box office considerations were important in the making of Animal Farm can be seen in the 1999 Hallmark/Artisan Entertainment version of Animal Farm. A ninety-one-minute combination of live action and animation using technology not available in the early 1950s, it was originally broadcast by Ted Turner’s cable network in the United States. Seemingly without the kind of prodding applied by de Rochemont’s investors, the producers of this version altered the ending of Orwell’s book as well as the framing structure of the story, in order to give it what one knowledgeable reviewer called ‘‘an overall dramatic arc.’’15 The setting was moved to the 1950s, and the film included ‘‘a fleeting sex scene of Farmer Jones and the wife of another farmer in bed together.’’ There were express links to contemporary topics such as animal rights and vivisection through the use of what one critic damned as ‘‘barbarous torture scenes.’’ This production also made use of supposedly vintage black-and-white newsreel footage as examples of the pigs’ propaganda films (one featuring goose-stepping ducks) to illustrate and condemn what was disparaged as ‘‘the narcotizing effects of TV’’ on public opinion.16 To some extent this version of the book built on the changes to the book incorporated by Halas and Batchelor in the original film, including an upbeat ending. Napoleon’s leadership ultimately leads to Animal Farm’s collapse; those of his opponents who have hidden out in the woods return. The farm’s new human owners, a husband and wife with two children, arrive at the rundown farm to the strains of Fats Domino singing ‘‘Blueberry Hill,’’ of all the incongruous soundtracks.17 The family, in John Rodden’s words, ‘‘look reassuringly bourgeois, upscale, and suburban, making an easy passage for the farm and the surviving animals from communist tyranny to liberal democracy.’’ The Hallmark TV movie was certainly superior to the original technologically, but its radical departures from the book can be summed up in the words of a reviewer who wrote that it ‘‘convoluted, diluted, and trashed’’ Orwell’s book.18 Not all of the changes proposed for the Halas & Batchelor film were realized. The ‘‘investors’’ didn’t always have their own way, even in Sequence 18. The wall map in that sequence, for example, did not show

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that neighboring farms had been incorporated into Animal Farm. Nor were there portraits of ‘‘little Napoleons’’ on each of the neighboring farms. Other references to Soviet satellite states and their subservient Communist rulers, despite strong recommendations for their inclusion, were not in the released film.19 That other parts of Orwell’s book could also serve the purposes of the ‘‘investors’’ with only slight modification can be seen in the movie treatment of the fate of Boxer, the brave, strong, patient horse whose untiring labor and commitment had benefited Animal Farm over and over again. Boxer represented the ordinary Soviet worker/peasant to whom Communism promised much but gave little. Boxer had looked forward to a peaceful retirement in the corner of the big pasture. What happens, though, is that Boxer, ill and exhausted from continued but willing overwork, in one of the most moving parts of Orwell’s book, is dispatched to the glue factory. The animals—promised by Napoleon’s oily spokesman, Squealer, that Boxer will be treated at a veterinary hospital—are not disturbed when a van comes to take the horse away. Only when Benjamin the donkey, Boxer’s staunch friend, reads the words ‘‘Horse Slaughterer’’ on the van are the animals aroused. But it is too late for them, and for an enfeebled Boxer, who in his prime could (in Orwell’s words) have ‘‘smashed the van to matchwood.’’ The van pulls away, taking Boxer to his grim death. In both the book and the various script versions, this segment is horrific. In the completed film it is a stirring piece of animation as well, an emotional high point of the film, as Boxer’s friend Benjamin, braying ever more loudly in anguish, futilely chases the van containing Boxer, who ineffectually strains to escape. Interestingly enough, the many discussions between Halas and Batchelor and the de Rochemont people about this part of Sequence 17 concentrated not on Boxer and Benjamin but on the aftermath. Even more than in the book, the film was meant to show the callous indifference of the pigs to the hardworking animals. The ‘‘investors’’ wanted to highlight disdainful Stalinist leadership’s lack of interest even in their most committed citizens. To facilitate that view, considerable attention was paid to what happened after Boxer was sent to the glue factory. In an early draft of the script, Squealer, cued by Napoleon and with crocodile tears streaming down his face, dismisses false rumors about Boxer’s final destination that he claims were started by the

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animals’ archenemy, Snowball. The horse’s demise was ‘‘beautiful and peaceful,’’ Squealer tells the animals.20 There was much discussion about this scene. Subsequent scripts dealing with it are not consistent and, like the film’s ending, took time to work out. In some versions Squealer asserts that Boxer’s last words were either ‘‘Forward Comrades,’’ ‘‘Long Live Animal Farm,’’ or ‘‘Long Live Napoleon.’’ In one of the rewrites, when the animals are unmoved by Squealer’s sophistry, Napoleon bursts out of the farmhouse ‘‘wearing Farmer Jones’ clothes, walking upright on two feet, carrying a whip with which he lashes out, accompanied by two ferocious dogs which growl fiercely.’’ Other rewrites were less direct.21 As finally filmed, the sequence ends with the pigs sharing a bottle from a whiskey crate left for them by the men who have taken Boxer away. As the pigs toast Boxer it becomes clear that the stalwart Boxer has been traded for the very whiskey with which he is being toasted. Wolff, who had been unhappy with the earlier rewrite showing Napoleon’s harsh and aggressive response, found the changes toning down this sequence to be ‘‘indeed improvements’’ that he ‘‘liked very much.’’22 As we have seen, Wolff, for much of the production the most direct link to Halas and Batchelor, had at times been dissatisfied with the input of the ‘‘investors,’’ and he continued to reiterate his concerns about the proposed changes to the ending. The more pliable de Rochemont responded more favorably to the ‘‘investors’’’ suggestions, for the most part, but about one of their actions he expressed considerable annoyance. He was upset when he learned that they had sent a copy of the script to what he described as ‘‘some friends of theirs who are supposed to be experts in psychological warfare.’’23 Almost to the day in January 1952 that de Rochemont sent the memo to his associates about the financial backers’ concerns about the film’s politics, a consultant to the government’s Psychological Strategy Board (psb) wrote that he and a psb colleague had reviewed the script and found the theme of the proposed film ‘‘somewhat confusing’’ and the impact of the story ‘‘somewhat nebulous.’’ From the date of his memo, he was probably referring to the fourth revised script. Why the script came to the psb’s attention just then is a question that for the moment remains unanswered and seems likely to remain so. The Truman Library staff has found that the psb files on deposit there offer only a single memo dealing with the movie.24

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The psb came into being formally on April 4, 1951, with a mission described as ‘‘planning for propaganda and psychological warfare’’ and ‘‘monitoring national efforts’’ in this regard. This grand mission was hampered by lack of cooperation from other government agencies. The psb had a less than imposing existence, and died unmourned in 1953 during the first months of the Eisenhower administration. The psb produced ‘‘reams of studies,’’ but to little avail. cia head Bedell Smith, whose agency should have worked closely with the psb, seems to have considered its staff ‘‘incompetent’’ and its work ‘‘irrelevant.’’25 Smith’s judgment is borne out by what can be gleaned from the files available about the psb’s actions with regard to propaganda films in general. Charles R. Worberg Jr., acting deputy assistant director during the psb’s final days, suggested making details about the harsh Soviet living conditions, ‘‘both inside and outside the slave labor camps,’’ available to movie scriptwriters ‘‘in order to fashion some very hard hitting propaganda films.’’26 There were discussions of the possibility of a series of films, under the rubric ‘‘Why We Fight the Cold War,’’ that would be ‘‘roughly analogous to the ‘why we fight’ series which was so successful during the second world war.’’ Inconclusive conversations took place with the noted director Frank Capra, creator of that series, who, in proceedings that Orwell would have found fascinating, had just managed to clear himself of accusations that had dogged him for months that he was a ‘‘subversive’’ because of his past associations and the politics of his films. Capra had to make an enormous effort to achieve the security clearance that would have allowed him to work on such a series and to overcome what he called ‘‘the bitterest and most humiliating experience of my life.’’27 The psb made some other innocuous attempts to deal with movies (one memo from a staff member concluded, ‘‘the moral I would draw from this is that if a work of art is to be good propaganda it should also be good art’’). A suggestion to screen American and Soviet propaganda films (‘‘the cia maintains a complete library of Soviet propaganda films . . . indexed as to content, length, language, etc.’’) resulted in what might be called a social evening: a screening of U.S. propaganda films was scheduled for a Wednesday so that staff could ‘‘bring their wives.’’28 As bureaucratic reshuffling took place in the American intelligence community, the psb became increasingly insignificant. The memo dealing with Animal Farm was written against the backdrop of General

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Smith’s restructuring of the cia. Some opc personnel found themselves reassigned to the psb. For example, the ‘‘Animal Farm’’ memo was directed to Tracy Barnes, an OSS veteran who, after being recruited to opc by Wisner, served for a brief time as ‘‘the number two man’’ to the psb director but was eager to return to the cia. What he felt about the appointment can be understood from his query, not long thereafter, to the board’s executive officer: ‘‘Can you give me any estimate’’ about how long it would be before the ‘‘cia picked me up?’’29 People like Barnes had much more clout than most of the individuals associated with the psb ‘‘Animal Farm’’ memo. Its author, Richard Hirsch, was a veteran of military intelligence and author of a book on Russia’s espionage in North America. John Anspacher, whose opinion the memo quotes, later described himself as ‘‘a radio journalist and communication specialist’’; he served as a State Department public affairs specialist in occupied Germany after World War II and, after his stint with the psb, in Cambodia, South Vietnam, and Ethiopia in the 1960s, ‘‘planning and seeing to the implementation of multi-media cultural information programs designed to achieve particular objectives among selected audience groups.’’30 Wallace Carroll, who put the review of the Animal Farm script in motion, has been described as ‘‘an intuitive American architect of psychological warfare.’’ A scholarly journalist (he had been a United Press bureau chief ), he had served with OWI during World War II. Carroll was a hardliner: in 1948 he published a well-received book called Persuade or Perish (described by one reviewer as ‘‘a chastening message for U.S. policy makers’’), and the next year asserted in Life magazine that ‘‘we must prepare to support guerilla warfare on . . . a scale . . . the world has never seen.’’ His efforts in the psywar field commanded respect, and during the Cold War years he consulted extensively on such activity with U.S. government bodies, including the State and Defense Departments. Perhaps in recognition of the psb’s limitations, he does not seem to have followed up his initial interest in Animal Farm.31 The psb memo and the backgrounds of these men are a good indication of the interest of at least one other government agency in the Orwell film. But it seems to me that too much can be read into such a memo, as I think authors such as Stonor Saunders and Shaw have done. It is fascinating that an ineffectual agency (a disappointed Carroll described the psb as ‘‘a fifth wheel’’ in the intelligence community) was interested

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in the project. But none of those mentioned in the memo or the psb as an agency had the clout or influence of opc/cia or Joe Bryan. Nothing better illustrates the triviality of the psb’s interest than Bryan’s ability to change the scripts of Animal Farm as he and his cohorts did.32 Other revisions to the scripts were motivated by practical considerations, or by a desire to rein in costs, as the production dragged on. In order to speed up the laborious, time-consuming, and costly animation process, Halas and Batchelor cut some of the book’s lesser characters, as noted earlier. The cutting of the mares Clover and Mollie, and the excision of Mrs. Jones, led one critic to remark on the ‘‘marked diminution of . . . female characters’’ and to note that ‘‘we still have the hens and cows,’’ but not ‘‘with any notably female characteristics.’’33 The de Rochemont team kept track of the changes necessitated by the government’s political agenda, but it seems to have had a harder time keeping up with the changes that had to be made for technical reasons. In late 1952 Wolff—also working on the Luther production in Germany—complained to de Rochemont about ‘‘information flow,’’ writing that he felt like a ‘‘complete jerk’’ because he had not been kept up to date on script changes. Even de Rochemont seems to have had problems keeping up, and toward the end of that year he requested from Halas and Batchelor ‘‘an up to date script,’’ because, as he wrote, even though his files included ‘‘all the changes from the sixth revised script . . . I feel incapable of making a new smooth copy.’’34 The increasing cost of the production worried de Rochemont and his staff. They seem to have underestimated the animation costs that would result from all the script changes. The ‘‘investors’’ had promised the ‘‘essential’’ funding, but, as mentioned earlier, as production dragged on sent auditors to ‘‘check the books.’’ The revised scripts, reflecting the political changes insisted upon, caused production of the film to increasingly fall behind schedule. Moreover, as costs rose and the de Rochemont company had to invest its own funds, he and his associates became concerned about recovering their outlay. Even Walt Disney’s great breakthrough cartoon feature, Snow White, initially had not been a moneymaker. Disney’s other activities had to carry the enormous costs of producing Snow White until it finally returned a profit. In late 1953 and early 1954, as production on Animal Farm dragged on and costs escalated, de Rochemont began to put ‘‘extreme pressure’’ on Halas and Batchelor to reduce expenditures and finish the picture.35

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Halas and Batchelor responded by cutting additional lesser characters, such as the cat and the rats, and by reducing the ‘‘immutable law’’ on the barn wall from seven commandments to five. They also telescoped or eliminated some of the book’s plot elements without any discernable political pressure to do so; thus the windmill (symbol of the difficult, painful electrification and industrialization of the Soviet Union) is destroyed twice in the book (once during the attack on the farm by Jones and his farmhands, a second time by a violent storm) but only once in the film (by the farmers). Animation judged to be weak was eliminated wherever possible.36 The need to economize had a strong impact on production. Halas and Batchelor began using the same animated sequences in different parts of the film. As Whitaker recalled, if ‘‘we had not used short cuts, it would have taken forever to make the film.’’ For example, a continuity sheet for Sequence 15 called for ‘‘doubling up’’ in various scenes—in scene 28, the cows charging were the same as the ones used in Sequence 14, scene 45, and in scene 44 the men and geese fighting were the same as those used in Sequence 14. If you look closely at the farmers marching to attack the farm it is possible to see that some of the artwork for individual characters was used more than once. Whitaker remembers that six basic farmhand characters were used over and over again, but differentiated by changing hair color or adding a different cap. In addition, some scenes had ‘‘no movement at all’’ (scenes 64 to 69 in one sequence were ‘‘still scenes with no animation’’).37 Throughout 1952 Halas and de Rochemont issued statements to the trade press about the anticipated completion of the film that had to be continually revised. Their estimate that the film would be completed by the spring of 1953 was off by a full year. In July of that year a progress report showed that hundreds of feet of film still needed to be animated—to date the camera-filmed footage stood at 3,287 feet, with an additional 2,400 to go. At the end of April 1954 Variety reported that a completed print of the film would be delivered ‘‘in about two weeks.’’ Even this report was premature. Further manipulation of the story caused more delays, and these would continue for several more months.38

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By mid-1953 all of the major decisions about the politics of the film had been worked through and resolved, and the work of Halas and Batchelor progressed steadily. In mid-March 1954 a sanguine Mace reported that the animation had been completed and that Technicolor was making color corrections and opticals. Increasingly concerned about the ongoing costs, de Rochemont and his associates assumed completion was in sight and breathed a sigh of relief. Overall the costs as such were not unreasonable (even if substantially more than had been budgeted), especially given the changes stemming from the need to reanimate in order to meet the goals of the ‘‘investors.’’1 But the ‘‘investors’’ remained concerned about the overall political message of the film, and their focus now shifted to the tone of the narration, which would do much of the work of conveying the proper message and tone of the film. Their pressure for aggressively political narration caused further delays, as it became necessary, Halas informed Mace, ‘‘to redo some of the sound track,’’ which in turn meant yet more changes to the animation.2 Joy Batchelor’s narration had taken into account the political tweaking of her scripts and the more significant departures that she and Halas had made from Orwell’s book. But she had tried to use as much of Orwell’s language as she could; there are page references to the book alongside some of what she wrote for the narration. Batchelor’s draft voiceover

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commentary for Sequence 13 (Orwell’s parody of the 1930s Soviet show trials, in which the indicted confessed falsely to bizarre crimes against the state), for example, quotes liberally from the book, with a page reference to the animals who had opposed Napoleon and were now trembling before him as he ‘‘called upon them to confess their crimes.’’ Like their Soviet counterparts in real life, these animals were purged falsely and cruelly, and this part of Orwell’s book had attracted the financial backers in the opc/cia for good reason.3 A significant portion of what she wrote for the voiceover narration uses Orwell’s words. The second paragraph of the book reads in part, ‘‘there was a stirring and fluttering all through the farm buildings. Word had gone round during the day that old Major, the prize Middle White boar, had had a strange dream on the previous night and wished to communicate it to the other animals.’’ Her commentary, as used in the film, deleted the words ‘‘buildings’’ and ‘‘Middle White’’ but otherwise remained faithful to the text.4 As with nearly every film adaptation of a novel, chunks of the book had to be trimmed substantially. Old Major’s speech to the assembled animals goes on for nearly five pages and would not have translated well to the screen. But Batchelor captures its essence in brief excerpts. As Halas and Batchelor reported at the time of the film’s release, they necessarily ‘‘condensed, unified, and simplified’’ the book. In scripting the movie Batchelor relied on her own considerable talents as a wordsmith to fashion a screenplay that would work for a seventy-minute movie and yet still remain relatively faithful to the book.5 I think it is fair to say that Joy Batchelor felt that she and Halas had met the demands of de Rochemont and his associates by incorporating nearly all of their requests into the film’s animation. She had written the narration in the same vein. Her final draft of the narration attempted to satisfy the financial backers’ political agenda, and given her own admiration for Orwell, whom she described as one of her heroes, it seems to me that she bent over backward in this respect. Her efforts, nonetheless, were not good enough for the Cold Warriors in the opc/cia. They wanted a much more blatant anti-Communist slant than Batchelor provided, and they made their displeasure known to de Rochemont. To revise the narration and produce one that would satisfy the ‘‘investors,’’ de Rochemont responded by calling in John Stuart Martin, who was part of the Princeton–Time, Inc., nexus so much involved with the making of the film. Martin and de Rochemont had worked together pre-

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viously; Martin is credited with writing the narration (‘‘aces,’’ according to Variety) for de Rochemont’s Oscar-winning World War II propaganda film The Fighting Lady (1944). A 1923 graduate of Princeton, Martin had not allowed the loss of his left arm in a childhood hunting accident to handicap him. As Wolcott Gibbs, in his smashing satire of Time-style put it: ‘‘Unhandicapped he, resentful of sympathy, Martin played par golf at Princeton, is a crack shot with a rifle or a shotgun, holds a telephone with no hands, using shoulder & chin, chews paper clips.’’ Martin prided himself, in the words of a contemporary, on being ‘‘the champion of onearm pushups.’’6 Martin was one of the original group who started Time magazine and a cousin of its co-founder, Briton Hadden. That, according to one historian of the enterprise, may explain why its prime mover, Henry Luce, handled the talented but difficult relative of his late partner with ‘‘a gingerly solicitude he didn’t often show others.’’ Martin was described by Gibbs as ‘‘nimble in . . . Timenterprises.’’ Martin had been active in ‘‘Cinemarch,’’ held a variety of responsible positions at Time magazine, serving several times as its managing editor (1929–33, 1936–37), and in 1935–36 had helped to develop Life magazine. His hard drinking gave him a reputation as a ‘‘verbal bully’’ when drunk, which seriously hampered his career; it may have cost him the chance to be Life’s first managing editor.7 After leaving Time, Inc., Martin flourished as a freelance writer. Characterized in a New York Times obituary as ‘‘a literary stylist,’’ his books included a history of the golf ball, a how-to manual for tree lovers, and an introduction to shooting and bird dogs. A gifted conservative wordsmith, Martin had, at the end of World War II, put together a well-received picture history of Russia that went through several editions. This history’s illustrations and text (the Russian expert Louis Fischer’s favorable review commented on Martin’s description of Stalin as the ‘‘tsarlike head of a political system’’ and on the book’s ‘‘rehabilitating pre-Bolshevik Russia’’) antedated and echoed the anti-Soviet views of the ‘‘investors.’’ This book made no secret of Martin’s anti-Communist politics. Whether he knew about the financial backers of the Animal Farm movie, Martin, in endeavoring to fulfill de Rochemont’s expectations, also met theirs.8 That Martin understood the politics of the situation is clear from the voiceover narration he wrote. He knew what was expected of him, and he delivered. Whether he ever knew about the role of the cia/opc ‘‘investors’’ is open to question, but he well understood what de Rochemont

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needed. In fact, the revised screenplay that Martin crafted was overpoliticized, simplistic in its Cold War ideology, and irritated Halas and Batchelor deeply. Martin received no screen credit for his work on the movie version of Orwell’s book. Indeed, so far as I have been able to determine, nothing written about the production at any time mentions his contribution. Like so many script doctors past and present, Martin was simply an anonymous pen for hire, yet he had a significant if limited impact during the final stages of production. Just exactly when Martin became involved remains uncertain, but he was a quick worker and had completed a first draft (of several) by mid-June 1954, just weeks after de Rochemont approached him.9 Martin’s efforts did give the film’s narration the desired political twist, though this is in no way a criticism of Batchelor’s efforts. She had labored over numerous scripts, under some confusing guidance from a partnership across the Atlantic, with people dropping in from time to time to make their wishes known, a situation that made for difficult working circumstances. Martin’s rewriting of the narration understandably, according to Vivien Halas, did irritate her mother ‘‘some.’’ But whatever Joy Batchelor’s feelings, her comments on Martin’s work, if critical, in the main were restrained. For example, on draft one of the ‘‘Martin Commentary’’ she indicated words and phrases that she felt should be omitted, made some revisions, and presented what she termed some ‘‘detailed observations.’’10 From my perspective her comments should have been regarded as useful, not offensive, and to the point. One comment on Martin’s rewrite reads, ‘‘I don’t care for the passage marked . . . because to my mind, it gives far too much of the game away . . . why then did we bother to build up the suspense visually when Jones comes home?’’ In other places she found Martin’s revisions ‘‘belittling.’’ And she expressed concern about another change because ‘‘we have none too much footage here,’’ a situation of some concern to her and Halas because any new animation would mean further delay. These observations seem eminently fair, inoffensive, and potentially useful.11 Revamping part of the voiceover narration was a demanding and expensive process that involved further animation. Revisions complicated the already arduous task of matching up audio (whether dialogue that had to be moved or narration that needed insertion). Even tiny changes

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meant delay and increased costs. For the animators, the start and end of each shot had been clearly marked so that they would know how many drawings were necessary to match certain dialogue before the film moved on to another scene. The changes in the script caused real difficulties. In Sequence 1, scene 14, for example, fourteen feet of film, or just under nine seconds, had to be resynchronized with the drawings in order to allow an additional seven seconds of commentary. Only after much travail did the animators come up with a solution—they added a ‘‘pan to the barn,’’ though this of course meant additional artwork.12 Martin, like the opc/cia backers, was especially concerned with the final sequence. The book’s last chapter, which Batchelor had quoted in that sequence, begins, ‘‘Years passed. The seasons came and went, the short animal lives fled by.’’ For Orwell, ‘‘somehow it seemed as though the farm had grown richer without making the animals themselves any richer—except, of course, for the pigs and the dogs.’’ Martin’s commentary also drew on Orwell’s words but introduced a harsher tone. His concluding sequence, the one used in the completed film, began: ‘‘Years passed, the Seasons came and went. The short animal lives fled by. . . . Outwardly Animal Farm seemed prosperous but the animals themselves were no better off, with the exception of the pigs and their Supreme Leader, Napoleon.’’ New animation was drawn to accompany this prose (e.g., pictures of Napoleon, covered with medals, everywhere).13 There is no question that Martin had an impact, especially, as in the final sequence, where after a point there was no Orwell prose to guide the narration. Having met the demands of de Rochemont and his associates for a more upbeat ending, Halas and Batchelor now had to redo and match the animation to the changes Martin imposed. In Sequence 18, where pigs are shown typing up press releases announcing Napoleon’s celebration, and the pig delegates are shown arriving in their cars, Martin’s narration, with new animation, could hardly sound less like Orwell: ‘‘pig-run enterprises now had many of the frills of real civilization, and one June day pig-delegates from far and wide arrived at Animal Farm to celebrate the coming of a new era.’’14 For all of Martin’s talents, his narration often amounted to simplistic Cold War persiflage dumbed down to grade-school level. In Martin’s hands, Snowball became ‘‘pushy, but not too rude about it’’; Snowball radiated ‘‘energy’’ but in pursuit of false goals; Napoleon was ‘‘pushy and not polite at all.’’ In Martin’s treatment Napoleon violently took control of

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Animal Farm through a ‘‘purge’’ of its inhabitants. Martin’s commentary demonized Napoleon.15 In contrast to Joy Batchelor’s subtlety, Martin’s words were blunt, clumsy instruments. He spoke not only of ‘‘purges.’’ Martin was not interested in Orwell’s theme of united animals building Animal Farm as a communal enterprise but in the pig-dictator’s brutal seizure of power. Martin’s narration dealt with the downside of the animals’ revolt. For Martin, control of Animal Farm meant that instead of its leaders serving the welfare of its citizens, the pigs ruthlessly provided plentifully for themselves.16 Although Martin’s treatment of the script echoed the views of the ‘‘investors,’’ his revisions did not always make their way into the film. In the scene in Sequence 18 in which the pig-delegates march from the rally to Napoleon’s house, Martin wrote, ‘‘Animal Farm now harped on a new social proposition to which the pigs were dedicated’’ (i.e., that some animals were more equal than others). Halas and Batchelor cut these words and made the point less obviously, but more economically and perhaps just as well with clever, satirical martial music. Nor did the finished film use some other parts of Martin’s frenetic commentary about ‘‘a fencedin state.’’17 Nevertheless, even where Martin’s exact words were not used in the finished film (often because this would have required further animation), they exercised an influence on the narration. Consider the part of Sequence 17 dealing with the aftermath of Boxer’s removal to the glue factory and Squealer’s failed attempts to jolly the animals out of their dismay, even despair. As the pigs quaff the whiskey they have received, Martin wrote that the whiskey had been bought with ‘‘Boxer’s blood,’’ which Halas and Batchelor rejected for the more toned-down ‘‘Boxer’s life.’’18 Martin’s stridency worried Halas and Batchelor, but de Rochemont made no objections, nor did its last-minute introduction, which caused a further delay in production, seem to bother him. The extra costs incurred were less important to the American side of the production than their determination that the political message of the film ring through loud and clear. As late as the end of August 1954, not long before the film’s scheduled world premiere in New York City, de Rochemont, after viewing film Halas had sent him, complained to Halas that parts of it were ‘‘an earlier version of the narration.’’19

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And Mace, following up, wrote Halas, ‘‘I’m having the narration we think best for the project re-typed and it will follow tomorrow.’’ Halas’s hesitancy is understandable. Martin’s narration often had a ham-handed quality. Martin’s desire to fulfill the goals of de Rochemont and his backers had resulted in some extremely crude propaganda. Halas and Batchelor had demonstrated from the beginning of the project that they accepted the propagandistic goals of the film and were willing to be flexible, but Martin’s crudeness must have been a cause for some dismay.20 It took some time for Halas and Batchelor to work out with de Rochemont just what could and should be said. The final narration, which amalgamates Joy Batchelor’s script and Martin’s commentary, is dated September 27, 1954. In early April, before Martin had begun churning out his commentary, Halas and Batchelor had dealt with Carlton Alsop, who had come over to view the almost completed film. Alsop was the last of the many visitors who had crossed the Atlantic to discuss the progress of the film, and more than once.21 Unlike Farr, the affable Alsop had no special interest in Orwell. Nor, like Bryan, did he seem to take his agency postings all that seriously. He does seem, at least for a while, to have gotten along very well with Sonia Orwell. An executive of the American production company recalls that in 1954, toward the end of filming, he had dinner with Alsop and Sonia Orwell while passing through London. They met him at her apartment for pre-dinner drinks, and after the meal they all went back to her flat for a nightcap. At the end of the evening Alsop stayed behind with her, and the visiting American felt that this was not unusual and that they had previously spent nights together.22 Alsop was very much the ‘‘ladies’ man’’ and a bon vivant who did not take life too seriously. Friends recalled that he ‘‘always traveled with black tie and white tie . . . along with his emerald . . . studs and cuff links.’’ Farr once wrote Bryan, ‘‘Yes, it is a good thing to go out with Carl Alsop. At any . . . nite spot in N.Y. or L.A. he is received with genuine joy by all.’’ His background was different from theirs. Born in Stockton, California, he left home at age sixteen, hopped freights, and ‘‘lived in ‘hobo jungles’’’ before finally settling down. He seems to have earned a college degree from the University of Southern California in 1925. Over the years he was identified at various times as a radio announcer, advertising executive, movie producer, theatrical agent, and public relations man.23 The award-winning radio and TV writer Hal Kanter recalled that Alsop

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was ‘‘not considered a top radio person, I think he’s done very little.’’ Overall Alsop does not seem to have taken much of his employment seriously. While briefly employed at mgm in a production capacity during the mid-1940s, Alsop periodically would stop by the office of novelist John O’Hara, then engaged to write a screenplay, saying, ‘‘I think we’ve had about enough of this, don’t you?’’ and off they would go for a set of tennis or drinks. A number of people queried by the fbi during its vetting of Alsop for cia employment volunteered, in the words of one, ‘‘applicant drinks alcoholic beverages to excess, but conducts himself in a proper manner.’’24 Alsop’s marital career ultimately is more interesting and revealing than his professional life. In 1940 he married Martha Scott, then on her way to becoming a prominent stage and screen actress, whom he met while working with her on a radio serial dealing with the conflicts between home and career. He had just been divorced, for the second time, and according to one gossip columnist ‘‘was about to run off to Egypt to forget.’’ He moved to Scott’s ranch in the San Fernando Valley. They divorced in 1946. Early the next year he married the fading star Sylvia Sidney. They separated in February 1950 and divorced in March 1951. She complained that ‘‘shortly after we married he stopped work.’’25 As neighbors of Judy Garland, they became involved with her messy life, and for a brief span he ‘‘represented’’ her. Her husband at the time, the director Vincente Minnelli, believed that Alsop was ‘‘one father figure . . . who hadn’t failed her.’’ Kanter remembered him as her ‘‘protector.’’ The Garland-Alsop relationship ended with her suicide attempt in June 1950, after which he went to New York City and briefly worked with a PR firm there. The fbi’s vetting of Alsop took place in December 1950 and January 1951. If Hunt is to be believed, Alsop, along with Farr, went to the United Kingdom for opc as part of the negotiations for the film rights to Orwell’s books. There is no mention of Alsop in any correspondence dealing with the rights, however, and according to the fbi report on him he had gone to Florida as ‘‘a house guest.’’26 Just how Halas and Batchelor viewed Alsop, or for that matter what they thought of Bryan, is not clear. They certainly could not help noticing that Bryan had significant input into the production in its early days. Did they really believe that he and Alsop were part of the de Rochemont organization? Certainly de Rochemont and his associates did endeavor to mask the input from the opc/cia representatives whenever they asked

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for changes to the script, as for example when the American end of the production attributed demands for a more anti-Soviet attitude to the anonymous ‘‘story editor’’ in the ‘‘script department’’ of a company supposedly ‘‘interested in distributing the film.’’ In any event, apart from that type of interference in the scriptwriting, and the visits of Alsop, Bryan, de Rochemont, and others notwithstanding, Halas and Batchelor ran their own show, and they did a first-rate job in hiring the narrator and the man who gave voice to the animals.27 All the film’s animal voices and sounds belonged to one man, the very talented Maurice Denham, who worked as a character actor in the movies and on TV almost until his death in 2002 at age ninety-two. Trained as an engineer, he ‘‘threw away his tools after four years’’ and made his stage debut in 1934. Denham began appearing in movies after the war ended in 1945. When John Halas chose him for Animal Farm, Denham had played minor roles in more than thirty films but was best known for his work on British radio as ‘‘the man with a thousand voices.’’ He had successfully played a gallery of characters on a long-running British radio comedy called Much Binding in the Marsh, which dealt with ‘‘the bumbling efforts of the Royal Air Force at a remote World War II air station.’’28 Halas, according to one press story, wrote Denham, ‘‘you are urgently needed to play the parts of three pigs, four donkeys, a herd of cows, six ducks, a flock of sheep, and a dog,’’ prior to engaging him in 1953. He was hired after the substantial completion of much of the animation but before the film’s creators had decided on how the animals would communicate. Given Denham’s talents, they decided that his would be the only voice to portray the animals. Halas remembered fondly that Denham ‘‘took the trouble to practice for months’’ in order to achieve a tone that was ‘‘convincing enough to be the voice of the pigs with grunts and snuffles in between words.’’29 At first, Denham recalled, Halas and Batchelor had considered having him make only animal grunts and squeals and other sounds, and using subtitles at the bottom of the screen. This was an appealing idea because it would ease distribution in the non-English-speaking world, as the captions could be written in different languages as necessary. But ultimately Halas and Batchelor opted to use Denham’s talent for vocally differentiating characterizations, and he read (and squeaked and squawked) the

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parts in English. Apart from the narrator, Denham’s is the only voice heard in the film, ‘‘a remarkable feat,’’ in the apt words of one critic.30 Whatever qualms Halas and Batchelor may have had about the content of the narration, its recording went extremely smoothly. Halas made a good choice in the person he hired to give it voice. For £100 he engaged Gordon Heath. It is doubtful that viewers of the film, then or now, realized that Heath was a black American expatriate. Indeed, it is not clear that de Rochemont and his associates knew. If they did, it would not have mattered. Years later William Greaves, a highly successful black filmmaker whose movie career began as a ‘‘second juvenile lead’’ in Lost Boundaries, recalled that in the early 1950s the de Rochemont organization operated ‘‘the only white-run studio where a black man could be treated with respect and given a chance to develop in the forbidden skills of motion picture production.’’31 Heath had enjoyed success on Broadway in 1945–46 playing a lead role opposite Barbara Bel Geddes in Arnaud d’Usseau and James Gow’s hit play Deep Are the Roots, a melodrama about racist bigotry in the 1940s American South. Directed by Elia Kazan, the twenty-seven-year-old Heath played a young black lieutenant returning to the Deep South after World War II, and he was lauded as the ‘‘next Paul Robeson’’ for his performance. One wonders how the opc/cia investors would have reacted had they known that the film’s narrator had been featured in a play whose co-author (d’Usseau), when testifying before huac, declined to answer questions about his possible Communist affiliations on the basis of the Fifth Amendment, and who—according to one Hollywood acquaintance—in later years had ‘‘rather serious quarrels’’ because he refused to accept all the reports of Stalin’s ruthlessness, when this news finally reached the West.32 After performing successfully in the London production of the play, Heath returned to the United States but soon thereafter decided to live in Europe. He wished to escape the American racism and discrimination against African Americans, which he felt limited his opportunities and constricted his life. Finally settling in Paris, the gay Heath made a comfortable living working occasionally as an actor on stage or in films, dubbing movies in London and Paris, and performing with his white male partner in the small, chic nightclub (‘‘L’Abbaye’’) they had established together. In his autobiography Heath proudly describes himself as ‘‘the first

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black radio announcer in America’’ (in 1945 he had worked for radio station wmca in New York City). And in the film he sounded much like the British radio announcers of the day. Years later one commentator (who had no idea who he was describing) said that Heath’s ‘‘plummy, old-fashioned’’ voice had a 1950s ‘‘ring of authority.’’ At the time Mace reported to Halas that ‘‘everyone here thought the voice you selected wonderful,’’ that it ‘‘delivered with a real feeling and understanding for the story.’’ Indeed, said Mace, some worried that the enunciation ‘‘was a bit too British for American ears’’ but that ultimately everyone agreed that ‘‘you selected the right man.’’33 Heath had been contacted through his agent in early July 1954, but it took a bit of time in those pre-EU days for Halas to get him a work permit. Heath recorded his voiceover in mid-August 1954 using a ‘‘7th revised commentary.’’ An unhappy Mace wrote Halas that Heath had worked with ‘‘an earlier version of the narration.’’ Mace sent over to Halas ‘‘substitute pages,’’ for what ‘‘we think is best for the picture.’’ Halas got in touch with Heath, told him that ‘‘part of the recording has not properly mixed on the film,’’ and offered him £50 to do a day’s worth of ‘‘re-recordings,’’ which was done at the end of September.34 Halas and Batchelor did a good job with Heath, explaining what was expected and necessary. As a result, Heath made some notes to himself on the script he used, which provide unusual insight into the final commentary. As Heath understood it, the creation of Animal Farm provided the ‘‘motivation for the film.’’ His notes described Boxer as ‘‘manly.’’ That ‘‘some animals were content with their lot’’ was ‘‘neutrality.’’ And the hard work of Boxer and Benjamin in building the windmill was ‘‘sort of heartwarming.’’ The animals’ decision at the end of the commentary ‘‘to do something’’ about the pigs meant that real emphasis must be given to the word ‘‘something.’’35 A Google search for ‘‘Gordon Heath’’ will yield more than twenty thousand hits, and he is linked to the movie on various websites. But there is no mention of his work on Animal Farm in Heath’s unfinished but published autobiography. Nor is the film mentioned in the introduction or afterword by scholars celebrating his career—they justifiably praise him as ‘‘an actor and as a man,’’ and intelligently discuss many of his activities in the United States and France, but there is no mention of Animal Farm and what he brought to it. His voice is a very important

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part of the film, and it is most unfortunate that this part of his life has been overlooked.36 As might be expected, the finished film encountered no problems with the movie industry’s self-censorship body, the Production Code Administration (pca), which was fairly important in that era. In October 1953 Mace wrote the pca on behalf of rd-dr to request ‘‘a temporary certificate’’ on the basis of the script development to date; on October 14 a certificate was mailed to him. The final script was not mailed to the pca until May 11, 1954; two days later the pca wrote Mace that it was ‘‘pleased to report that this material seems to meet the requirements of the Production Code.’’37 Attached to a copy of this letter in the pca files are copies of reviews of the film and a note saying that it had been playing in New York City for about six months. The delay in requesting approval from the pca had nothing to do with fears on the part of the de Rochemont organization that the censorship body would disapprove the content of the film. The delay resulted from problems with distribution. A great deal of effort had gone into creation of a film whose point of view and details satisfied the opc/cia investors. Now, having satisfied the sponsors, the de Rochemont organization, and Halas and Batchelor as well, would have to bend their energies to the task of getting the film version of Orwell’s book distributed and finding an audience for it.38

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The film had its world premiere in New York City on Wednesday, December 29, 1954. The location, carefully chosen by Mace for the de Rochemont organization, was the posh Paris Theatre. Just off the south end of Central Park, between Bergdorf Goodman and the Plaza Hotel, the one-screen Paris was a premier venue that harked back to a time when moviegoing was a ‘‘cultural experience.’’ At the time of the premiere a British movie trade journal described the Paris as a ‘‘topflight prestige showcase in New York.’’ The theater had been run for decades by Pathe´ Cine´ma of France, which operated it until that company’s lease ran out at the end of the 1980s.1 In addition to negotiating the initial run at the Paris, Mace, who had worked with the management of the theater in the past, arranged for the short subjects playing with Animal Farm to include part of an old 1935 March of Time release about Huey Long. Mace wanted to remind viewers of America’s ‘‘flirtation’’ with tyrants in the not so distant past. He was pleased that at least one of the New York reviewers of the film, Archer Winsten of the Post, took note of the inclusion of the short depicting Senator Long, who in the late 1920s had ruthlessly established what amounted to a personal dictatorship in the state of Louisiana, one that he maintained after moving to the U.S. Senate in the 1930s. Winsten commented that Long’s ‘‘figure and menace’’ were an ‘‘integrated part of the program.’’2

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To help publicize the film, the de Rochemont organization brought Sonia Orwell over from London for the premiere. She was a decided asset. In 1954, though active as ‘‘the widow’’ of the author, Sonia Orwell had not yet become the ‘‘difficult’’ person later acquaintances would remember. At the time, she was ‘‘loud, intelligent, and good-looking, with a mane of light brown hair and a full figure bordering on the zaftig,’’ a woman with presence. She had the sparkle and gaiety that she lost later, as her life deteriorated. Contemporaries recall that she ‘‘drank and gossiped with equal gusto’’; those qualities certainly helped her to win over the New York press.3 Photos of this attractive woman accompanied the news stories that appeared in the United States, Great Britain, and elsewhere. She told a New York World-Telegram and Sun interviewer that Halas and Batchelor had done ‘‘a fine job in making a Technicolor feature out of the book,’’ though the interviewer was more interested in her reactions to the controversial two-hour BBC production of Nineteen Eighty-Four, whose faithfulness to the book, right down to the ‘‘torture by rats,’’ had a few weeks earlier caused an unexpected uproar in the United Kingdom.4 She met with many of the literary types with whom her husband had corresponded and discussed the film with them. Orwell’s U.S. publishers gave a large cocktail party for her. The de Rochemont organization held a glitzy reception at the UN for both Sonia Orwell and Halas and Batchelor, who also had flown over for the premiere. For all their eloquence, Halas and Batchelor were overshadowed by her glamour. There is a telling picture of Sonia Orwell splendidly arrayed in a full-length fur coat, wearing a corsage, standing under the marquee of the Paris Theatre advertising ‘‘Orwell’s Animal Farm,’’ alongside a somewhat subdued-looking Halas and Batchelor on the night of the film’s premiere.5 The film did well critically in the United States, for the most part, especially in the daily press. It had gotten nice play during production. In a letter to an fbi contact about the making of the film, de Rochemont had sent along some tear sheets that he thought would be of ‘‘great interest to you and your friends.’’ Later he sent the agent a ‘‘batch of New York reviews’’; given the number of New York’s daily newspapers in those days, there were quite a few reviews, and they certainly carried more weight then than they do today.6 The reviews were generally very positive. The New York Herald-Tribune said that the film lacked ‘‘the bite’’ of Orwell but on the whole was ‘‘an

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amusing piece of meaningful nonsense, a comic book with purpose.’’ The New York Journal-American called it ‘‘an interesting adaptation . . . of the author’s devastating satire’’ (‘‘the Communists never had it so rough’’). And the New York World-Telegram and Sun dubbed the film ‘‘vitriolic entertainment.’’ Wanda Hale of the New York Daily News gave it three and a half stars out of a possible four, and Winsten of the Post on his ‘‘Movie Meter’’ ranked it between ‘‘good’’ and ‘‘excellent.’’ The influential New York Times critic Bosley Crowther called the film a ‘‘vivid and biting animation of Mr. Orwell’s popular tale of social revolution and disillusion.’’7 Predictably, the more stridently anti-Communist media endorsed the film. The virulently anti-Communist and enormously influential gossip columnist Walter Winchell enthused about the film, which he called ‘‘terrific.’’ Time magazine (an early enlistee in the anti-Red crusade) said the film asked its audience ‘‘to look the Soviet horror square in the eye’’ (in addition the magazine lauded Halas and Batchelor for proving that ‘‘animation can cope with serious subjects’’).8 The Red-baiting New York Daily News went so far as to take note of the film on its editorial page, commenting in its usual vein on the ‘‘Kremlin vermin’’ and excoriating ‘‘our local Commies.’’ The newspaper’s editorial called Animal Farm ‘‘A Film to See.’’9 Much of the American trade press echoed the New York papers (Film Daily called the movie fascinating, stirring, absorbing, with ‘‘obvious political parallels’’; Variety called it ‘‘a powerful preachment . . . vividly realized,’’ with the pigs ‘‘corrupting and perverting an honest revolt against evil social conditions into a new tyranny as bad as, and remarkably similar to, the old regime’’).10 These responses must have gladdened the hearts of the film’s opc/cia backers, but the adulatory response was not universal. More serious American film and literary critics were generally more restrained, and concerned about the film’s political stance, which they felt had been lifted clean from its historical context, as John Rodden has observed.11 Both the Left and the Right attacked aspects of the film. The poet Delmore Schwartz, reviewing the film for the New Republic, concluded that little of Orwell’s fable, ‘‘implicit with the disillusion and heartbroken disappointment of a desperately honest human being who had lived to see the greatest and best social hope . . . converted into a cynical despotism,’’ had made its way into the animation, which, however, Schwartz

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lauded for its verve and brio. He commended the film’s creators for their ‘‘literal fidelity’’ to Orwell’s ‘‘text.’’12 Schwartz’s peers at other left-leaning journals of opinion also attacked the film. The novelist Robert Hatch wrote in the Nation that ‘‘the characterizations were superficial cliche´s,’’ the tone was ‘‘pedestrian,’’ and overall the film was a crude anti-Communist polemic and a ‘‘bitter satire on the [British] Welfare State.’’ In Hatch’s view, the film failed to address the question of ‘‘whether or not Orwell was preaching the essential futility of any revolt against oppression.’’13 Critics on the Right had their own objections. Commentary, which was strongly anti-Communist at the time, said the film had ‘‘many merits’’ but focused on its defects, notably the ‘‘unmention’’ of Stalin’s Russia and the ‘‘revision of the ending,’’ which allowed the parable of Animal Farm to be ‘‘applied equally to all forms of totalitarianism.’’ Others echoed this criticism. But the critic for CUE, a respected weekly guide to entertainment in New York City, on the other hand, concluded that ‘‘if you are at all uncertain about totalitarianism, fascism, or what have you—there is no picture in town that will do you more good than Animal Farm.’’14 Thanks to the reviews and to the controversy aroused by the politics of the film, it was judged a success in the United States, but ‘‘the prophet Orwell’’ did not translate into the ‘‘profit Orwell.’’ Animal Farm did not make Variety’s annual list of films grossing more than $1 million. While applauding the film, Variety was right that ‘‘it’s just not the kind of film fare which is likely to be ‘popular.’’’15 The film’s dreary box office receipts in New York made it difficult for de Rochemont to find an American distributor for the film. Few American viewers were inclined to take a cartoon film seriously. Some of Disney’s animated features might be considered adult fare (for example, Snow White [1937], which was initially banned in England for children under age sixteen because of its ‘‘genuinely terrifying moments’’). But in the main Disney cartoons and features till then had been lush and charming ‘‘kiddie features,’’ what a contemporary reviewer called ‘‘fantastically innocent gambols.’’ Halas and Batchelor had consciously not imitated Disney; as noted earlier, they rejected John Reed’s efforts to add Disneyesque touches to the animation.16 Animal Farm was closer in content if not in style to the efforts of upa (United Productions of America), whose short films in the 1950s

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irrevocably changed commercial animation. A group of American animators, upa’s founders moved away from Disney’s sentimentality of mood in favor of ‘‘a new stylistic language’’ that emphasized simplicity of form and movement. Although upa’s cartoons won awards (Gerald McBoing Boing and When Magoo Flew won Oscars in the 1950s), the company did not last. The nearsighted Mister Magoo was one of upa’s most successful cartoon characters and indeed outlasted his creators’ studio, which ultimately was taken over by one of the Hollywood majors, Columbia.17 The animated version of Orwell’s book, serious in subject matter and lacking the attractions of both Disney and upa, was arguably a recipe for disaster. The Halas & Batchelor style was not suited to winning an audience. The team had erred in believing that emphasis could be ‘‘profitably placed’’ on content rather than traditional or even innovative animation techniques. Joy Batchelor told a reporter after the film premiered, ‘‘we used a style’’ that wouldn’t ‘‘detract from the impact of the story.’’18 Beginning early in 1953, when Columbia executives had requested a screening of ‘‘as much of the picture as is ready,’’ and continuing throughout much of the year, there were negotiations with the studio, which had first option on de Rochemont’s feature productions. The agreement between Columbia and de Rochemont provided that during its contractual life he would not make his ‘‘services in connection with production of motion pictures’’ available to anyone but the studio. He retained the right to produce ‘‘educational pictures,’’ which is how Animal Farm and some other ventures, such as Martin Luther, were categorized, but for these, too, Columbia had the first opportunity to acquire distribution rights for general theatrical exhibition.19 At one point in July, the de Rochemont organization, recognizing that the Halas & Batchelor film needed better distribution, turned to the studio. Columbia, whose British office had screened the incomplete print of the film, had provided the financially hard-pressed de Rochemont an advance of £35,000, to be used for the completion of the production. It looked as though Columbia and de Rochemont would come to terms and that the studio would acquire the distribution rights to the picture.20 But arrangements were never finalized because de Rochemont found Columbia’s terms unacceptable. His objections may have included the fact that, in terms of U.S. distribution, there was a difference of approximately 7 percent between the profit Columbia wanted and what Mace, acting for de Rochemont, offered. More important, perhaps, than the

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economics of the deal, for those Mace called ‘‘the other principals involved’’ was that the contract stipulated ‘‘no obligation on Columbia’s part’’ to distribute the film in the rest of the Western Hemisphere. The opc/cia investors must surely have wanted the film to be shown outside the United States, and this provision in the contract would have been unacceptable to them.21 The New York premiere had gone well enough. rko, a major distributor that had handled Disney’s films, was credited with the initial release, but it was Mace who handled all the details of the showing at the Paris Theatre, including advertising and publicity. A few weeks later it was announced that Distributors Corporation of America (dca) would handle ‘‘the national release’’ of Animal Farm.22 dca was an odd choice. A small outfit, it handled mainly independent foreign films such as I Am a Camera (a 1955 British version of the Christopher Isherwood stories that later served as the basis for the musical Cabaret) and The Stranger’s Hand (a 1954 British-Italian film inspired by a Graham Greene story). Some years after Animal Farm’s release in the United States, an industry official described the movie as ‘‘a bomb’’ commercially, attributing its failure to the distributor, who the official felt just ‘‘didn’t know what to do’’ with a serious cartoon. The men from opc/cia did not get widespread distribution in the United States.23 Nor was distribution in the British Isles very widespread. In April 1953, while the film was still in production, Martin Maloney, an officer of Louis de Rochemont Associates, had gone to London to set up distribution plans for the UK release, but he seems to have had no success. Some months later Halas vetoed showing the almost complete film to the sales manager of the UK firm General Film Distributors, on the grounds, as Halas told Mace, that ‘‘we should not rely on the decision of . . . salesmen . . . we must go to ‘higher ups’ and hope when the time arrives you or someone else from rd-dr will be here to help sell it.’’ Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of Halas and Batchelor as well as the de Rochemont team, Animal Farm failed initially (as Mace noted) ‘‘to achieve proper distribution with Rank, ABC, or British Lion,’’ the most important UK theater chains.24 Years later Halas attacked these chains, which ran the major cinemas in most of Britain, ‘‘for systematically running an undemocratic, selfish, and unprogressive monopoly,’’ which meant that independent filmmakers like himself were limited to ‘‘specialised circuits’’ where they

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made so little money that they could be forced out of business. As an alternative to the chains, the de Rochemont people attempted to secure a UK premiere of the film at a ‘‘Royal Command Performance,’’ and Mace advised Halas that the prime names to be featured in seeking that goal should be Orwell, and ‘‘secondly, Halas and Batchelor.’’25 Mace informed Halas that if these efforts did not succeed, ‘‘we will rent a London theatre . . . to launch the picture.’’ And in the end this is what was done. On January 13, 1955, a fortnight after its American premiere, the film opened in London at the ‘‘comfortable little’’ Ritz Theatre by Leicester Square. The invited audience that evening, as one newspaper reported, ‘‘queued in bitter cold and driving snow.’’ The stormy weather kept many of the invited guests away; of the thirty cartoonists who were invited, only eight showed up.26 Although the film had been ‘‘on offer’’ for some time in the United Kingdom, as one contemporary London press report put it, ‘‘only since TV’s enterprise with 1984 has this brave new film been booked.’’ The distributor, Associated British-Pathe´, hitched its promotion of the Halas & Batchelor film to the controversy that had been aroused over the telecasts of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four. The tagline of the advertising and PR handouts was ‘‘Pig Brother Is Watching You’’ (a takeoff on Nineteen Eighty-Four’s ‘‘Big Brother Is Watching You’’), and the accompanying illustrations included a portrait of a glowering, tuxedo-clad upright Napoleon, modeled on Orwell’s description of Big Brother.27 At a London press conference held to publicize the film, Sonia Orwell said she was very proud that the book had been selected for the first feature-length cartoon film to be made in Britain, but she got little chance to talk about it, as she was ‘‘bombarded’’ with questions about the BBC production of Nineteen Eighty-Four that had caused such a furor. In response to one query about the telecast, she said, ‘‘I must be loyal to the brave B.B.C.,’’ but indicated that she did ‘‘not really’’ approve of the corporation’s interpretation of her husband’s book.28 The British ‘‘quality press’’ generally endorsed the film version of Animal Farm. But more reviews in the UK press (both in London and in the provinces) than in the United States addressed the subject of the altered ending. Many reviews explained it away, and some had no objection to the departure from the book, as did the doyens of English film criticism: the Times reviewer, Dilys Powell, although she disagreed ‘‘in principle’’ with the ‘‘softening’’ of the ending, did not find it ‘‘artistically unjusti-

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fied’’; C. A. Lejeune, writing for the Observer, did not share the point of view of those who criticized the movie’s ending, since Orwell had ‘‘left us with nothing but despair,’’ and ‘‘despair is no programme and the screen no place for such nullity.’’29 Other critics, representing a wide array of media, deplored the distortion. ‘‘Orwell would certainly not have liked this . . . change, with its substitution of commonplace propaganda’’ wrote the critic for the liberal Manchester Guardian, while the conservative London Daily Mail charged that the ‘‘softening . . . destroys the whole point of a serious book.’’ The review in the politically conscious Truth said that the film’s happy ending was ‘‘as true to the message’’ of the book ‘‘as it would have been for the BBC to have conciliated its terrified viewers by making Winston Smith be elected Big Brother’’ at the end of Nineteen Eighty-Four. Malcolm Muggeridge, a friend of Orwell’s who was hosting the TV talk show Panorama, made it clear that he did not like the film’s ending ‘‘one bit.’’30 Regardless of whether they liked the film or approved of the ending, most of the British critics emphasized the fact that Animal Farm was the first British animated feature and lauded Halas and Batchelor for their enterprise. Even the Communist press asserted that the animators had maintained ‘‘a high standard,’’ though, predictably, its review of the film attacked George Orwell. Surprisingly, the reviewer for the Communist Daily Worker did not take issue with the revised ending which, he wrote, ‘‘disguises the naked despair and utter emptiness of Orwell’s philosophy,’’ but he deprecated what he called ‘‘Orwellism,’’ the belief that ‘‘revolution against capitalist oppression is futile.’’31 Among those who were dissatisfied with the animation (some critics called it ‘‘jerky’’ and ‘‘imperfect in technique’’) was the Labor politician Gerald Kaufman, then just beginning his political career. In his review for the Tribune, Orwell’s old stamping ground, Kaufman praised the courage of the film’s creators in tackling so serious a subject, expressed concern at various distortions of ‘‘Orwell’s message,’’ but concluded that despite all its imperfections Animal Farm was ‘‘an important film,’’ that ‘‘no one who cares about the cinema should miss.’’32 Kaufman’s conclusion was shared by many British reviewers not writing for the daily press. Typically, Catherine de la Roche (who had collaborated on an excellent history of Soviet film) took a very even-handed tack in her review for Sight and Sound. Like Kaufman, she noted the ‘‘radical change’’ to the ending, the shift in emphasis, and limitations in the style

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of drawing, but she also maintained that, as the first full-length British cartoon, the film’s ‘‘interest goes well beyond that’’ because of the subject matter and its ‘‘imaginative symbolism.’’33 At the time of the film’s premiere in London, a journalist expressed doubts about whether it could ‘‘overcome the traditional box-office antipathy to political pictures,’’ and, indeed, critical reviews were better than box office receipts. As in the United States, once the film went into general distribution, it failed to find an audience. In the minutes of a discussion about use of the film as propaganda by various British government agencies in 1955, one official noted that ‘‘the film at present was not doing very well in this country.’’ At the beginning of March 1955 the director-general of the British Film Producers Association responded to an inquiry from a government agency that, ‘‘so far as we can ascertain, no arrangements have yet been made for exhibiting Animal Farm outside this country and the U.S.A.’’34 At least some of the ‘‘hidden hand’’ forces that were part of the AngloAmerican offensive in the cultural Cold War were interested in building an audience for the film, as had been done for Orwell’s books. It is important to note that, as a detailed chronicler of the ‘‘hidden hand’’ has pointed out, its activities will always be ‘‘a matter of dispute.’’ But what was rumor in the early 1960s has become generally proven fact. Thus the funding and operations of the Congress for Cultural Freedom and its American offshoot, the American Committee for Cultural Freedom (accf ), have been almost microscopically examined. Stonor Saunders and others have detailed intelligently and thoroughly the particular kind of cultural warfare practiced by the Anglo-American government agencies in the heyday of the Cold War.35 It seems to me, however, that just as these scholars have missed or misinterpreted some aspects of the production of the film, the same holds true of their treatment of its distribution. opc’s key investment in the film notwithstanding, neither U.S. nor UK government agencies played much of a role in its distribution. The vigor that marked the marketing of the print editions of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four was notably lacking when it came to the Halas & Batchelor film. By the mid-1950s the accf was plagued by what Stonor Saunders calls ‘‘mutual distrust.’’ She points out that in 1954 the group faced ‘‘imminent financial ruin.’’ For a brief moment the accf did manage to pull itself together, but by the beginning of 1957 it had suspended its activi-

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ties. It is against this background that Sol Stein, the accf ’s executive director, wrote to the managing director of the Paris Theatre, expressing concern that the publicity materials for the film made no reference to its source, ‘‘one of the most important anti-Communist documents of our time.’’36 The responses from Lillian Girard (vice president of the Paris Theatre) and the de Rochemont organization are predictable; they express hope that Stein and his organization can help them sell tickets. Girard argued that box office support from the accf would be ‘‘the best answer to those who would not like to have seen this picture made’’ because of its politics. The de Rochemont team agreed to a discount coupon arrangement for students and ‘‘educators,’’ suggesting that Stein send a personal note to some of the latter.37 Ms. Girard, referring to the New York Daily News editorial extolling the film, asked Stein to get in touch with his editorial friends, which he did (Stein discussed the film with August Hecksher of the New York HeraldTribune and asked him to ‘‘consider the editorial we discussed’’). But nothing came of this or of his approaches to other New York editorial writers. Having worked out a discount coupon arrangement, Mace asked Stein, ‘‘what else can we do?’’ Not much, it would seem.38 At the behest of the de Rochemont organization, Stein also sent form letters to various New York labor leaders about the discount arrangement. In essence the de Rochemont people used Stein to do what often is done to try and build an audience for problematical presentations (get endorsements, provide discounts for special groups, and so on). But Stein and the accf did not have much impact on ticket sales, perhaps because his heart wasn’t in it. It seems to me that Stein tried to promote the film not as a committed agent of the accf but simply in an attempt to justify his salary at a time when the organization was on the wane.39 Nor did the efforts of British government agencies deliver much support for the film. It had been proposed that the ird provide assistance for distribution of the film and in conjunction with its exhibition make available a comic strip version based on the Halas & Batchelor animation. This comic strip ran in some British newspapers (one of which typically advertised it as ‘‘greater than ‘1984’’’). It was also suggested that ‘‘the film might be shown in Finland prior to the forthcoming World Peace Council Meeting.’’ An information officer in Saigon, requesting that a print either in English or in French be made available, said that an ird

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visitor from London (John Rennie, the agency’s head) had agreed that ‘‘Indochina today presented an ideal audience for Orwell’s warning.’’40 H. A. H. Cortazzi, an ird man, thought the film ‘‘excellent anti-Communist propaganda’’ and likely to be ‘‘most effective among the slightly educated’’ (he was afraid that it might ‘‘go over the heads of the completely uneducated’’). Cortazzi felt that the investment in sponsored translations of Orwell’s book had been ‘‘quite a success’’ but was concerned about what had been done about the lackluster distribution of the earlier ‘‘strip cartoon’’ version of Animal Farm: the agency had bought the rights to reproduce it in Cyprus, Tanganyika, Kenya, Uganda, northern and southern Rhodesia, Nyasaland, Sierra Leone, Gold Coast, Nigeria, Trinidad, Jamaica, Fiji, British Guiana, and British Honduras. Sixty sets were sent to the Colonial Office, but ‘‘unfortunately we have no records to show whether in fact this cartoon was reproduced in these territories.’’41 A number of communications passed between various representatives of different UK government agencies about the possible uses of the film. At one point there was criticism of ‘‘another example of the Colonial Office’s half-hearted approach.’’ Ultimately Rennie did indicate, on February 16, 1955, that the ird did have available £500 to spend on the film, but it had to ‘‘be spent before March 31.’’ Subsequently the Colonial Office decided that it did not like the film and would not use it. An ird functionary wrote his superiors, ‘‘there is nothing more that we can do.’’42 The ird, its British compeers, and their American counterparts continued to push print versions of Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four ‘‘with vigour.’’ But the Halas & Batchelor film did not arouse much further official interest. Soon after the release of the film, a U.S. government agency became involved with a movie version of Nineteen Eighty-Four that was filmed in England: once again American dollars (‘‘a $100,000 subsidy’’) were used, this time by an Anglo-American team, to ‘‘alter . . . Orwell’s message.’’43 The brand of anti-Communism that led to the movie versions of Orwell’s novels changed over the years, sometimes quite dramatically. Halas and Batchelor, the men from opc, and de Rochemont and his associates went on with their careers. But their production of Animal Farm, its distribution problems at the time of the release notwithstanding, has had a fascinating afterlife.

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The 1954 film version of Animal Farm failed to achieve widespread distribution, but since then it has been seen by tens of thousands of people. The opc/cia investors may have failed to reach their intended audience at the time of the film’s commercial release, but the afterlife of the Halas and Batchelor film underscores the judgment of that master propagandist, John Grierson, who has said that ‘‘quick takings are a guarantee of immediate public interest and therefore are important, but the persistence of a film’s effect over a period of years is more important . . . the ‘hangover’ effect of a film is everything.’’1 Grierson, considered the godfather of the documentary, is credited with coining the term in 1926. His view of the genre as ‘‘the creative interpretation of everything’’ differed little from Henry Luce’s view of The March of Time. During World War II Grierson, who produced films for the Canadian government on the Allied side, told those concerned about Nazi film propaganda not to fret about ‘‘short term results.’’ In making film propaganda there were alternatives to the ‘‘commercial cinema,’’ he advised. As early as the 1930s Grierson had envisioned (as did John Halas later) a new audience outside the traditional cinema venues.2 The initial failure of Halas & Batchelor’s Animal Farm to gain a large audience meant that it functioned neither (in the words of those theorists who have dealt with the impact of the film) as ‘‘the magic bullet—capable of inflicting propaganda . . . on the mass audience’’ nor as ‘‘a hypodermic

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needle’’ whose ‘‘messages . . . were injected into [the] body politic,’’ in the words of Nicholas Reeves, a film theorist. But ultimately the film did find that elusive audience, and thanks to that audience the movie version of Orwell’s book has had an afterlife not anticipated by the opc/cia investors, or probably at that time by de Rochemont and his team, or by Halas and Batchelor.3 Grierson’s predictions were prescient, as the story of Animal Farm proves. The film has certainly had a long life, which is all the more surprising because it is highly doubtful that the opc/cia investors anticipated that new technologies would enable it to reach a whole new audience. They probably never imagined that a review of a 1969 BBC-TV offering on ‘‘the strange death of revolutionary Communism’’ would laud the program’s producers for using such ‘‘unusual touches as part of the ‘Animal Farm’ cartoon.’’4 Whatever hopes there may have been for reaching a wider audience, nobody foresaw that the Halas and Batchelor film would be broadcast repeatedly on TV channels in the United Kingdom, the United States, and elsewhere in the world. Or that Animal Farm would become, and has remained, available in VHS, DVD, and other formats. There is also a German version of the film titled Der Aufstand der Tiere (The Revolt of the Animals). The opc/cia investors would be pleased that decades after the film’s 1955 German theatrical premiere, the Halas & Batchelor movie—whether in English or German—has become one of the most shown films at West German schools (‘‘einem der meistgezeigtgen Filme an bundesdeutschen Schulen’’). This was due to Orwell’s book becoming a staple in the West German school curriculum. And after the reunification, in October 1990, of West Germany and the Communist-controlled German Democratic Republic (where Orwell had been vilified for his views), Animal Farm continued to be a hot subject of study in unified Germany.5 Both in Germany and elsewhere, Orwell’s little book has become a classic. Many of Orwell’s novels are boring, and are certainly not up to his reportage or essays. The ideas espoused in Animal Farm and the nightmarish world he created in it are much more impressive than the tales and sad affairs he spins in most of his novels. Animal Farm was an accessible allegory about the Soviet Union between 1917 and 1943, easily if not always correctly taught. The book, as Peter Davison points out, in its appeal to younger people, has become an ‘‘almost mandatory appear-

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ance on compulsory school . . . reading lists’’ throughout the world. It remains one of teachers’ favorite books to teach. As print increasingly goes out of fashion, teachers often resort to visual aids in order to reach students and hold their attention. The Halas & Batchelor film has been considered a first-rate complementary tool to teaching the book.6 Typical of the teaching aids available in the United States and the United Kingdom is the ‘‘Oxford Vision Resource Pack,’’ designed to assist teachers in giving ‘‘a better understanding and appreciation of literary works.’’ In the case of Animal Farm, the pack consists of three items: the book itself, a video of the Halas & Batchelor film, and a guide intended to link video and book. How effective this guide or any other such tools are is open to question, but it is worth noting that in this instance the guide does say that the changed ending is of ‘‘crucial importance,’’ but discusses it in the context of other differences between the book and the film, such as the elimination of some animal and human characters, the ‘‘omission of certain events,’’ and the addition of ‘‘some comic moments’’ and the ‘‘irritating duckling.’’7 Obviously, in the final analysis, the teacher is the determining factor in how the film and book are treated. Orwell scholar John Rodden, who taught the book to Philadelphia high school students, found the film a helpful pedagogical aid, and has noted that it was one of the most frequently requested films in Philadelphia’s schools, ‘‘usually shown more than 150 times a year.’’ Rodden believes that the film’s use in schools has influenced ‘‘thinking about Orwell’s fable.’’8 The producer of the film benefited little from it. When Louis de Rochemont was chosen to produce Animal Farm, he was at the peak of his career. By the time the film went into general release in the United States in early 1955, de Rochemont had begun what was a long, slow decline. His once innovative style of filmmaking had become a cliche´, overtaken by technology and artistic developments that made movie production less bound by the studio. Certainly in terms of feature film production he was losing his touch. Walk East on Beacon, the 1952 Columbia release dealing with the fbi’s protection of U.S. scientific secrets from domestic and foreign Communists, had limited box office appeal and was generally dismissed critically as ‘‘vastly overlong and tedious.’’ Its shrill anti-Communism was echoed in the 1960 Columbia release of de Rochemont’s Man on a String, which despite being shot on location in Europe was unbelievable and dull, even

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though it was based on the fanciful memoirs of the flamboyant Boris Morros. The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (Warner Bros., 1961), based on a Tennessee Williams novella, was de Rochemont’s last feature film, its worth indicated by the alternative title, The Widow and the Gigolo. Even stars Vivien Leigh and Warren Beatty could not save this pessimistic, lethargic, critical and box-office flop.9 The de Rochemont organization never fully recouped its investment in Animal Farm. But into the later 1950s de Rochemont and his team fared reasonably well, producing educational, informational, and sponsored films. The client roster included Compagnie de Suez Canal, the American Medical Association, and the U.S. Information Agency. With the publisher D.C. Heath, the de Rochemont team produced ‘‘films, TV, recordings, books, etc., for school children’’ studying French, and very successfully, according to F. Bordon Mace. With another company the de Rochemont group produced a well-received and financially rewarding thirty-six-part series called The Earth and Its Peoples, for grade schools.10 The de Rochemont people also profited from nontheatrical distribution of select prize-winning films, such as their production of Martin Luther’s life (characterized as a ‘‘magnificent recreation of history’’) and a documentary feature on Albert Schweitzer that won an Oscar in 1957. Mace, an officer in all the de Rochemont companies, which included rddr, Heath–de Rochemont, and Louis de Rochemont Associates, recalled that it was ‘‘not uncommon to set up new and separate corporations for new types of projects with different goals.’’11 The de Rochemont organization also became involved with some of the 1950s panoramic screen processes with which Hollywood hoped to stop the decline in moviegoing correctly assumed in part to be caused by the advent of TV. In the competition for U.S. consumers’ leisure dollar, the industry sought to use the big-screen film, enhanced by color and stereophonic sound, to emphasize ‘‘the boundless dimensions available to Hollywood,’’ and to awaken the viewer to what were trumpeted as ‘‘the limitations of TV’s constricted black and white universe.’’12 Perhaps the biggest splash at the time was made by Cinerama, which used three projectors, a giant curved screen, and stereophonic sound to achieve the ‘‘illusion of three-dimensional reality.’’ Cinerama Holiday, produced by de Rochemont and released in February 1955, was the second film made using Cinerama. Essentially a travelogue, written by John Stuart Martin and including cute Halas & Batchelor cartoon interludes,

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it was among the year’s largest-grossing films. Ultimately Cinerama was not commercially viable because of the complexity of the projection, which required remodeled theaters and additional staff (e.g., a sound engineer).13 Neither was Cinemiracle, which improved some on Cinerama because it did not require three projectors for its giant curved screen. Windjammer, de Rochemont’s 1958 Cinemiracle film, and the only feature ever made in that process, was also essentially a travelogue. It too opened in a remodeled NYC theater to the oohs and ahs of critics and viewers, but the costs of exhibition, especially that of converting theaters, doomed it. The de Rochemont team also produced some short films to accompany features released in Todd-AO, a one-projector wide-screen process that did not require remodeled theaters. These shorts (composed of very brief sequences; one eleven-minute film included a wild rollercoaster ride, flying through canyons, skiing down Sun Valley’s slopes, and a motorcycle chase over San Francisco hills) served as prologues to roadshow engagements of Todd-AO features like Oklahoma. All this activity made de Rochemont ‘‘the only producer in the world who made theatrical attractions in the three major surround screen . . . processes of his time,’’ in Mace’s words.14 Such projects brought de Rochemont hefty fees, as did the other work he and his team did ‘‘for hire,’’ but these projects did not offset his decline in stature as his theatrical features flopped. Nor was de Rochemont helped by the fact that his relations with J. Edgar Hoover had soured. Like many in the film world, de Rochemont was a heavy drinker. Already in 1947 Elia Kazan found that de Rochemont ‘‘drank too much.’’ Problems with Hoover arose not because of the drinking but because, as one of de Rochemont’s associates recalled, ‘‘over drinks’’ the filmmaker would sometimes disparage the fbi head. In due course de Rochemont’s comments came to Hoover’s attention. In 1956 an irritated Hoover, who had once instructed Bureau agents overseas to extend every courtesy to a touring de Rochemont, informed his associates that ‘‘no cooperation of any kind is ever to be extended’’ to him again.15 As de Rochemont’s career waned, he and his wife moved from their farm in Newington, New Hampshire, to a Portsmouth hotel. He died on December 23, 1978, in a nursing facility in York, Maine. His career had skyrocketed but, like a roman candle, it ultimately fizzled. ‘‘Because he produced rather than directed most of his films, de Rochemont floats

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invisibly in the background of an eclectic array of movies,’’ as one writer has put it. In the years since his death he has become a mere footnote, remembered, if at all, for The March of Time; there is little comment about his association with Animal Farm.16 Lothar Wolff worked closely with de Rochemont on all of these endeavors. Wolff struck out on his own in the early 1960s and, although a self-styled ‘‘scientific moron,’’ made a series of films on the sun and the earth for the National Academy of Sciences in the mid-1960s, and films on the moon, the solar system, and the sun for the National Geographic Society at the beginning of the 1980s. For much of the 1970s he served as an executive producer for Time-Life Films, overseeing nearly a hundred TV documentaries. His efforts as an independent producer included a splendid, stirring feature-length documentary called The Joy of Bach (1977), which was very well received. Returning to his roots, he also wrote and directed a fascinating documentary overview of The March of Time (1976) for West German TV. Wolff continued working successfully and productively, in both Germany and the United States, until shortly before his death in 1988.17 Joseph Bryan, after his stint with the government’s intelligence operations, had returned to his career as a wordsmith by the end of the 1950s. He contributed to a wide variety of magazines, much of his work appearing in the upscale travel magazine Holiday; he was a favorite of its editor, who wrote a glowing introduction to Bryan’s last book, a series of congenial essays about some eccentrics in contemporary society. His other books included an easy-to-read, relatively uncritical biography of the duke and duchess of Windsor (whom he knew socially), a 1979 Book-of-theMonth Club selection, written with Charles V. Murphy, and a boy’s biography of P. T. Barnum. He published his last book in 1985 at the age of eighty, and died in 1993, at age eighty-nine, from liver cancer.18 On leaving the cia in 1959 Finis Farr settled in New Jersey and returned successfully to the writer’s trade, publishing books and numerous articles. He worked hard at his craft, as he told one editor, ‘‘panning around . . . for the occasional nugget.’’ He had enough success that his 1964 biography of the black boxer Jack Johnson was plagiarized. Farr took legal action, charging unauthorized use of material in a stage play and the movie drawn from it. Farr reported to Bryan that he ‘‘got a settlement’’ from the author and from Twentieth Century Fox.19 He remained a devoted fan of Orwell, who made an appearance of

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one kind or another in all of his books, regardless of their subject matter. Although quite conservative, Farr had little patience for either end of the American political spectrum. In his view Bobby Kennedy looked ‘‘like a Beverly Hills car hop,’’ and J. Edgar Hoover was ‘‘one degree above trash, a former low-grade government drone who saw his chance to build an empire of toadies.’’ He moved to Maine in 1978 and died there in 1982 at age seventy-seven (just after his death a proposal for a book on the 1930s that had been submitted earlier to a publisher was accepted).20 In May 1954, while still at the cia, Alsop married a well-to-do socialite and soon thereafter retired from the agency and, it would seem, from employment of any kind. He and his wife moved to her fashionable home in Pasadena. He maintained close relations with J. Edgar Hoover, who arranged for the Bureau to assist Alsop and his wife during their trips to and from Europe in the 1960s. As one Bureau memo to fbi offices in New York City and to agents overseas well put it, ‘‘Mr. and Mrs. Alsop are personal friends of the Director . . . you should meet them and extend the usual courtesies of your office upon their arrival,’’ which meant that they ‘‘were met by an SA [special agent] and expedited through Customs and Immigration.’’ After his death in 1979—he died while pruning the roses in his garden—Alsop was eulogized as ‘‘a gentleman who knew how to live better than most mortals’’ (one manifestation being that he and his wife had an annual New Year’s Eve Party, at which ‘‘the Roederer Cristal Champagne flowed like the Rio Grande’’).21 During his cia days E. Howard Hunt wrote pulp thrillers (laced with sex, action, and vigorous anti-Communism) under various pseudonyms, and he continued to churn them out after retiring from the agency. After leaving the cia in 1970 Hunt wound up in the Nixon White House as one of the ‘‘plumbers’’ assigned to plugging leaks to the media. The cia, it seems, supplied him with ‘‘a wig, a camera, a speech-altering device, and false identification papers’’ that he used during his illegal activities as a ‘‘security consultant.’’ Hunt was involved in the 1972 break-in at the offices of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C., leading to one of the worst scandals in American political history and eventually forcing Nixon to resign in disgrace. Gore Vidal once wrote that the Watergate break-in was the high point of Hunt’s career (‘‘the Shakespeare of the cia found his Globe theatre’’).22 Hunt’s first wife died in a plane crash in December 1972; on her body was more than $10,000 in cash. In the context of Watergate, various

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theories abounded as to why. Hunt’s biographer reported that with regard to the cause of the crash, ‘‘sabotage was charged but never proven.’’ Hunt served a thirty-three-month prison term as a result of his Watergate activity, moved to Miami, and continued writing. By 2001 he had produced more than seventy novels under his name and five pseudonyms, but to diminishing commercial success and ever more disparaging reviews, which called his work ‘‘aimless,’’ ‘‘bloated,’’ ‘‘undramatic,’’ and ‘‘less than convincing.’’ In 1995 he declared bankruptcy and not long thereafter began being plagued by ill health.23 Halas and Batchelor fared much better over the years than did de Rochemont did. Their version of Animal Farm, in Joy Batchelor’s view, ‘‘made history and it made us.’’ They had a long, productive career in the years that followed, but their names remain linked to that film. The animation historian Paul Wells has argued with some validity that their subsequent work ‘‘was measured against and marginalized’’ by it. The 2003 British Film Institute website (‘‘the definitive guide to Britain’s film and TV history’’) is typical in saying that Animal Farm is their best-known work.24 Halas, ever the promoter, had suggested to de Rochemont animating Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but de Rochemont did not think it would be profitable financially, ‘‘no matter how much a critical and artistic success.’’ As a result of the media play given Animal Farm, Halas and Batchelor hoped to find the financing to undertake ‘‘a live action and cartoon feature in Technicolor’’ of Pilgrim’s Progress, John Bunyan’s seventeenth-century allegory about the Christian’s journey ‘‘from this world to the Next.’’ The limited box office returns for Animal Farm put a crimp in their plans. They, for all their varied output over the next thirty-plus years, would personally produce only one more feature: Joy Batchelor oversaw a fifty-five-minute heavily abridged animation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Ruddigore (released in 1964 to a mixed reception). The film suffered, according to one Savoyard, from being made ‘‘a suitable length for showing on American TV.’’25 What Halas and Batchelor undertook during the decades after making Animal Farm has without exaggeration been called amazing. Their studio created hundreds of education, advertising, and public relations animated short films for commercial and government sponsors, as they, in the words of a celebratory brochure, applied ‘‘animation techniques to a variety of purposes other than the production of cartoon films wholly for

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entertainment.’’ The introduction, in 1955, of commercial TV to the United Kingdom led to a proliferation of American and European clients, as Halas and Batchelor, who had always made advertising animation to be shown in movie theaters, now churned out hundreds of animated TV commercials.26 As in the past, they worked with government agencies—on the international scene with such organizations as unesco, and in Britain with the Central Office for Information. They worked with new clients, such as the Dutch electronics firm Philips (for whom they created an amusing seven-minute short on TV’s positive influence), and with movie companies for which they made animated film titles—as with The Guns of Navarone in 1961. They also financed some fascinating animated shorts themselves, among them the entertaining seven-minute Automania 2000 (1963), about the encroachment of cars on our civilization; it won a British Film Academy Award and was nominated for an Oscar.27 Halas and Batchelor were leaders in using what was called ‘‘short cut ingenuity’’ to pare costs. They realized that to be competitive films had to be produced more quickly. They were not alone in making technological breakthroughs but for years remained on the cutting edge of creative and technical expertise. In the late 1960s Halas and Batchelor were among the first to venture into computer animation.28 They had their ups and downs financially but survived. Increasingly, their efforts were turned toward television. Among TV cartoons their studio created were DoDo—The Kid from Outer Space (1964) and Foo Foo (1959–60), described in their sales pitch as ‘‘a cheerful little blunderer’’; these cartoons were syndicated to UK and U.S. television for years. For American TV the studio animated cartoon versions of popular characters such as Popeye (1955) and the Lone Ranger (1966– 67).29 Joy Batchelor continued to write most of the scripts for much of what the Halas & Batchelor studio churned out. Described in early 1965 as ‘‘a vigorous blonde with strong ideas,’’ she remained ‘‘the driving force’’ behind much of the studio’s work. By 1967, however, her personal interest in animation had declined. In the mid-1970s she retired because of ill health; she had developed arthritis in her wrists. She died in London on May 14, 1991.30 Various business arrangements in the late 1960s and early 1970s led to Halas and Batchelor being ‘‘edged out,’’ but Halas bought back the

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studio in 1975, and it operated on a much reduced scale until 1982, when it was sold to a Swiss/German company. For Harold Whitaker, who remained a colleague until he retired in 1994, the sale led to the studio’s disintegration, as some animators struck out on their own. Halas lost the right to use his name and operated for some years under the banner of other companies he organized, such as the Educational Film Centre. He remained ‘‘a live wire,’’ in Whitaker’s words, until his death. Halas died in London on January 21, 1995.31 Well before Halas ceased being ‘‘a slave of the market place,’’ as he put it, he was involved in all kinds of activities that furthered the use of animation. Over the years, as one history of animation succinctly recounts, ‘‘Halas brought together the many aspects of the culture of animation.’’ The Halas & Batchelor studio, for much of its existence, was synonymous with animation in Great Britain and trained many of that country’s animators. Halas, a shrewd businessman, was also a true believer, especially in his later years, and propagated his beliefs about animation in every way he could, through the media, books, public discussions, and speeches. Awarded an OBE in 1972 for his contributions to British film, he helped to organize the Association Internationale du Film d’Animation, was its president from 1960 to 1985, and then became its honorary president.32 In Halas’s later years his career tailed off, but he dealt very well with aging, the changing economics of animation, and the mind-boggling technological changes in his field. As Julia Child once marvelously put it, ‘‘why languish . . . when it is so much fun to be a myth?’’ It seems to me unfair and inaccurate to denigrate Halas by dubbing him ‘‘the selfstyled father of British animation.’’ As has been argued, his role as a theorist and advocate should be ‘‘valued as highly as his achievement as a practitioner.’’ By all accounts he was a sharp operator, and he certainly used his stature to personal advantage, but he was also a visionary with a sense of mission.33 So too were the opc/cia investors who supported the making of the Halas & Batchelor film of Orwell’s book. It is easy now to deride them and the agency in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse and breakup. But the world they saw in 1949 was far different from how many now see that era. In 1949, given the tyranny of Stalin and the Soviet state, the ‘‘investors,’’ and those with and for whom they worked, saw ‘‘a frightful local present and a possible frightful world future,’’ as Robert Conquest

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has written. Perhaps time has proved them wrong; there are certainly those who would argue that they erred. In pushing its view of how the world should be, opc/cia made many egregious mistakes, horrifying decisions, and downright stupid judgments.34 But, as the old saw goes, hindsight is 20/20. Vladimir Putin’s twentyfirst-century consumer-conscious and business-oriented Russia is a very different creature from the fearful totalitarian world of Stalin’s Soviet Union. That dictator, unlike Russia’s current ruler, would never have been found opening the first gas station in New York City to sell Russian oil—as Putin did in the spring of 2004. The individuals who commissioned the Halas & Batchelor film can be criticized for censoring and warping Orwell’s ideas, especially for changing the ending. But, happily, their view has proved prescient, regarding the Soviets and their erstwhile client states, certainly much more so than the final shattering vision set forth in Orwell’s allegory. Orwell viewed the future of the Stalinist part of the Communist world bleakly, and his book was meant to expose what he called the ‘‘Soviet myth.’’ Countering that myth was also the rationale for the cultural warfare undertaken by America’s psy warriors: Animal Farm, the movie, was but a very small part of an extensive campaign.

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The men who wrote the legislation establishing the Central Intelligence Agency in July 1947 argued that such an organization would serve as ‘‘an analytical and predictive secret intelligence agency with a view to avoiding another Pearl Harbor.’’ Intelligence expert David Wise, in reviewing the contemporary public congressional testimony dealing with the legislation establishing the cia, found that from it one got ‘‘the impression that the proposed agency would be a collection of elderly ladies clipping Pravda and poring over Soviet railroad timetables.’’ However, he notes, in the closed executive sessions of Congress, where there was much more candor, it was clear that congressional intent indicated that the proposed agency would be engaging in serious covert Cold War endeavors, as subsequently proved to be the case.1 That covert activity took many forms. As a former cia director said, ‘‘covert action . . . describes our efforts to influence events in a foreign country without our role being known . . . by means of unattributable propaganda, sub rosa political action, secret paramilitary support.’’ In addition to practicing espionage on a large scale, the cia has endeavored to foment insurrection in the Communist countries of Eastern Europe. Mercenaries were hired to fight on various Asian battlefields. And the cia (as well as other government agencies) invested substantial funds in a Kulturkampf to sell American ideas and way of life everywhere in the world. Indeed, historian David Caute has maintained that the American

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struggle for cultural supremacy during the heyday of the Cold War was ‘‘increasingly promoted to relevance alongside the more traditional weapons of the military and industrial complex.’’2 When details of the cia’s Kulturkampf began to be known in the mid1960s, the agency was not without its stalwart articulate defenders. Tom Braden, who had been much involved in the agency’s actions in this area, spoke out forthrightly in support of these actions. His defense, although decades old now, still has a contemporary ring, as he calls the criticisms ‘‘inane . . . twaddle’’ and excoriates columnists and newspapers for failing to understand the Communist threat and to recognize the inability of a provincial, politicized Congress to deal with it. The Soviets, argued Braden, through clever manipulation of the language, had stolen the words peace, freedom, and justice, and had managed to sell their brand of Communism as a victory for the classless society and the transformation of mankind. Orwell had seen through their myths but many had not, so for Braden, Wisner, and those who thought their way, it was essential to subvent those, like Orwell, who intellectually countered the Soviets, for the Cold War was fought with ideas.3 The commissioning of the Halas & Batchelor production of Animal Farm was only one aspect of the agency’s cultural offensive, as the government mobilized whatever resources it could to counter the Soviets. Much of this mobilization was out in the open, as with the ‘‘Campaign for Truth’’ in the early 1950s; but many of the cia’s activities were covert. Both types were integral to a number of American policies and strategies. Like the British journalist Nick Cohen, there are those who may well be on the side of the angels in their current political stance of opposing the U.S. government’s covert use of the media, then and now. Interestingly, Frances Stonor Saunders, who has done much to expose that covert activity, although not backing off from her unflinching critique of the cia’s covert cultural activities, conceded in a 2003 interview (four years after publication of her book) that ‘‘in those early years’’ (referring to the late 1940s and early 1950s), ‘‘if the only way to do it was covertly, then it had to be done covertly.’’4 In any event, there were many in the Truman administration as well as members of the American establishment who felt that an expansive propaganda campaign was a vital tool in wooing the people who might be attracted by what Orwell had dubbed ‘‘the Soviet myth.’’ As one critic of that campaign has noted, it was soon realized that psychological war-

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fare was as ‘‘important as military capability.’’ In pursuing that campaign both openly and covertly, the opc/cia became the American government’s vehicle of choice for that campaign.5 Since the mid-1960s various government bodies, concerned academics, investigative journalists, and others have detailed the less than acceptable practices of the cia. Initially, the agency’s defenders, such as Braden, could and did argue that ‘‘the nature’’ of the agency’s work required that its ‘‘objectives, its methods, and its effectiveness be shrouded’’ from public scrutiny. But by the latter part of the 1960s, as some of its covert activities came to light, even a less ardent critic argued that the agency ‘‘has gone far beyond its originators’ intent.’’6 Critics argued compellingly that the cia’s enemies and critics at home and abroad did not need to draw up bills of particulars to discredit it, for the agency had ‘‘gained a bad name on its own.’’ The intense scrutiny of its failures in both intelligence and performance, whether failing to grasp in 1950 that North Korea was about to invade South Korea, or botching the 1961 Bay of Pigs operation in a badly planned attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro as Cuba’s ruler, robbed the agency of whatever patriotic gloss it might once have had. Its initials were derided as an acronym standing for ‘‘Caught In the Act’’ or ‘‘Can’t Identify Anything.’’7 The American intelligence establishment, during opc’s tenure and after its integration into the cia through Bedell Smith’s restructuring, practiced cultural warfare on a massive scale. It invested very heavily in exercising the fine art of ‘‘black propaganda,’’ summed up by a respected analyst as an activity that ‘‘conceals its own identity by purporting to emanate from somewhere other than its true source.’’ The sponsorship of the Halas & Batchelor filming of Orwell’s Animal Farm fell into this category. The making of that film, like Wisner’s ‘‘Radios,’’ may not have been the most sophisticated of operations, but it was certainly much better than what the commercial media produced in support of Anglo-American Cold War stratagems. Hollywood’s cycle of anti-Communist movies in the early 1950s, for example, has accurately been characterized as the faulty work of ‘‘hysterical nitwits whose films boomeranged so badly abroad as practically to deserve a Stalin Peace Prize.’’8 Rumors and leaks had linked the cia to various projects before their ties to the government were exposed in detail and formally substantiated. Over the years, new disclosures of the agency’s practice of cultural warfare have become the fodder for much debate. But in the case of the

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Halas & Batchelor film, it was not until well into the 1990s that any writer discredited the argument that the uprising of the animals at the end of the movie was more commercial, and more palatable to viewers, than Orwell’s bleak ending. And no one objected to the many nuances introduced at the behest of the ‘‘investors.’’ When the idea of turning Orwell’s book into a movie was first broached, there was a strong belief among the intellectual powerbrokers in the United States that ‘‘it was possible to influence and condition political allegiances, private and public behaviors.’’ There was a belief that ‘‘unconventional instruments’’ such as movies could win over the ‘‘hearts and minds’’ of people. That belief faltered as the United States floundered in Vietnam during the late 1960s and early 1970s. Since then there has been continuous debate about the overt and covert cultural activities of U.S. government agencies (paralleled by a similar discussion in Great Britain as to the functionality of the UK secret services, especially as they seem to have been seriously and continually penetrated by the very forces they opposed).9 For most of the twentieth century moving pictures dazzled audiences around the globe. Most viewers probably knew that state censorship and industry self-regulation existed and to a certain extent regulated what they could see. But most of those efforts were out in the open and were subject to continuing criticism—so much so that as the twentieth century waned, so too did effective industry self-regulation and state censorship in the United States and United Kingdom. The cia’s influence was exposed only gradually, over time. When it began fighting the Cold War in the later 1940s, American policymakers believed that the use of a popular mass medium such as film could successfully implement the cultural component of psychological warfare, to which great importance was attached. The aim of those who advocated film for getting the message across ‘‘was to find a non-noticeably propagandistic point of contact with an audience.’’ Animation seemed such a point of contact because, as Grierson had argued, it seemed ‘‘ideologically innocent.’’10 That seeming innocence, of course, characterized the Halas & Batchelor animated films produced for various UK government agencies during World War II. A UK media specialist has observed that the films’ success with audiences lay in the individual quality of a Halas & Batchelor short, winning that audience over to a point of view, while other

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government-sponsored films prompted groans, or found patrons rushing up the aisles to fill up ‘‘with a double feature supply of food.’’ Their animation presented (as Geoff Brown put it) ‘‘important ideas in accessible form . . . without apparently carrying an ideological or political position.’’ Abu the Arab boy was fun to watch. Being told to dig for victory might be propaganda but, more important for the viewer, it was enjoyable, even fun.11 Halas & Batchelor’s Animal Farm was not fun, nor was it ideologically innocent (it could not be, given that Orwell’s book was its source). But what did viewers really see, and how did they interpret it? Messages that may be effective with one audience or in one medium may not succeed with a different group of viewers or in another format. And what may be very effective at one historical moment can fail to interest an audience at another. As one writer has argued rather convincingly, it has ‘‘never been explained how in practice the . . . meaning of the film becomes available to the people.’’12 The opc/cia representatives who dealt with the movie production of Orwell’s book were geared to the Cold War world of a different era. The world has changed dramatically and irrevocably since then. Do viewers of Animal Farm today, more than fifty years later, see it as contemporaries did? Do they understand the ramifications of the film (or the book), of the changed ending, of the nuances insisted upon by the investors? We know that the film is frequently shown to German high school students, but even when a teacher explains the politics of a divided Germany, or that Napoleon is supposed to represent Stalin, whose goal was to keep the country divided in pursuit of an aggressive anti-West policy, or that the changed ending was designed to increase public opposition to Stalin and his policies, do the students respond any differently than they would to images of Hannibal and the Punic Wars? The story behind the making of the film is a very small part of the history of the cia and the cultural Cold War it orchestrated. But because of the possible ramifications, as well as the ties to Orwell, who has become a cultural icon for those writing about the world of arts and letters in the twentieth century, the story has gotten the kind of media play that reinforces its importance. That it took decades for rumor to be documented as fact, for it to be tied in any detail (and much of it is still incorrect) to the opc/cia, speaks volumes about the ability of a government agency to keep its activities covert.

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From my perspective it is extremely unfortunate that America’s psy warriors did not have enough faith in their cause, and in those for whom they were campaigning, to openly (indeed, blatantly) make known what they were doing. Even after their activities came to light, they had neither the gumption nor the intelligence of a Tom Braden, who so forthrightly defended the agency’s Kulturkampf—for him, borrowing a word from the agency’s critics, it would have been ‘‘immoral’’ for the cia not to act as it did. Certainly with regard to this movie, it seems to me that in the contest of values in the bipolar world of the early 1950s, America’s psy warriors erred in not making known their reasons for their use of what then was dubbed ‘‘the most mythopeic medium of the age.’’13 The ability of a film to influence an audience, of course, depends on getting people into the theater in the first place. Grierson thought cinema should be used as a pulpit. But, as one of his critics queried, ‘‘what was to be done when the church refused to fill?’’ Animal Farm won neither the critical response nor the audience that de Rochemont anticipated and that the opc/cia hoped to achieve.14 Since its release, however, the film has come to have a fascinating and extensive afterlife, especially in recent years, when it has been released as a DVD in more than one country and by more than one company. One can argue, despite the input of the opc/cia, that the film is a significant work deserving of the attention it has more recently garnered. It is also possible to argue that only because of the interest of the opc/ cia investors and their perhaps injudicious use of taxpayer dollars was a significant work undertaken and completed. If ‘‘cinema is a window and a mirror,’’ as Andrew Sarris has argued, then the Halas & Batchelor film allows us to see different but not contradictory views of its sponsors and creators. We can see and understand the ideas and motivations of the opc investors and what they hoped to achieve from their position behind the scene. And we can grasp why Halas and Batchelor chose to make the film, whether aware of the cia’s involvement or not. We can also take a peek at ourselves through the lens of the past, and ask whether we want to be like the animals in the book, or whether we’d prefer to emulate those in the movie, and stand up and fight those imposing their will upon us.15 While the issues remain important, the basis for them reflects a society that is no more. It may still be premature to think that today’s Russia, whatever happens there, will never develop, either domestically or inter-

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nationally, along the lines that Orwell laid out in his ‘‘fairy story’’ of Stalin’s Soviet Union, but that does seem to be the case. Totalitarian regimes still exist, however, and there are more tyrants than there should be who would impose arbitrary authoritarian rule on a country’s citizens. Parade, a widely circulated supplement to many American Sunday newspapers, runs an annual list of ‘‘the ten worst dictators’’ as well as a list of ten more ‘‘contenders.’’ But Orwell’s allegory, except perhaps in the broadest outlines, does not easily apply to them, despite some horrific Stalinist actions on their part.16 The power of film propaganda, indeed, the role of media influence in general that so concerned Orwell, remains controversial in our society and subject to contradictory views. Such views color not only debates about the present but also our interpretations of history. As of this writing, the beginnings and end of the Cold War continue to be debated, not only how it started but what exactly its ending means. In such debates there is always discussion about ‘‘the secret hand of the cia.’’17 To understand the personalities involved in the transformation of a short book into an animated feature film, to grasp the concepts behind the subvention of the film by a U.S. government agency that hid its funding, is to appreciate the complexities that have always governed art and politics, but probably never more so than in the heyday of the Cold War. Whatever the big picture, it is possible to miss the many little details that, as in Breughel’s paintings, are to be found everywhere on the canvas. In dealing with them specifically it is possible to pinpoint some very important aspects of political and film history. Even in Orwell’s lifetime, Animal Farm was censored when translated to other formats. In 1946 he adapted the book for a radio play to be broadcast by the BBC over its Third Programme. Because of concerns as a result of correspondence about a possible misunderstanding of the book’s message, he added some lines to make absolutely clear what he thought of as the ‘‘key’’ turning point in the book (i.e., when the pigs appropriate the cow’s milk and the harvested apples). According to Crick, ‘‘special rations for the pigs’’ meant for Orwell ‘‘the revolution’s first betrayal.’’ Although this presentation was produced by an erstwhile flat mate and lifelong friend (the broadcaster Rayner Heppenstall), as Davison has pointed out, ‘‘the significance’’ of the added lines was lost on the producer who deleted them.18 As for the ird, it had no need to tweak Orwell’s book in pursuit of its

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goals. The author’s passion fit in very well with the ird’s stated mission. But Orwell himself had almost nothing to do with the ird and had decided not to write for it. And the UK agency, for all its anti-Communist activities, which included the hyping of Orwell’s book, limited its audiovisual activities with regard to Animal Farm. Not so the Americans. Orwell once said that ‘‘all Art is Propaganda.’’ By that statement he meant that in dealing with culture, however we may define it, ‘‘values and opinions can be changed in a political way.’’ Animal Farm—as one of the legion of Orwell interpreters has put it—the book and Animal Farm the movie were conscious attempts by Orwell and by those who wish to use his book to meld the political and the artistic. Both attempts were successful because of the singular qualities of George Orwell.19 Many critics have argued, concerning the covert activities of the cia, that ‘‘it is the secrecy . . . that sticks in the craw, for it defies the very core of the liberal-democratic faith: transparency, openness, candor.’’ Is propaganda, even if it is not clandestinely sponsored, by definition bad; is it really more harmful than advertising? The master propaganda analyst Harold Lasswell has maintained that the ‘‘selling of ideas is not more moral than a pump handle.’’20 Yet it continues to be forcefully argued that hiding the sponsorship of an idea or of a product is wrong. Halas & Batchelor’s Animal Farm, while a milestone in the development of British animation, may have been ‘‘only a pebble on the long road of history,’’ in Barbara Tuchman’s words. But it is a significant pebble, a very large pebble, because of the exposure of the official influences on its creators.21

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P R E FA C E

1. Frances Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 1999); Tony Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War: The State, Propaganda, and Consensus (London: I. B. Tauris, 2001). 2. The three statements were made, respectively, by Tom Gervasi, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Darrel Garwood, Under Cover: Thirty-Five Years of CIA Deception (New York: Grove Press, 1985) (first published in 1980 as American Shadow by the Spoon River Press, Stafford, Va.), 22; David M. Barrett, The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005), 460; and David H. Price, Threatening Anthropology: McCarthyism and the FBI’s Surveillance of Activist Anthropologists (Durham: Duke University Press, 2004), 356. 3. Gary Kern, A Death in Washington: Walter G. Krivitsky and the Stalin Terror (New York: Enigma Books, 2003), 394; Tim Weiner, ‘‘The Spying Game,’’ New York Times Book Review, April 10, 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/010/Books/review/10WEINERL .html?8bu&emc⳱bu. 4. Kathryn I. Dyer, information and privacy coordinator, Central Intelligence Agency, to Daniel J. Leab, October 4, 2000 (in author’s possession). 5. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Secrecy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998), 185. 6. Evan Thomas, ‘‘A Singular Opportunity: Gaining Access to CIA Records,’’ Studies in Intelligence 5 (1996), http://www.odei.gov/csi/. 7. Articles dealing with these movies include ‘‘How Red Was My Valley: Hollywood, the Cold War, and I Married a Communist,’’ Journal of Contemporary History 19 (January 1984): 59–88; ‘‘The Iron Curtain: Hollywood’s First Cold War Film,’’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 8, no. 2 (1988): 153–88; ‘‘From Even-Handedness to Red-Baiting: The Transformation of the Novel Trial,’’ Film History 10, no. 3 (1998): 320–31; ‘‘I Was a Communist for the FBI,’’ in The Movies as History: Visions of the Twentieth Century, ed. David Ellwood (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 2000), 86–104. 8. An erstwhile musical prodigy in tsarist Russia, Morros emigrated to the United States and became a Soviet agent in the early 1930s. Never really an important figure in Hollywood, he constantly exaggerated his position and his relationships, and did manage over the years to con his Soviet superiors as well as various partners (including the producer Sam Spiegel, no slouch himself at self-aggrandizement). Morros does appear as FROST (the Russian word for frost is moroz) in the VENONA transcripts, the decrypted 1940s cables sent by Soviet agents to the USSR, which record that country’s intelligence activity in the United States. Much of what Morros did for the Soviets was negligible, but he was able to be of assistance in transferring funds, and thanks to his employment by Paramount as a music director in the late 1930s he was able to place a Soviet agent in Paramount’s studio in Berlin. Once turned by the FBI in 1947, Morros outdid himself in reporting to both of his employers

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that he was ‘‘like one’’ with Archbishop Spellman, had discussed Margaret Truman’s musical career with her father—President Truman—over dinner at the White House, and had talked for half an hour with the pope about Russian literature. Morros surfaced in 1957, going public in media interviews and press conferences with his stories of Soviet espionage and FBI counterespionage, subsequently appearing before congressional committees and testifying in court during the prosecution of some of his Communist associates (who were convicted). A master of self-promotion, he later managed to sell his melodramatic exculpatory memoir, which served as the basis for the somewhat tired movie that de Rochemont produced. See Boris Morros, as told to Charles Samuels, My Ten Years as a Counterspy (New York: Viking, 1959), and Allen Weinstein and Aleksander Vassiliev, The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era (New York: Random House, 1999), 110–39. 9. Louis de Rochemont Papers, 1899–2004, Accession Number 5716, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming (hereafter de Rochemont Papers); information about the Animation Research Center holdings, including the Halas-Batchelor Collection, can be found at http://www.surrart.ac.uk/arc. 10. For these comments on Stonor Saunders’s book, see Scott Lucas, ‘‘Revealing the Parameters of Opinion: An Interview with Frances Stonor Saunders,’’ in The Cultural Cold War in Western Europe: 1945–1960, ed. Giles Scott-Smith and Hans Krabbendam (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 27 (this wide-ranging interview is well worth attention; she vigorously and intelligently defends her research and conclusions, 15–40); Jeffrey O. Isaac, ‘‘Rethinking the Cultural Cold War,’’ Dissent (summer 2002): 29; Volker P. Berghahn, America and the Intellectual Cold War in Europe: Shepherd Stone Between Philanthropy, Academy, and Diplomacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), xvi; Christopher Wilcox, ‘‘Book Shelf: A Secret Soldier in the War of Ideas,’’ Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2000, 46. 11. Gore Vidal, The United States: Essays, 1952–1992 (London: Abacus, 1994) (his essay on Hunt was originally published in the New York Review of Books, December 13, 1976); Alexander Cockburn, ‘‘Propaganda of the Victors,’’ New York Review of Books, November 28, 1974, 36; John R. Coyne Jr., ‘‘Review,’’ National Review, February 28, 1975, 36. For Hunt’s epigram, see, for example, quoteland.com. 12. Louis Menand, ‘‘Honest, Decent, Wrong: The Invention of George Orwell,’’ New Yorker, January 27, 2003, 84; John Rodden, Scenes from an Afterlife: The Legacy of George Orwell (Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2003), 276n7. Typical of the approach of Orwell’s biographers is Gordon Bowker, George Orwell (London: Little, Brown, 2003), chapter 20, esp. 422–23 and 468nn15–16; Robert Pearce, ‘‘Animal Farm: Sixty Years On,’’ History Today (August 2005): 46–53. 13. Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War, 3; on aspects of the movie version of Animal Farm where I believe he has erred, see 94–95. 14. Press release, Verso, July 29, 1999, 1 (in author’s possession); Observer column (April 26, 1998) reprinted in Nick Cohen, Cruel Britannia: Reports on the Sinister and the Preposterous (London: Verso, 1999), 159, 161. 15. Peter Grose, Gentleman Spy: The Life of Allen Dulles (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), 284; Ray S. Cline, Secrets, Spies, and Scholars: Blueprint of the Essential CIA (Washington, D.C.: Acropolis Books, 1976), 99. 16. Townsend Hoopes and Douglas Brinkley, Driven Patriot: The Life and Times of James Forrestal (New York: Knopf, 1992), 315; Esther Ferrington, ed., Secrets of the Century: Inside the CIA (Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 2000), 21; Wendy L. Wall, ‘‘ ‘America’s Best Protagonists’: Italian-Americans and the 1948 Letters to Italy Campaign,’’ in Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945–1966, ed. Christian G. Appy (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000), 18. 17. Orwell quoted in George Orwell, ‘‘Our Job Is to Make Life Worth Living, 1949– 1950,’’ in The Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. Peter Davison (London: Secker & Warburg,

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1998), (hereafter Davison, CWO), 20:237; D. J. Taylor, Orwell (London: Chatto and Windus, 2003), 422; praise for Crick’s biography is in Stefan Collini, ‘‘The Grocer’s Children: The Lives and Afterlives of George Orwell,’’ Times Literary Supplement, June 20, 2003, 3, 6. 18. Peter Davison, George Orwell: A Literary Life (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996), ix; the Wellesley conference topics are discussed in ‘‘Curious George,’’ Boston Sunday Globe, May 11, 2003, H1; Benjamin Alpers, Dictators, Democracy, and American Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy—1920s–1950s (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 286; final quotation from Scott Lucas, Orwell (London: Haus Publishing, 2003), 117. 19. Bernard Crick, George Orwell: A Life, new ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1992), 589; Jan Dailey, ‘‘A Timely Look Back into the Future,’’ Financial Times (UK), May 24–25, 2003, W4. 20. Evans quoted in Deborah Lipstadt, History on Trial: My Day in Court with David Irving (New York: Ecco, 2005), 42.

CHAPTER 1

1. Woodcock quoted in Robert Hewison, In Anger: British Culture in the Cold War, 1945– 1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), 27. 2. Lucas, Orwell, 81; George Orwell, ‘‘The Freedom of the Press,’’ in Davison, CWO, 8:113. This essay was written in 1944, and Orwell, angered by publishers’ rejections of the manuscript, meant it to serve as ‘‘a fiery preface to a self-published edition.’’ Ultimately Secker & Warburg published the book, so this essay was not published until 1972, after it was discovered by Ian Angus, who earlier had worked with the widow Sonia to put together a collection of Orwell’s writings. John Newsinger, ‘‘My Country, Right or Left: Patriotism, Socialism, and George Orwell, 1939–1941,’’ in War Culture: Social Change and Changing Experiences in World War Two, ed. Pat Kirkham and David Thomas (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1995), 31; Orwell quoted in Gillian Fenwick, George Orwell: A Bibliography (Winchester, England: St. Paul’s Bibliographies, 1998), 97. 3. Peter Davison to Daniel J. Leab, July 7, 2004 (in author’s possession); Meyer quoted in Taylor, Orwell, 323; John Rodden, ed., Understanding Animal Farm: A Student Casebook for Issues, Scholars, Sources, and Historical Documents (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999), ix; Orwell, ‘‘Author’s Preface to the Ukrainian Edition of Animal Farm,’’ in The Collected Essays, Journalism, and Letters of George Orwell, ed. Sonia Orwell and Ian Angus (London: Secker & Warburg, 1968), 3:406. 4. Rodden, Understanding Animal Farm, xviii; Orwell to Gollancz, March 19, 1944, in Davison, CWO, 16:126; Gollancz to Leonard Moore, April 4, 1944, quoted in Crick, George Orwell, 454. 5. West quoted in Victoria Glendinning, Rebecca West: A Life (New York: Knopf, 1987), 173; Frederic Warburg, All Authors Are Equal (London: Hutchinson, 1973), 9; Cohen, Cruel Britannia, 158. 6. John Bayley, ‘‘The Last Puritan,’’ New York Review of Books, March 29, 2001, 49; Eliot to Orwell, July 13, 1944, quoted in Crick, George Orwell, 458. 7. Bowker, George Orwell, 312; Taylor, Orwell, 337; Lucas, Orwell, 79; Yuri Modin, with Jean-Charles Deniau and Augieska Ziarek, My Five Cambridge Friends—Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt, and Cairncross—by Their KGB Controller, trans. Anthony Roberts (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1994), 81; Michael Sheldon, Graham Greene: The Enemy Within (New York: Random House, 1994), 267; Christopher Andrew and Oleg Gordievsky, KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev (London: Sceptre, 1991). Professor Norman Mackenzie, a Communist Party member until 1943, who subsequently agreed with Orwell about the failings of the Soviet Union, characterized Smollett as ‘‘a nasty

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shit’’ (quoted in The Guardian, June 24, 2003, 5). According to Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West (London: Penguin Books, 2000), 158, because Smollett was recruited by double agents (e.g., Philby), his ‘‘spectacular success in organizing pro-Soviet propaganda . . . was thus perversely interpreted as a cunning plot by British intelligence.’’ After the war Smollett reverted to Smolka, returned to journalism in Vienna in the employ of the British press, and in the early 1950s, while suffering from multiple sclerosis, was among those denounced during Stalin’s anti-Semitic purges in the satellite states. He died in 1980 (Andrew and Gordievesky, KGB, 375–423). Smolka, uncredited but paid, contributed advice and assistance to the production of Greene’s movie thriller The Third Man. In what Greene biographer Sheldon considers an ‘‘inside joke,’’ at one point in the movie, when a British officer tells his driver the name of a bar, it is the ‘‘Smolka’’ (Sheldon, Enemy Within, 269). 8. Orwell quoted in Warburg, All Authors Are Equal, 41; Davison, Orwell: A Literary Life, 86. Warburg refers, for example, to ‘‘a great debate’’ in the office (All Authors Are Equal, 48). 9. Warburg quoted in Crick, George Orwell, 488; Lucas, Orwell, 80. 10. Warburg, All Authors Are Equal, 52 . 11. James B. Gilbert, Writers and Partisans: A History of Literary Radicalism in America (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1968), 247; George Soule, ‘‘Orwell’s Fables,’’ New Republic, September 2, 1946, 266. 12. Eric Blair [Orwell] to Leonard Moore, September 8, 1945, in Davison, CWO, 17:286; Warburg, All Authors Are Equal, 546, 54; Crick, George Orwell, 487; Orwell to Dwight Macdonald, in Davison, CWO, 18:11. 13. Orwell to William Phillips, co-editor of Partisan Review, January 31, 1946, 85, in Davison, CWO, 18:85; Crick, George Orwell, 568; Rahv to Orwell, quoted in Harvey Teres, Renewing the Left: Politics, Imagination, and the New York Intellectuals (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 135; Viereck quoted in Fenwick, Orwell: A Bibliography, 100; Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., A Life in the Twentieth Century: Innocent Beginnings, 1917–1950 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 355, 402. 14. Crick, George Orwell, 487. 15. Christopher Morley quoted in Daniel J. Leab, George Orwell: Catalogue to an Exhibition at the Grolier Club (Washington, Conn.: Cogswell Tavern Press, 1996), 31; a member of the club’s selection committee quoted in John Rodden, George Orwell: The Politics of Literary Reputation, rev. ed. (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2003), 44; Scherman quoted in Rodden, Understanding Animal Farm, 134. 16. Orwell to K.A.G.S. Lane, Christy, & Moore (Orwell’s literary agents), in Davison, CWO, 18:405; New Republic, Nation, and New Masses reviews quoted in Rodden, Understanding Animal Farm, 137–40. 17. Wilson quoted in Davison, CWO, 18:484; Politics review quoted in Rodden, Understanding Animal Farm, 136–37; ‘‘Vogue Spotlight by Allene Talmey,’’ September 15, 1946, quoted in Davison, CWO, 18:396. 18. Rodden, Scenes from an Afterlife, 48; Louis M. Ridenour, ‘‘Allegory with Goose Pimples,’’ Saturday Evening Post, August 25, 1946, 10; Peter Davison to Daniel J. Leab, e-mail, February 4, 2006; Peter Davison, ed., Orwell and Politics: Animal Farm in the Context of Essays, Reviews, and Letters Selected from the Complete Works of George Orwell (London: Penguin Books, 2001), 231–33. Making of the parallels is not uncommon—two examples are theoretician James Arnt Aune, who charted more than thirty parallels between characters and events in the book and Soviet history (Aune, ‘‘Literary Analysis of Animal Farm,’’ in Rodden, Understanding Animal Farm, 5–7); and J. R. Hammond lists eighteen in his useful George Orwell Companion (London: Macmillan, 1982), 161. 19. Jeffrey Meyers, Orwell: Wintry Conscience of a Generation (New York: W. W. Norton, 2000), 249.

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20. Orwell, ‘‘Preface to the Ukrainian Edition,’’ 406. 21. Laurence Zuckerman, ‘‘U.S. CIA Made Orwell’s Animal Farm, 1984 Film is AntiCommunist,’’ New York Times, March 18, 2000; Alpers, Dictators, Democracy, and American Culture, 286. 22. Orwell to Dwight Macdonald, December 5, 1946, in Davison, CWO, 18:507. 23. Orwell to Dwight Macdonald, September 6, 1944, in Davison, CWO, 16:381. In 1935 Orwell wrote, ‘‘A Happy vicar I might have been / two hundred years ago. . . . But born alas in an evil time / I missed that pleasant Heaven,’’ quoted in Terry Teachout, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Ghost on the Roof: Selected Journalism of Whittaker Chambers, 1931–1959, ed. Terry Teachout (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1989), xx; Davison, Orwell: A Literary Life, 143. 24. Ben Pimlott, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Orwell’s England, ed. Peter Davison (London: Penguin Books, 2001), xx. 25. This introduction to the Signet paperback edition (New York: New American Library, 1956) first appeared in the Times Literary Supplement, August 6, 1954. Rodden, Scenes from an Afterlife, 212. 26. Woodhouse, the scion of a noble family and a true establishment figure, has more than two inches in his listing in the 1998 edition of Who’s Who, none of which even hints at his many more clandestine activities, most notably in Iran. Woodhouse, in his discreet memoir, does recall working with the CIA in coordinating the coup ousting Iranian prime minister ‘‘Mussed’’ (Mossadegh), who wished to end British control of that country’s oil industry. Initially the United States, as the Wall Street Journal later put it, ‘‘had no enthusiasm’’ for a plan that was seen as ‘‘a last gasp by Britain’s expiring empire.’’ See Richard J. Aldrich, The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence (Woodstock, Vt.: Overlook Press, 2001), 472; Steven Marsh, ‘‘Continuity and Change: Reinterpreting the Policies of the Truman and Eisenhower Administrations Toward Iran, 1950–1954,’’ Journal of Cold War Studies 7 (summer 2005): 117; ‘‘In Quest for Oil Security,’’ Wall Street Journal, February 4, 2004, A6. In his memoir, Woodhouse rather simplistically (and somewhat contrary to fact) overstates his success in lobbying the American government and businesses for their intervention, emphasizing ‘‘the Communist threat to Iran, rather than the need to recover control of the oil industry.’’ It is perhaps not surprising, then, that he would abridge Orwell’s statement. See C. M. Woodhouse, Something Ventured (London: Granada, 1982), 117. Neither a thorough biography of Loy Henderson, then U.S. ambassador to Iran and no fan of its government, dealing in detail with his actions at that time, nor a lengthy article making use of more recently available sources, seems in sync with Woodhouse’s recollection. Rather, Henderson’s biographer finds him initially set against British policy and persistently ‘‘uneasy about the whole situation.’’ H. W. Brands, Inside the Cold War: Loy Henderson and the Rise of the American Empire, 1918–1961 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 264–83. According to Marsh, the Eisenhower administration did not regard Mossadegh as a Communist sympathizer, and Woodhouse, in his efforts to win American economic aid, may well have ‘‘overplayed his Communist card,’’ since the mistakes in British policy had made a coup ‘‘the only remaining means of salvaging U.S. interests in the region.’’ Marsh, ‘‘Continuity and Change,’’ 116, 117, 119. 27. Orwell, ‘‘Preface to the Ukrainian Edition,’’ 113; Orwell to Yvonne Davet (who had translated Homage to Catalonia into French), February 24, 1946, in Davison, CWO, 18:131 (‘‘une conte satirique contre Staline’’ in the original). On September 6, 1946, Orwell wrote Madame Davet that the publishers of a translation of Animal Farm initially ‘‘chose ‘URSA (Union des Republiques Socialistes Animales’ [Union of Socialist Animal Republics] but . . . changed it to avoid offending the Stalinists too much’’ (Davison, CWO, 18:390–91). Ursa, of course, means bear in Latin, as Peter Davison, who drew my attention to Orwell’s letter, pointed out, and the bear has symbolized Russia for years. Davison to Leab, July 7, 2004 (in author’s possession).

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28. Timothy Garton Ash, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Davison, Orwell and Politics, xiii; Meyers, Orwell, 249.

CHAPTER 2

1. David Rothkopf, Running the World: The Inside Story of the National Security Council and the Architects of American Power (New York: Public Affairs, 2005), 43. 2. Truman quoted in Merle Miller, Plain Speaking: An Oral Biography of Harry S. Truman (New York: Berkeley Publishing Co., 1973, 1974), 341; the CIA director is quoted in Stansfield Turner, Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence (New York: Hyperion, 2005), 40; the Truman biographer is Robert Ferrell, Harry S. Truman and the Modern American Presidency (Boston: Little, Brown, 1984), 71; the scholar is Amy B. Zegard, Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 182. 3. Sara L. Sale, The Shaping of Containment: Harry S. Truman, the National Security Council, and the Cold War (St. James, N.Y.: Brandywine Press, 1998), 14. 4. Adam Yarmolinsky, The Military Establishment: Its Impact on American Society (‘‘A Twentieth-Century Fund Study’’) (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 29; 69 Stat. 497 quoted in Thomas Etzold, ‘‘American Organization for National Security, 1945–1950,’’ in Containment: Documents on American Foreign Policy and Strategy, 1945–1950, ed. Thomas Etzold and John Lewis Gaddis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1978), 9. 5. U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of the Historian, History of the National Security Council, 1947–1997, ‘‘The Truman Administration,’’ http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/history.html. 6. Wilson D. Miscamble, George F. Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 1947–1950 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 22; Tim Weiner and Barbara Crossette, ‘‘George F. Kennan Dies at 101; Leading Strategist of Cold War,’’ New York Times, March 18, 2005, obituary. A smart, compelling portrait of Kennan at this time in his life can be found in Derek Leebaert, The Fifty-Year Wound: How America’s Cold War Shapes Our World (Boston: Little, Brown, 2002) which maintains that he ‘‘reflected the nation’s contradictions: pride in power, perfectionist expectations, readiness to despair, suspicion of leadership, and confident ignorance’’ (33–34). 7. Walter L. Hixson, George Kennan: Cold War Iconoclast (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 52; Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 26. 8. John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of American National Security Policy During the Cold War, rev. and exp. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 19, 24–25; Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 26; ‘‘Generation ‘X,’’’ Wall Street Journal, February 20, 2004, A16; Hoopes and Brinkley, Driven Patriot, 276; Richard Holbrooke, ‘‘The Paradox of Kennan,’’ New York Sun, March 22, 2005. 9. Elias M. Zacherias, in collaboration with Ladislas Farago, Behind Closed Doors: The Secret History of the Cold War (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1950), 256; Kennan quoted in Barrett, CIA and Congress, 32. 10. The appendix to the policy statement detailing the initiation of covert operations can be found in ‘‘NSC4-A . . . ,’’ in CIA Cold War Records: The CIA Under Harry Truman, ed. Michael Warner (Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1994), 174. 11. David Rudgers, Creating the Secret State: the Origins of the Central Intelligence Agency, 1943–1947 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2000), 170; Gregory Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin: America’s Strategy to Subvert the Soviet Bloc, 1947–1956 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000), 17.

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12. ‘‘NSC 10/2: National Security Council, Directive on Office of Special Projects, June 18, 1948,’’ in Etzold and Gaddis, Containment, 126n9; Barrett, CIA and Congress, 19; William Colby and Peter Forbath, Honorable Men: My Life in the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978), 72–73; David Wise and Thomas B. Ross, The Invisible Government (New York: Random House, 1965), 101 (Wise, a decade later in The American Police State [New York: Random House, 1976], 223, put it more colorfully: ‘‘The ‘other functions’ loophole became the eye of the needle through which over the years, CIA covert operations were threaded around the globe’’); Turner, Burn Before Reading, 52. 13. Michael Nelson, War of the Black Heavens: The Battle of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 1997), 42; Roy Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards: U.S. Covert Action and Counter-Intelligence (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 2001), 269n12. 14. Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards, 32–33; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, The CIA and American Democracy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 56. 15. Evan Thomas, The Very Best Men—Four Who Dared: The Early Years of the CIA (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995), 29. 16. Burton Hersh, The Old Boys: The American Elite and the Origins of the CIA (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1992), 291; Harry Rositzke, The CIA’s Secret Operations: Espionage, Counterespionage, and Covert Action (New York: Reader’s Digest Press, 1977), 151; Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards, 32; Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 87; Richard Helms, with William Hood, A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency (New York: Random House, 2003), 113. 17. Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War Behind the Iron Curtain (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000), 96; Zacherias, with Farago, Behind Closed Doors, 150; David Stafford, Roosevelt and Churchill: Men of Secrets (London: Abacus, 2000), 280; Morton J. Halperin, Jerry J. Berman, Robert L. Borosage, and Christine M. Marwick, The Lawless State: The Crimes of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies (New York: Penguin Books, 1976), 32; Joseph J. Trento, The Secret History of the CIA, with a new introduction by the author (New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005), 26. 18. Schlesinger, Life in the Twentieth Century, 349; Thomas Powers, Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Quada (New York: New York Review of Books, 2002), 20; Trento, Secret History of the CIA, 26; Rudgers, Creating the Secret State, 174; David Murphy, Sergei A. Kondrashev, and George Bailey, Battleground Berlin: CIA vs. KGB in the Cold War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 104; Colby and Forbath, Honorable Men, 74. 19. Joint Chiefs of Staff report quoted in Sharon J. Parry-Giles, ‘‘Militarizing America’s Propaganda Program, 1945–1955,’’ in Critical Reflections on the Cold War: Linking Rhetoric and History, ed. Martin J. Medhurst and H. W. Brands (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2000), 105; Albert P. Toner quoted in Mario del Pero, ‘‘The United States and ‘Psychological Warfare’ in Italy, 1948–1955,’’ Journal of American History 87 (2001): 1304. 20. Stuart M. Loory, ‘‘The CIA’s Use of the Press: A ‘Mighty Wurlitzer,’ ’’ Columbia Journalism Review (September–October 1974): 12. 21. Artoym Panfilov and Yuri Kaschevsky, Subversion by Radio: Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Moscow: Novosti Press Agency Publishing House, 1974), 4; Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, 21. 22. Miscamble, Kennan and the Making of American Foreign Policy, 204; Arch Puddington, The Cold War Triumph of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2000), 10. 23. Stacy Cone, ‘‘Presuming a Right to Deceive: Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, the CIA, and the News Media,’’ Journalism History 24 (winter 1998–99): 148. 24. James Boylan, Pulitzer’s School: Columbia University’s School of Journalism, 1903–2003

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(New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 138; Parry-Giles, ‘‘Militarizing America’s Propaganda Program,’’ 104; Edward W. Barrett, Truth Is Our Weapon (New York: Funk and Wagnells, 1953), 96, 97. 25. ‘‘The Central Intelligence Act of 1949,’’ in Warner, CIA Cold War Records, 293–94. 26. Loch K. Johnson, ‘‘The CIA and the Question of Accountability,’’ in Eternal Vigilance: Fifty Years of the CIA, ed. Rhodri Jeffreys Jones and Christopher Andrew (London: Frank Cass, 1997), 191; New York Times quoted in John Ranelagh, The Agency: The Rise and Fall of the CIA, from Wild Bill Donovan to Bill Casey (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 118; Loch K. Johnson, America’s Secret Power: The CIA in a Democratic Society (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989), 36. 27. Anne O’Hare McCormick quoted in David Frumkin, In the Time of the Americans: FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Marshall, and MacArthur—The Generation That Changed America’s Role in the World (New York: Random House, 1995), 636; ‘‘The Marshall Plan,’’ in For the Record: A Documentary History of America, vol. 2, ed. David E. Shi and Holly A. Mayer (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 277. 28. Richard M. Bissell Jr., with Jonathan E. Lewis and Francis T. Pudio, Reflections of a Cold Warrior from Yalta to the Bay of Pigs (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 68. 29. Giles Scott-Smith, The Politics of American Culture: The Congress for Cultural Freedom, the CIA, and Post-War American Hegemony (London: Routledge, 2002), 71; Barrett, CIA and Congress, 120; Finance Division [CIA] to Executive, OPC [Wisner], October 17, 1949, in Warner, CIA Cold War Records, 322, xxi. 30. Rudy Abramson, Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averill Harriman, 1891–1986 (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1992), 425. 31. Rainer Rother, ‘‘Foreword,’’ in Selling Democracy: Winning the Peace (Berlin: Deutsches Historisches Museum, 2005), 5 (‘‘a booklet for the film series presented by the Berlin International Film Festival, German Historical Museum and German Federal Archive-Film Archive . . . February 12–20, 2005’’); Bernadette Whelan, ‘‘Ireland, the Marshall Plan, and U.S. Cold War Concerns,’’ Journal of Cold War Studies 8 (2006): 78. 32. David Atlee Phillips, The Night Watch: Twenty-Five Years of Peculiar Service (New York: Athenaeum, 1977), 59–60. Some historians took this prank a bit too seriously; one described it as ‘‘a crude idea legendary in CIA folklore.’’ Scott Lucas, Freedom’s War: The American Crusade Against the Soviet Union (New York: New York University Press, 1999), 65. 33. Helms, with Hood, Look over My Shoulder, 355; Puddington, Cold War Triumph, 62. 34. Bissell, Reflections of a Cold Warrior, 68; Rothkopf, Running the World, 17; Robin Winks, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961 (New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1987), 55. 35. ‘‘The Great Life,’’ Hollywood Reporter, July 31, 1979, Margaret Herrick Library, Center for Motion Picture Study, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles (hereafter Herrick Library). 36. Robert Merry, Taking on the World: Joseph and Stewart Alsop—Guardians of the American Century (New York: Penguin Books, 1996), 156; Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones, Cloak and Dagger: A Secret History of American Intelligence (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2002), 163. 37. Finis Farr, FDR (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1972), 286–87; Finis Farr, The Elephant Valley (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1967), 45; Farr to Bryan, January 11, 1966, box 1, J. Bryan Papers (CO569), Firestone Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey (hereafter Bryan Papers). 38. William Corson quoted in Trento, Secret History of the CIA, 59; George S. McGhee, On the Front Line in the Cold War: An Ambassador Reports (Westport, Conn.: Pegasus, 1997), 145. 39. John Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby, the True

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Story of One of America’s Most Controversial Spymasters (New York: Oxford University Press, 2003), 43–44; Merry, Taking on the World, 156.

CHAPTER 3

1. Raymond Fielding, The March of Time: 1935–1951 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 76; Lothar Wolff, interview by Elaine Felsher, Time, Inc. Oral History Project, June 4, 1985, 23 (copy in author’s possession); F. Bordon Mace, interview by author, Washington, Connecticut, August 4, 2001; de Rochemont to Nate Spingold, Columbia Pictures, January 7, 1953, box 43, de Rochemont Papers. While this book was in production, the de Rochemont Papers were reprocessed; the box references are to where the material was located when I used it. 2. Fielding, March of Time, 29; Elizabeth Zoe Vicary, ‘‘Louis de Rochemont,’’ in American National Biography, ed. John Garraty et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 4:475–76. 3. Robert Elson, ‘‘De Rochemont’s March of Time,’’ in The Documentary Tradition, ed. Lewis Jacobs (New York: W. W. Norton, 1979), 105; James W. Hardman, The Story of Louis de Rochemont’s WINDJAMMER (New York: Random House, 1958), 30. 4. John Gunther, Inside Asia, 1942 war ed., completely revised (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942), 376; The New York Times Film Reviews—1913–1978 (New York: New York Times and Arno Press, 1970), 2:825 (hereafter New York Times Film Reviews) (this review by Mordaunt Hall refers to scenes in de Rochemont’s 1932 compilation film, but it is clear that the footage used was that which he had earlier smuggled out of India). 5. Fielding, March of Time, 32–33; ‘‘ ‘Magic Carpet’ of Film,’’ in The New York Times Encyclopedia of Film—1919–1936, ed. Gene Brown (New York: Times Books, 1985), May 3, 1931. 6. Motion Picture Herald quoted in The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1931–1940, ed. Patricia King Hanson (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993), ‘‘Film Entries, A-L,’’ 434; Variety Film Reviews: 1907–1980 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1980), May 10, 1932; Fielding, March of Time, 33. 7. Fielding, March of Time, 34. 8. James Widmer, ‘‘Radio Days: the March of Time,’’ http://www.ptr.com/march.html (this website has early broadcasts, including the first one in 1931); W. A. Swanberg, Luce and His Empire (New York: Dell Publishing, 1973), 128; Fielding, March of Time, 11. 9. Swanberg, Luce and His Empire, 128; Welles quoted in Michael Denning, The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century (London: Verso, 1996), 387. 10. Bosley Crowther, ‘‘Time Marches On and On,’’ in Brown, New York Times Encyclopedia of Film, October 31, 1937; Thomas Doherty, ‘‘Documenting the 1940s,’’ in Boom and Bust: Hollywood in the 1940s, ed. Thomas Schatz, 395–405, vol. 6 of History of the American Cinema, ed. Charles Harpole (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1997). 11. Crowther, ‘‘Time Marches On and On’’; Louise Tanner, All the Things We Were (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1968), 204; Doherty, ‘‘Documenting the 1940s,’’ 399. 12. Robert E. Herzstein, Henry Luce, TIME, and the American Crusade in Asia (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 31. There were two versions of the film: the first did not have the German film footage in the final scenes; the original ending was replaced by the ‘‘400 odd feet of film from the Nazi propaganda picture.’’ Thomas Pryor, ‘‘By Way of Report,’’ in Brown, New York Times Encyclopedia of Film, September 8, 1940D; for a review of the earlier version, see Variety Film Reviews, July 24, 1940.

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13. Variety Film Reviews, August 13, 1941; foreword and officer quoted in Hanson, American Film Institute Catalog, ‘‘Film Entries, M-Z,’’ 2776; Fielding, March of Time, 275; Theodore Strauss quoted in New York Times Film Reviews, December 14, 1942. 14. Columbia Pictures Corporation, New York City, press release, 11/50, 2 (in author’s possession); Luce quoted in Eric Barnouw, Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film, 2d rev. ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 121. 15. Edgar Anstey, ‘‘The March of Time: News as Entertainment,’’ in The Movies 7, ed. Ann Lloyd et al. (Leicester, UK: Orbis Publishing, 1980), 124; Academy Award citation quoted in Fielding, March of Time, 171; Wolff, interview by Felsher, 25; obituary, New York Times, December 25, 1978. 16. Wolff, interview by Felsher, 29; Tourtellot quoted in Fielding, March of Time, 283. 17. Hanson, American Film Institute Catalog, ‘‘Film Entries, A-L,’’ 756; Philip J. Landon, ‘‘The Fighting Lady (Documentary),’’ in War and American Popular Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, ed. M. Paul Holsinger (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, Press, 1999), 259. 18. Rudy Behmler, ed., Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century-Fox (New York: Grove Press, 1993), 88, xvii; Zanuck to Quentin Reynolds, March 19, 1947 (ibid., 124); Zanuck to Otto Lang, Quentin Reynolds, and Leonard Hoffman, March 5, 1947 (ibid., 123). 19. Fielding, March of Time, 282; James Agee, Agee on Film: Reviews and Comments (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), 272 (originally published in The Nation, March 1, 1947); Hanson, American Film Institute Catalog, ‘‘Film Entries, M-Z,’’ 2496. 20. ‘‘William G. Sebold, Wilhelm Georg Debrowski, AKA: William G. Sawyer—U.S. Double Agent During World War II (1899–?),’’ http://www.angeldfie.com/oz/1spy/Sebold.html; Fred J. Cook, The FBI Nobody Knows (New York: Macmillan, 1964), 263. 21. Foreword quoted in Hanson, American Film Institute Catalog, ‘‘Film Entries, A-L,’’ 1100. 22. Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden, Sub Rosa: The OSS and American Espionage (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964), 2; Crowther, New York Times Film Reviews, March 6, 1947. 23. Crowther, New York Times Film Reviews, March 6, 1947. 24. Thomas H. Pauly, An American Odyssey: Elia Kazan and American Culture (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1983), 99, 97; Elia Kazan, A Life (New York: Knopf, 1988), 316. 25. Foreword quoted in Hanson, American Film Institute Catalog, ‘‘Film Entries, A-L,’’ 1100; Jeff Gordon, ‘‘Favorite Films of the Golden Age: The House on 92nd Street,’’ Films of the Golden Age (summer 2001): 10. 26. Richard Gid Powers, G-Men: Hoover’s FBI in American Popular Culture (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1983), 20; Hoover to Legal Attaches in London, Paris, Hamburg, July 24, 1952, FOIPA 噛0929536-001 (hereafter FBI-de Rochemont); Jay Robert Nash and Stanley Ralph Ross, The Motion Picture Guide, vol. W–Z, 1927–1984, (Chicago: Cinebooks, Inc., 1987), 3721; George Seldes, ‘‘SR Goes to the Movies: Spies and the FBI,’’ Saturday Review, April 9, 1952, 46. 27. Reviews cited in Russell Campbell, Cinema Strikes Back: Radical Filmmaking in the United States, 1930–1942 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1982), 138–39; Fielding, March of Time, 290; Donald Dunlop, ‘‘The March of Time and the Ramparts We Watch (1940),’’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 5, no. 2 (1985): 150; de Rochemont to Alf Bjercke, a Norwegian friend, August 24, December 13, 1950, box 13, de Rochemont Papers. 28. Louis de Rochemont to President Harry Truman, December 15, 1950; Korean War– National Emergency Announcement, both in Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri; de Rochemont quoted in Maurice Zolotow, ‘‘Want to Be a Movie Star?’’ Saturday

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Evening Post, March 29, 1952, 25; Nate Spingold, Columbia Pictures Corporation, to de Rochemont, March 4, 1953, de Rochemont Papers. 29. Louis de Rochemont to Nate Spingold, Columbia Pictures Corporation, April 27, 1951; de Rochemont to Ben Kadish, August 7, 1951, both in box 43, de Rochemont Papers. He practiced what he preached, but it was tough love. Irving Pichel, a competent veteran journeyman actor and director with mostly B-film credits, said in the fall of 1947 that he would refuse to cooperate with HUAC, which was holding hearings on ‘‘Communist infiltration of the Motion Picture Industry.’’ Though Pichel never seems to have been a member of the Communist Party, a 1951 California State Senate report listed him sixteen times for his association with putative ‘‘Communist dominated organizations.’’ For his principles and his interests Pichel was blacklisted and had no credits for the year 1952. Subsequently he worked with those who cleared alleged subversives, and was able to assume what he called his ‘‘proper place as a loyal American.’’ In 1953 de Rochemont hired the repentant Pichel to direct a feature-length biography of Martin Luther undertaken in conjunction with the Lutheran Church. Bernard F. Dick, Radical Innocence: A Critical Study of the Hollywood Ten (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1989), 3, 9; California State Senate, Senate FactFinding Committee on Un-American Activities, Sixth Report (Sacramento: California State Senate, 1951), 58–59; John Cogley, Report on Blacklisting, vol. 1, ‘‘Movies’’ (N.p.: Fund for the Republic, 1956), 156–57. 30. Zanuck quoted in Joel Finler, ‘‘Darryl F. Zanuck: ‘Don’t Say Yes Until I Finish Talking,’ ’’ in Lloyd et al., The Movies 60, 1186; Zolotow, ‘‘Want to Be a Movie Star?’’ 25. 31. USIS Filmdienst Filmkatalog, May 1955; F. Bordon Mace, interview by author, August 7, 2001, Washington, Connecticut. 32. Variety, February 23, 1949, 3; Eugene Lyons, ‘‘Louis de Rochemont: Maverick of the Movies,’’ Reader’s Digest, July 1949, 27; Pauline Kael, Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang (Boston: Little, Brown, 1968), 223. 33. E. Jay Jernegan, William Lindsay White, 1900–1973: In the Shadow of His Father (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1997), 201; Doris Kearns Goodwin, No Ordinary Time— Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), 247, 166. 34. Zolotow, ‘‘Want to Be a Movie Star?’’ 141. White’s ninety-one-page book, published by Harcourt, Brace in March 1948, had appeared in ‘‘condensed form’’ in the December 1947 issue of the Reader’s Digest. Daniel J. Leab, From Sambo to Superspade: The Black Experience in Motion Pictures (London: Secker & Warburg, 1975), 152. 35. Zolotow, ‘‘Want to Be a Movie Star?’’ 141; Hanson, American Film Institute Catalog, ‘‘Film Entries, A-L,’’ 1100. 36. 1950s clippings from Variety, Herrick Library. 37. Mace, interview, August 7, 2001; de Rochemont to William Whyte, July 17, 1952, box 111, de Rochemont Papers. 38. Fielding, March of Time, 283. 39. Martin J. Maloney to Louis de Rochemont, January 3, 1951; Maloney to de Rochemont, Lothar Wolff, Bordon Mace, April 23, 1951, both in box 86, de Rochemont Papers.

CHAPTER 4

1. Peter Davison to Daniel J. Leab, e-mail, February 4, 2006; Paul Lashmar and James Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda Weapon, 1948–1977 (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing Company, 1998), xiv; Timothy Garton Ash, ‘‘Under the Blanket . . . ,’’ The Guardian, July 10, 2003, 21; Timothy Garton Ash, ‘‘Orwell’s List,’’ New York Review of Books, September 8, 2003, 8.

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2. Ash, ‘‘Orwell’s List,’’ 8; Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 131; Shaw, ‘‘Hollywood’s Cold War,’’ chapter 3, p. 4 (manuscript in author’s possession). George Orwell’s putative relationship with the IRD caused considerable controversy during the mid-1990s and led critics of his anti-Soviet stance to charge that he had sold out to ‘‘Big Brother.’’ A brouhaha first resulted in 1996 when stories broke about a notebook he kept in which he listed some 130 people as ‘‘crypto-Communists’’ and ‘‘fellow-travelers.’’ Labor MP Gerald Kaufman charged that Orwell was ‘‘a betrayer of the causes he held dear’’ (quoted in Peter Davison, The Lost Orwell: Being a Supplement to the Complete Works of George Orwell [London: Timewell Press, 2006], 208). It was argued then and later (e.g., Lashmar and Oliver, Britain’s Secret Propaganda Weapon, 97) that this notebook had been turned over to Celia Kirwan, an attractive woman to whom Orwell had once proposed marriage and who had just begun working for the IRD, ‘‘copied and returned’’ (Davison, Lost Orwell, 212). She has stated, ‘‘No, I am certain that George Orwell did not send me his notebook at IRD (or anywhere else, of course)’’ (Celia Kirwan Goodman to Peter Davison, February 23, 1999, copy in author’s possession, for which I am much beholden to Davison). The contents of the notebook (including Orwell’s notations), with the exception of some names if Davison could not be ‘‘sure they were dead,’’ were published in Davison, CWO, 20:242–58; Davison, ‘‘An Editorial Assessment of The Complete Works of George Orwell,’’ in The Culture of Collected Editions, ed. Andrew Nash (Hounds Mills, England, 2003), 224. Orwell did send a list of thirty-eight names to Kirwan. She had visited him at his sanitarium and they had talked about individuals—as she reported to her superiors—‘‘who might be enlisted to work for us’’ (Davison, CWO, 20:320). In a subsequent letter he sent her, Orwell said these persons ‘‘should not be trusted as propagandists’’ (Davison, CWO, 20:322). As Timothy Garton Ash has pointed out, when Orwell sent her the list he mentioned ‘‘her friends’’ and had ‘‘no illusion’’ that the list was just going to her (Ash, ‘‘Orwell’s List,’’ 8). These names were kept confidential by the UK authorities until June 2003, when Ash was able to publish them. The names sent to Kirwan in May 1949, as well as names originally excluded by Davison when the contents of the notebook were published in the CWO in 1998 because they were ‘‘alive or untraced,’’ are published in Davison, Lost Orwell (141–51). These hitherto unavailable names proved to be a mixed bag and included comedian Charlie Chaplin, Trotsky biographer Isaac Deutscher, black nationalist George Padmore, novelist J. B. Priestly, and journalist/editor Kingsley Martin (with whom Orwell had political differences in the 1930s). The list also included such types as Peter Smollett (whom Orwell described as a ‘‘very slimy person’’). As Ash remarked, some of Orwell’s notations might prove to be ‘‘disquieting’’ because of disparaging references, for example, about Jews (Ash, ‘‘Introduction,’’ xvi). Davison points out that the names passed on to Kirwan were people that Orwell considered ‘‘unsuitable to write in Britain’s defense to counter Soviet propaganda’’ (Davison, ‘‘Editorial Assessment,’’ 224). He was, in Ash’s words, ‘‘not putting some British thought police onto these people’s tails’’ (Ash, ‘‘Introduction,’’ xvi, xvii). Moreover, as Davison argues (CWO, 20:240–41), ‘‘it is worth bearing in mind that when Orwell was cooperating with Celia the Berlin Blockade was still operating and France was close to going Communist—which meant that the Soviet empire was . . . on our doorstep.’’ 3. Philip Knightly, The Master Spy: The Story of Kim Philby (New York: Knopf, 1989), 5; Sheridan to Norman Pett, March 5, 1951, FO1110/392, Public Records Office, National Archive, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, UK (hereafter PRO/UKNA). 4. Sheridan to Tull, Peck, June 18, 1951; Sheridan to Tuck, March 14, 1951; Information Research Department to Information Officers, August 23, 1951, all in FO1110/392, PRO/ UKNA; Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 134. 5. Cable, Brandt and Brandt (New York literary agents) to C. Brooks (one of Orwell’s UK agents), London, September 25, 1950; cable, A. M. Heath (Orwell’s London literary agent) to Brandt and Brandt, New York City, September 27, 1950; Lt. Col. Eugene Keller Jr., Dept. of the Army, Reorientation Branch, New York City, to B. Baumgartner (who handled dra-

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matic rights for Brandt and Brandt), August 29, 1950; C. Brooks to B. Baumgartner, September 27, 1950; George E. Morris, Walter Lantz Productions, to B. Baumgartner, April 15, 1952; B. Baumgartner to Lt. Col. Keller, October 5, 1951, all in George Orwell Archive, University of London, London (hereafter Orwell Archive). 6. Cyrus Brooks, Christopher Mann, Ltd., London, to B. Baumgartner, New York City, October 30, 1950, Orwell Archive; ‘‘Synopsis: The Animal Kingdom by George Orwell,’’ September 24, 1950, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 7. Mace to Lynn Souter, November 2, 1951; Mace to Herb Brenner, the Jaffe Agency, Inc., November 26, 1951, both in box 29, de Rochemont Papers. 8. For example, Louis de Rochemont to F. Bordon Mace, January 21, 1952; LE [Lemist Elster] to ‘‘Dear Louis,’’ November 16, 1950, both in box 210A, ibid. 9. LE [Lemist Elster] to ‘‘Dear Louis,’’ November 16, 1950, ibid. 10. Ibid. 11. Richard H. Immerman, ‘‘Smith, Walter Bedell,’’ American National Biography, http:// www.anb.org/articles/0707-00279-article.html; Barrett, CIA and Congress, 91; Helms, with Hood, Look over My Shoulder, 101. Smith had relatively little interest in psychological warfare. His doubting attitude is summed up by one of his favorite stories about what he called ‘‘successful’’ psychological warfare. During World War II a heavy bag of leaflets was dropped from the air, its parachute failed to open, and the bag hit and sank a barge on the Rhine. ‘‘That,’’ said Smith, ‘‘was the greatest achievement of psychological warfare in Europe.’’ Ludwell Lee Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith as Director of Central Intelligence, October 1950–February 1953 (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992), 214n6. 12. Lyman Kirkpatrick Jr., The Real CIA (New York: Macmillan, 1968), 91; Fisher Howe quoted in Turner, Burn Before Reading, 61; Godson, Dirty Tricks or Trump Cards, 35. 13. Sanche de Gramont, The Secret War: The Story of International Espionage Since World War II (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1962), 31; Richard Bissell quoted in ‘‘Minutes of the 1968 Meeting at the Council on Foreign Relations as reported by the Africa Research Group,’’ in Victor Marchetti and John D. Marks, The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence (New York: Knopf, 1974), 383; Eisenhower quoted in Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, 3. 14. ‘‘Draft Letter to Herbert Smith and Co.,’’ December 23, 1982. I am indebted to Vivien Halas for allowing me to copy this draft, part of an extensive file dealing with litigation over the rights to the film between de Rochemont’s heirs, her parents, and, after their deaths, herself. 15. Roy Buford, Christopher Mann, Ltd., to Lothar Wolff, de Rochemont Corporation, New York City, April 13, 1951. I am indebted to Bill Hamilton, A. M. Heath, London, who handles the Orwell properties, for making this contract available to me (Hamilton to Leab, November 6, 2000). 16. Brooks to B. Baumgartner, October 10, 1951, Orwell Archive; ‘‘Agreement Between RD-DR Corporation . . . and Halas & Batchelor Cartoon Films, Ltd., and John and Joy Halas . . . ,’’ December 15, 1951, 16. I am indebted to Vivien Halas for providing me with a copy of this agreement. 17. ‘‘Analysis of direct costs incurred on Animal Farm, to June 15, 1951,’’ box 85, de Rochemont Papers; de Rochemont to Abe Schneider, Columbia Pictures Corporation, August 13, 1951, box 43, ibid. 18. F. Bordon Mace to Vivien Halas, June 30, 2000 (I am indebted to Vivien Halas for making this eight-page letter available to me); Mace, interview, August 7, 2001; ‘‘administrator’’ quoted in Laura Kalman, Abe Fortas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990), 27. 19. Untitled article, Variety, November 7, 1951, Halas & Batchelor Collection, Animation Research Centre, Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Farnham, England (hereafter Halas & Batchelor Collection). I used the materials in the collection in the fall of 2000, when they were housed at the Southampton Institute, Southampton, England. I am deeply indebted to

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James Walker, who was then at Southampton and subsequently moved to the Animation Research Centre, for assistance in using these materials. 20. Sonia Orwell quoted in the Daily Telegraph, December 24, 1954, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Collection; Hilary Spurling, The Girl from the Fiction Department: A Portrait of Sonia Orwell (London: Hamish Hamilton, 2002), 140–45. 21. Vivien Halas, interview by author, October 12, 2000, London, England. It is interesting to note that when I discussed this manuscript with Vivien Halas in July 2004, once more her most lasting impression of Sonia Orwell is that she was kind to the children of Halas and Batchelor. 22. Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? 294; E. Howard Hunt, Under-Cover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent (New York: Berkley Publishing, 1974), 70; Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War, 94. Also see Thomas, Very Best Men, 33. 23. Lucas, Freedom’s War, 55; Cohen, Cruel Britannia, 160; Scott Lucas, The Betrayal of Dissent: Beyond Orwell, Hitchens, and the New American Century (London: Pluto Press, 2004), 33; Evan Thomas to Leab, e-mail, May 27, 2003; Evan Thomas, phone interview by author, May 29, 2003. 24. Judt quoted in Robert Levy, Anna Pauker: The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Communist (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2001), 11. 25. Spender quoted in Spurling, Girl from the Fiction Department, 64; Bowker, George Orwell, 422; Hilary Spurling, phone interview by author, August 18, 2002. 26. David Plante, Different Women—A Memoir of Three: Jean Rhys, Sonia Orwell, Germaine Greer (New York: Athenaeum, 1983), 99, 70, 97. 27. Spurling, Girl from the Fiction Department, 176; Taylor, Orwell, 420–21; Meyers, Orwell, 315; Sheldon, Enemy Within, 445. 28. Ian Angus to Daniel J. Leab, e-mail, September 1, 2002; B. Baumgartner to Catherine Carver, Harcourt, Brace, June 20, 1955, Orwell Archive. 29. Hunt, Under-Cover, 70. 30. Arthur Schlesinger Jr. quoted in Edmond Taylor, ‘‘The Cult of the Secret Agent,’’ Horizon (spring 1975): 5; Joseph Smith, Portrait of a Cold Warrior: Second Thoughts of a Top CIA Agent (New York: Ballantine Books, 1976), 334; Tad Szulc, Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt (New York: Viking, 1974), 12. Szulc believes that Hunt, ostensibly attached to the ECA, actually ‘‘belonged to the year old CIA-station in the French capital’’ (61). See also Farr to J. Bryan III, June 27, 1972, box 1 (CO569), Bryan Papers. Farr admired Hunt’s writing abilities, asserting that ‘‘one of these days’’ he would ‘‘come out with one of those blockbusting big novels.’’ And Hunt’s early novels, unlike his later pulp fiction, earned him respectful critical attention, a job with de Rochemont at The March of Time (like so many others involved in filming Orwell’s book, their paths crossed), and a Guggenheim fellowship. In 1944 William McFee (now almost forgotten but once compared favorably to Joseph Conrad for his ‘‘sea stories’’) had hailed Hunt’s East of Farewell, about men at sea during World War II, as ‘‘one of the best . . . about the war to date.’’ As did a New York Times reviewer, who thought Hunt’s book was ‘‘without any doubt the best sea story of the war.’’ Farr to Bryan, July 10, 1969, box 1, Bryan Papers; McFee obituary, The Times (London), April 9, 1966; William McFee, ‘‘The Literary Life at Seventy-Five: Whine from the Chimney Corner,’’ Saturday Review, July 14, 1956, 7; William McFee, letter to the editor, New Republic, January 23, 1944, 44; New York Times quoted in Gore Vidal, United States, 878. 31. Karl F. Cohen, ‘‘Animated Propaganda During the Cold War: Part Two,’’ Animation World, April 11, 2003 (http://mag.awn.com/index.php?article_no⳱1734), and Karl F. Cohen, ‘‘Animated Propaganda During the Cold War: Part One,’’ February 21, 2003 (http://mag.awn.com/index.php?1type⳱all&sort⳱date&article_no611); the Guardian (UK) website ran an edited version, which also appeared in the paper with a catchy title—‘‘The Cartoon That Came in from the Cold’’—highlighting swipes at the CIA (http://films.guardian.co.uk/features/

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featurepages/0,4120,908925.00.html); the liner notes to Home Vision’s 2004 remastered DVD version of the movie (HVANI 070), written by Cohen, repeat what is in his articles, continuing to draw on Stonor Saunders and Hunt, and also manage to introduce some new errors (e.g., the film ‘‘did well at the box office,’’ and ‘‘Bordon Mace . . . became president of the company set up to produce Animal Farm’’). Franz Krahberger, ‘‘The Masterminds,’’ May 1, 2001, is one of a series attacking CIA cultural policies (http://ejournal.thing.at/Beucher/ puerg/master.html). 32. Landon Y. Storrs, ‘‘Red Scare Politics and the Suppression of Popular Front Feminism: The Loyalty Investigation of Mary Dublin Keyserling,’’ Journal of American History 89 (2003): 499; Hall quoted at 497.

CHAPTER 5

1. Vivien Halas, interview by author, October 21, 2000, London, England. 2. Picture Show and Film Pictorial, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 3. ‘‘A History of Cartoon Film Making,’’ WPN & Advertiser’s Review, June 9, 1961, ibid. 4. John Grant, Masters of Animation (London: B. T. Batsford, 2001), 102. 5. Elizabeth Coxhead, ‘‘A Woman in London: She Brought Animal Farm to Life,’’ Liverpool Daily Post, January 20, 1955; Barbara Brandenburger, ‘‘Artist Whose Drawings Come to Life,’’ The Times (London), January 5, 1967, both clippings in Halas & Batchelor Collection; Harold Whitaker, interview by author, July 27, 2004, Stroud, Gloucestershire, England; Halas, interview, October 21, 2000. 6. Coxhead, ‘‘Woman in London’’; Halas, interview, October 21, 2000; ‘‘Gwen Tells the Human Story Behind ‘Animal Farm . . .’: The Watford Girl Who Won Fame as the British Disney,’’ West Herts Post, January 20, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection; quoted in Vivian Halas, ‘‘My Family and Other Animators,’’ in Paul Wells, ed., Halas & Batchelor Cartoons: An Animated History (Farnham, Surrey, UK: Southbank Publishers, 2006), 86. 7. Grant, Masters of Animation, 102; ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team, by Joy Batchelor,’’ notes requested by Glen Ireton for an article, n.d., Insert A, 1, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 8. Grant, Masters of Animation, 102; ‘‘Personality of the Month: John Halas,’’ Films and Filming, March 1957, 3. In 1990 Granada TV devoted three programs of its show Clapperboard to John Halas in celebration of the fortieth anniversary of the Halas & Batchelor firm—Halas recalled being an apprentice to Pal in the first program (video of the three programs in author’s possession; hereafter Clapperboard); ‘‘George Pal,’’ in Halliwell’s Who’s Who in the Movies, 13th ed., ed. John Walker (London: Harper Collins, 1999); John Halas, ‘‘Application for Prolongation of My Stay in the United Kingdom,’’ December 22, 1938, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 9. ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team,’’ 1; ‘‘Gwen Tells the Human Story.’’ 10. ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team,’’ 1. 11. ‘‘An Animated Life Story,’’ Hampstead & Highgate Express, January 22, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection; Giannalberto Bendazzi, Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 153. 12. Elaine Burrows, ‘‘Live Action: A Brief History of British Animation,’’ in All Our Yesterdays: Ninety Years of British Cinema, ed. Charles Barr (London: BFI Publishing, 1986), 277. 13. Sir Fife Clark, The Central Office of Information (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1970), 28; James Chapman, The British at War: Cinema, State, and Propaganda, 1939–1945 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998), 13; Roger Manvell, Art and Animation: The Story of Halas and Batchelor Animation Studio, 1940–1980 (N.p., 1980), 5–6. 14. Comments about Dustbin Parade, as well as excerpts from it and other early Halas &

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Batchelor films, can be found in Down on Animal Farm, a 1995 BBC special of the Stay Tooned series, which is part of Polygram’s 1999 VHS release (噛058303303) and Home Vision’s 2004 digitally restored DVD. Derek G. Morgan, ‘‘Films Little But Important,’’ Everybody’s Weekly, April 30, 1949, 10, 11, Halas & Batchelor Collection; ‘‘Filling the Gap,’’ Clapperboard, first program. 15. Paul Wells, ‘‘Dustbins, Democracy, and Defence: Halas and Batchelor and the Animated Film in Britain, 1940–1957,’’ in Kirkham and Thomas, War Culture, 70; Manvell, Art and Animation, 5; Clive Coultass, Images for Battle: British Film in the Second World War, 1939–1945 (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1989), 147; ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team,’’ 2. 16. ‘‘Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films Limited, Minutes of a Meeting Held . . . 16th April 1947,’’ 2, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 17. Manvell, Art and Animation, 5; Halas, interview; Clapperboard, second program; brochure of the Educational Film Centre, established by Halas, which distributed Halas & Batchelor films, October 1989 (in author’s possession). Peter Foldes, who had left Communist Hungary, was encouraged by Halas but left filmmaking at the end of the 1940s for a successful career as a painter until the mid-1960s, when he gained ‘‘an international reputation as one of the first artists to make figurative computer-drawn animation.’’ Tate Britain, ‘‘A Century of Artists in Britain,’’ 3 November 2003–25 January 2004, http://www.tate.org.uk/brit ain/artistsfilm/programme3. 18. Atlee quoted in Clark, Central Office of Information, 38. 19. ‘‘From White Paper to Colour Cartoon,’’ COI Review, c. 1948, 28, Halas & Batchelor Collection; ‘‘Documentary Films,’’ Documentary Film News, February 1948, 18. 20. Morgan, ‘‘Films Little But Important,’’ 11; Vivian Halas, ‘‘My Family,’’ 91. 21. Kenneth O. Morgan, The People’s Peace: British History, 1945–1989 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), 73; Cripps quoted in ‘‘Out of Small Beginnings,’’ supplement to the Kinematograph Weekly, May 18, 1961, 4 (in author’s possession). 22. Manvell, Art and Animation, 6; John Halas and Roger Manvell, The Technique of Film Animation (New York: Hastings House, 1959), 133; ‘‘New Documentary Films,’’ Documentary Film News, November 12, 1948, 118. 23. ‘‘Agreement Between the Government of the United States and the Government of Italy Providing for Economic Cooperation,’’ in Documents of American Foreign Policy, ed. Raymond Durmatt and Robert K. Turner (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1950), 10:235 (this agreement is typical of those the United States concluded with Marshall Plan recipients—with aid went propaganda); Chloe Metz, ‘‘The Changing Face of Europe: The Marshall Plan Seen Through Film,’’ Columbia Historical Review (1998), http://www.mirror.shnet.edu.ca/Columbia/www.columbia/edu/cu/historygrad/in dex. html; Bernadette Whelan, ‘‘Marshall Plan Publicity and Propaganda in Italy and Ireland, 1947–1951,’’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 23 (October 2003): 312; David Ellwood, ‘‘E.R.P. Propaganda in Italy: Its History and Impact in an Official Survey,’’ in The Role of the United States in the Reconstruction of Italy and West Germany, ed. E. Krippendorf (Berlin: J. F. Kennedy Institute, 1981), 274. European Recovery Program slogans (‘‘Wir bauen ein neues Europa’’) in HansJuergen Schroeder, ‘‘Marshall-Plan-Propaganda in Berlin,’’ in Germany and America: Essays in Honor of Gerald R. Kleinfeld, ed. Wolfgang Uwe Friedrich (New York: Berghahn, 2001). Also see David Ellwood, ‘‘ ‘You too can be like us’: Selling the Marshall Plan,’’ History Today 48 (October 1998): 33–39. 24. Jim Lindner to Daniel J. Leab, e-mail, August 2, 2000; John Halas, ‘‘Not for Fun,’’ Films and Filming, November 1956, 8; ‘‘The Film Schedule at a Glance,’’ in Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan, 1947–1955 (Berlin: Internationale Festspiele Berlin in association with the Museum of German History and the Bundesarchiv/Filmarchiv, 2004), 21; H. Sandoz interviewed by Hans Beller, Kunsthochschule fu¨r Medien Ko¨ln, Cologne, Germany, 14

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(I am indebted to Beller, whose achievements include a film, The Marshall Plan in Action, for which this and other interviews he made available to me were undertaken). 25. Albert Hemsing, ‘‘The Marshall Plan’s European Film Unit, 1948–1953: A Memoir and Filmography,’’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 14, no. 3 (1994): 293; ‘‘Marshall Plan Filmography,’’ http://www.marshallfilms.org/filminfor.asp?id⳱Sh-1. 26. ‘‘The Men Behind the Marshall Plan Films,’’ in Selling Democracy: Films of the Marshall Plan, 13; ‘‘Marshall Plan Filmography,’’ preface, http://www.marshallfilms.org/mpfde tail.asp; Lothar Wolff, ‘‘Reminiscences of an Itinerant Filmmaker,’’ Journal of the University Film Association 24, no. 4 (1972): 90. 27. Leslie L. Withers, ‘‘Films,’’ Sunday Mercury, January 16, 1955; untitled story in the Liverpool Daily Post, January 22, 1955; Evelyn Ball, ‘‘Husband and Wife Team Challenge Disney,’’ Evening Star, December 17, 1954, all in Halas & Batchelor Collection. 28. ‘‘Farmyard Satire Will Be Britain’s First Feature Cartoon,’’ Kentish Mercury, December 14, 1951; untitled story, Ipswich Evening Star, December 18, 1951; ‘‘They’re Making Britain’s First Full-Length Cartoon,’’ Hampshire & Highgate Express, January 4, 1952, ibid. The showing of these films would have had to be private since Congress had instituted ‘‘a ban that prevented their being shown to American audiences (who were not to be propagandized with their own tax dollars).’’ Not until 1990, after lobbying by former Marshall Plan filmmaker Albert Hemsing, did legislation, introduced by Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.), pass Congress and allow these films to be seen by American audiences. The private showing to which the UK press referred may have been a special screening in June 1951, which took place after de Rochemont had approached Halas and Batchelor. It was set up at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, where Wolff pointed out that these films were prepared ‘‘exclusively for Europeans.’’ Sandra Schulberg, ‘‘Selling Democracy Worldwide,’’ in Selling Democracy: Winning the Peace, 12; Wolff quoted in Hemsing, ‘‘Marshall Plan’s European Film Unit,’’ 273. 29. Halas, Clapperboard, second program. 30. Mr. Spiro interviewed by Hans Beller, 1 (I am indebted to Beller for a copy of the transcript of the interview; for more detail about the interview, please see note 24, above). 31. Joy Batchelor and Vivien Halas quoted in Karl F. Cohen, ‘‘Orwell and the CIA,’’ The Guardian, March 11, 2003. This is an edited version of his articles in Animation World and can be found on the History Network website at http://hnn/us/readcomment.php?ed⳱ 0206. 32. Wolff, ‘‘Reminiscences of an Itinerant Filmmaker,’’ 88; ‘‘Lothar Wolff—Produzent, Regisseur, Cutter,’’ in Lexikon zum deutschsprachigen Film, ed. Hans-Michael Bock (Hamburg: Cinegraph, 1984), lg. 13 (1989), D1–D5; de Rochemont to Wolff, March 10, 1936, box XI, ‘‘March of Time,’’ Lothar Wolff Papers, International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, Rochester, New York (hereafter Wolff Papers). 33. . Gordon Hitchins to Jun’ichi, managing director, Nippon Audio-Visual Library, Tokyo, Japan, December 17, 1981; ‘‘Lothar Wolff, Executive Producer, Life Around Us Series,’’ press release, Time-Life Films, July 20, 1971, both in Wolff Papers. 34. Fielding, March of Time, 111; Wolff, ‘‘Reminiscences of an Itinerant Filmmaker,’’ 89; Mace, interview, August 7, 2001; Arthur Tourtellot quoted in Fielding, March of Time, 112. Vivien Halas, who first met Wolff as a child in the early 1950s, and as an adult kept in touch with him over the years, remembers him fondly. Halas, interview, October 21, 2000. 35. Rear Admiral Ellis Reed Hall, U.S. Coast Guard, in ‘‘Report on Lothar Wolff,’’ June 28, 1949, FBI file 噛124-2994 (hereafter FBI-Wolff ). 36. On Nichols see ibid.; Pearson quoted in Curt Gentry, J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets (New York: W. W. Norton, 1991), 450. 37. David Thomson, ‘‘All the Conspirators,’’ in Lloyd et al., The Movies, 1601.

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38. ‘‘Agreement . . . Between RD-DR Corporation . . . and . . . Halas and Batchelor Cartoon Films Limited,’’ December 14, 1951, Halas & Batchelor Collection, 5–6 (clause 7). 39. Ibid., 1, 9–10 (clause 16). 40. Mace, interview, August 7, 2001. 41. Roger Manvell, The Animated Film (N.p.: Sylvan Press, 1954), i; John Halas, Masters of Animation (Topsfield, Mass.: Salem House Publishers, 1987), 34.

CHAPTER 6

1. Halas, Masters of Animation, 31; Halas and Manvell, Technique of Film Animation, 258. 2. John Halas and Joy Batchelor, ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ in Lloyd et al., The Movies, 832; Anthony Kinsey, Animated Film Making (London; Studio Vista, 1970), 42; Walter Hayes, ‘‘It’s British—and No Pig in a Poke,’’ Daily Sketch, January 26, 1953, 13, Halas & Batchelor Collection. The running times stated on various DVDs vary by a minute or two, as do the running times stated in various reviews, again by one or two minutes. These variations seem to have nothing to do with cutting, etc., but may simply be a matter of where the film was printed or the DVD produced. According to Vivien Halas, the exact length is hard to pin down (comment on a draft of Chapter 7, Halas to Leab, fax, September 20, 2004, 1). 3. Roger Manvell, The Living Screen: Background to Film and Television (London: George Harrup, Ltd., 1961), 11, 64; ‘‘They Helped Create ‘Pig Brother’ in a Three-Storey House,’’ Cheltenham Chronicle, January 29, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 4. ‘‘Halas & Batchelor,’’ Graphis 53 (1954): 195. 5. Manvell, Animated Film, 11; Robert Musel, ‘‘Algernon to Be Wickedest Screen Villain,’’ Los Angeles Daily News, October 14, 1952, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 6. Bendazzi, Cartoons, 42; Manvell, Living Screen, 64; Hayes, ‘‘No Pig in a Poke’’; ‘‘Derby Man’s Key Job in Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ Cartoon,’’ Derby Evening Telegraph, January 12, 1955, 13, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 7. Whitaker, interview. 8. George Jackson, ‘‘A History of Cartoon Film Making,’’ WPN & Advertisers’ Review, June 9, 1961, Halas & Batchelor Collection; Bendazzi, Cartoons, 152. 9. Whitaker, interview; ‘‘Orwell Was at Cotswold Sanatorium,’’ Cheltenham Chronicle, December 26, 1954; ‘‘‘Pig Brother’ in a Three-Storey House,’’ both in Halas & Batchelor Collection. Vivien Halas believes that the news stories about the London studio got it wrong: she remembers it as being Regency. 10. ‘‘ ‘Pig Brother’ in a Three-Storey House’’; ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team,’’ 2. 11. Grant, Masters of Animation, 68; Harold Whitaker and John Halas, Timing for Animation (Jordan Hall, UK, and Woburn Hall, Mass.: Focal Press, 1999), 14; Mace to Leab, April 14, 2003 (in author’s possession). 12. Halas, Masters of Animation, 83; Whitaker and Halas, Timing for Animation, 14; Ralph Stephenson, Animation in the Cinema (London: A. Zwemmer, and New York: A. S. Barnes and Co., 1967), 15. 13. Ephraim Katz, ‘‘Storyboard,’’ in Ephraim Katz, The Film Encyclopedia (New York: Perigree Publishing, 1979), 100; David Thomson, The New Biographical Dictionary of Film (New York: Knopf, 2002), 402. 14. Halas and Batchelor, ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ 832. 15. Joy Batchelor interviewed in Masters of Animation: A Series by John Halas, vol. 2, Great Britain, Italy, France (an Italtoons Production in association with the Educational Film Centre/Great Masters, Ltd., 1986, distributed in the U.S. by Home Vision, Chicago); ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team,’’ 3.

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16. Joy Batchelor interviewed in Masters of Animation; ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team,’’ 36; a portion of the tension chart is reproduced in Richard Holliss, ‘‘Animation Techniques,’’ in Wells, 126–27. 17. ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team,’’ 3. 18. Halas to Wolff, July 16, 1951, de Rochemont Papers; Batchelor interviewed in Masters of Animation. 19. Stephenson, Animation in the Cinema, 40. 20. Ian Grant, ‘‘Pushing for Pixels,’’ Computer Images International, February 1989, 16; ‘‘Award for ‘Dilemma’ in Moscow,’’ press release, Halas & Batchelor Animation, Ltd., Halas & Batchelor Collection; Halas quoted in ‘‘From Bauhaus to Film Cartoon,’’ The Times (London), January 30, 1962, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 21. Ball, ‘‘Husband and Wife Team.’’ 22. Geoff Alexander, ‘‘Philip Stapp,’’ http://www.cine16.com/stap.htm. 23. Vivien Halas quoted in Cohen, ‘‘Orwell and the CIA’’; ‘‘Analysis of Direct Costs Incurred on ‘Animal Farm’ to June 15, 1951,’’ box 86, de Rochemont Papers. 24. Halas to Wolff, February 12, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers; Manvell, Living Screen, 49; Paul Wells, ‘‘From the Wildest Fantasy to the Coldest Fact,’’ in Wells, 178. Stapp died on October 2, 2003; see Stonington Intelligencer, http://www.stoningtonct.com/obits .html. 25. [Anne Karalekas], ‘‘History of the Central Intelligence Agency,’’ in The Central Intelligence Agency: History and Documents, ed. William Leary (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1984), 48. Karalekas’s comprehensive, insightful history, prepared for the U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, which in the mid-1970s undertook an exhaustive investigation of the agency, demonstrated that in pursuit of its missions OPC was split into ‘‘four functional staffs’’ (one of which was ‘‘psychological warfare’’), each ‘‘organized around projects—individual activities’’ such as the filming of Orwell’s book (45). Wolff to Messers. LdR and J. Bryan, February 13, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 26. Halas to Wolff, March 3, 1952 (to which is attached a note that copies are being sent to Bryan and that ‘‘Joe is in Washington,’’ signed Lothar Wolff ), box 210A, de Rochemont Papers; untitled article, Kinematograph Weekly, March 20, 1952, ‘‘C. H. B. Williamson Talks About British Films,’’ Today’s Cinema, March 24, 1952, ‘‘Rochemont Chiefs Here,’’ Daily Film Renter, March 19, 1952, all three clippings in Halas & Batchelor Collection. 27. Rositzke, CIA’s Secret Operations, 173. 28. Caskie Stinnett, ‘‘Foreword,’’ in J. Bryan III, Merry Gentlemen and One Lady (New York: Athenaeum, 1985), ix, 257; The Sixty Year Record of the Class of 1927 of Princeton University (Princeton, N.J., 1987), 16; Bryan quoted in Hersh, Old Boys, 272. 29. ‘‘Agreement . . . between RD-DR . . . Halas & Batchelor Cartoon Films, Ltd.,’’ clause 8; ‘‘No, He’s Not One of the Goons,’’ undated clipping, Halas & Batchelor Collection; ‘‘Summary of Cash Transactions, September 1952,’’ box 195, de Rochemont Papers; V. Halas to Leab, September 20, 2004; Halas to Leab, September 30, 2004 (in author’s possession). 30. Whitaker, phone interview; Whitaker comments, ‘‘The Making of Animal Farm,’’ Polygram video; Whitaker quoted in Holliss, ‘‘Animation Techniques,’’ 142. 31. Whitaker, phone interview. 32. Ibid.; ‘‘The Making of Animal Farm,’’ Polygram video; ‘‘Sweatbox Notes,’’ June 23 and June 10, 1953, Halas & Batchelor Collection. Reed’s notes were very detailed: in critiquing a scene in Sequence 14, he wrote, ‘‘Jones is getting out of character. He should have a hunched-over feeling—not so much neck and his shoulders should be higher. Please check drawings in previous scenes which you have done and also the Model Sheet. Remember the neck does not come straight up out of the top of the body, but rather follows a line continuing

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out from the curvature of the neck’’ (‘‘Sweatbox Note,’’ July 15, 1953, Halas & Batchelor Collection). 33. Reed to M. Western, March 13, 1953; Reed to Stroud Unit, May 23, 1952; Gerald Kaufman, ‘‘Orwell Plus Disney,’’ Tribune, January 21, 1955, all in Halas & Batchelor Collection; Holliss, ‘‘Animation Techniques,’’ 145. 34. Mace, interview, August 7, 2001; Manvell, Art and Animation, 5. 35. Louis de Rochemont to Joy Batchelor, June 20, 1953, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 36. Untitled article, New York Times, January 13, 1955, American Committee for Cultural Freedom Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University, New York (hereafter ACCF Papers). 37. Wolff to Halas, January 14, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 38. ‘‘Suggested Alterations made by Mr. Louis de Rochemont to the existing animated material viewed on the 14th and 18th September 1952,’’ Halas & Batchelor Collection; ‘‘NOTES MADE BY MR. DE ROCHEMONT DURING SCREENING OF ‘ANIMAL FARM’ AT TELEFILMS, 11.8.53,’’ box 125, de Rochemont Papers (the dating is European style, he saw the footage on August 11, 1953). 39. Halas and Manvell, Technique of Film Animation, 258; Mace to Leo Jaffe, Columbia Pictures Corporation, February 6, 1953, box 43, de Rochemont Papers. As it became clear that Halas and Batchelor were putting together a feature film, the unions became less amenable and Halas reported in mid-February 1952 that the technicians’ union had ‘‘tried to force me to pay higher salaries. . . . So far I have successfully resisted, but . . .’’ Halas to Wolff, February 12, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 40. Louis de Rochemont to Abe Schneider, Columbia Pictures Corporation, August 13, 1951, box 43, de Rochemont Papers; typical of the newspaper stories written from the press releases is one in the Yorkshire Evening News, December 15, 1951, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 41. Stephen Watts, ‘‘Metamorphosis of a Menagerie,’’ November 2, 1952, in Brown, New York Times Encyclopedia of Film; untitled article, Variety, February 6, 1971, Halas & Batchelor Collection; ‘‘Memo Relative to Production Costs of Animal Farm,’’ July 27, 1953, box 43, de Rochemont Papers. 42. Halas, interview, October 21, 2000; Mace, interview, April 7, 2001. It was typical of their continued dealings that in 1954, while Animal Farm was still in production, Halas reported to Mace that ‘‘designs for the Swiss sections of CINERAMA’’ had been completed, a reference to inserts Halas and Batchelor designed for the different sections of Cinerama Holiday (released in 1955), the second film presented in that super-widescreen process, and a spectacularly successful de Rochemont effort (Halas to Mace, April 4, 1954, box 104, de Rochemont Papers); in 1957 de Rochemont sold a short Halas film to NBC-TV (Martin J. Maloney, treasurer, RD-DR Corporation, to Accounting Dept., February 4, 1957, box 104, de Rochemont Papers). 43. Halas quoted in A. H. Weiler, ‘‘The Screen: New York and Hollywood,’’ November 2, 1952, in Brown, New York Times Encyclopedia of Film. 44. Halas to Wolff, February 27, 1952, March 2, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 45. ‘‘Rochemont Chiefs Here’’; Halas to Mace, April 8, 1954, box 3, de Rochemont Papers. 46. Vivien Halas quoted in Cohen, ‘‘Orwell and the CIA’’; Vivien Halas to Philip Babich, Weekend America, Market Place Productions, San Francisco, e-mail, July 19, 2005 (I am grateful to Ms. Halas for making a copy of their exchange available to me). Halas, ‘‘My Family,’’ 98. 47. Mace to Leab, August 19, 2001 (in author’s possession); Vivien Halas to Philip Babich, July 19, 2005 (copy in author’s possession).

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CHAPTER 7

1. Louis de Rochemont to F. Bordon Mace and Lothar Wolff, January 21, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 2. Bendazzi, Cartoons, 153; Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War, 100. 3. De Rochemont to Mace and Wolff, January 21, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 4. ‘‘Nassau Herald, 1926,’’ 163, Mudd Library, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey. 5. Glen Perry, for the class of 1926, Princeton Alumni Weekly, April 5, 1982. Some obituaries say Farr ended his World War II career as a major, but in the Farr Papers there are notations on various obituaries striking out ‘‘major’’ and replacing it with ‘‘captain.’’ Finis Farr, ‘‘Personal History Statement,’’ July 13, 1949, MORI DocID 803586, Central Intelligence Agency, Washington, D.C. Farr’s work for Time, Inc., earned him generous letters of appreciation from Roy Larsen ‘‘for doing the best possible job,’’ and from James Linen, then Time’s publisher, for an effort even hard-nosed critics found ‘‘superior.’’ Roy Larsen to Farr, August 19, 1946; James Linen to Farr, January 23, 1947, both in Finis Farr Papers, Munger Library, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts (hereafter Farr Papers). 6. Bryan, Merry Gentlemen, 259. Some of the closeness between Bryan and Farr, as well as the latter’s offbeat sense of humor, can be gleaned from an excerpt from a script for one program of the series Mr. District Attorney. Farr—much to the dismay of Bryan’s young son, who was a faithful listener—had the D.A. vociferously declaim that ‘‘in my long years as a tribune of the people, the scum of the underworld has passed before me, but none so slimy, so rotten, so contemptible as you, Joe the Rat Bryan’’ (Merry Gentlemen, 245); Farr, ‘‘Personal History Statement’’; Finis Farr, Fair Enough: The Life of Westbrook Pegler (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1975), 119. 7. Farr, Elephant Valley, dust jacket. It is clear that Farr was familiar with Animal Farm. ‘‘Parade of Books,’’ a King Features Syndicate column that was basically a PR tool, in an item set for either July 29 or July 30, 1967, noted that Farr, in describing a boy and girl together on a New York subway train has a character reflect, ‘‘he knew that they had a small, standardized set of ideas from which their reactions would be calculated, like those of the sheep in Animal Farm.’’ Just in case readers were unfamiliar with Animal Farm, the column added that Farr was making ‘‘of course, an allusion to George Orwell’s satiric novel on socialist society goals’’ (‘‘Parade of Books,’’ Farr Papers). 8. Halas to Wolff, July 16, 1951, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 9. ‘‘Comments on 3rd Revised Screen Treatment of ‘Animal Farm,’’’ ibid., 1, 2, 4. 10. Ibid., 2, 3, 4. 11. Ibid., 2, 4. 12. Hemsing interviewed by Hans Beller, September 1, 1997, 15 (I am indebted to Herr Beller for a copy of the transcript of the interview; please see Chapter 5, note 24, for details of the Beller interviews); Schulberg, ‘‘Selling Democracy Worldwide,’’ 15; ‘‘Comments on 3rd Revised Screen Treatment of ‘Animal Farm,’’’ 3; Wolff to de Rochemont, January 22, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 13. ‘‘Comments on 3rd Revised Screen Treatment of ‘Animal Farm,’’’ 3, 4. 14. Grose, Operation Rollback, 164, Barrett, CIA and Congress, 28. 15. Michael Howard, ‘‘Dulles and His Doctrines,’’ Times Literary Supplement, July 19, 1974, 757. 16. Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945– 1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), xiv; Marsh, ‘‘Continuity and Change,’’ 81. 17. Rep. Charles Kersten (R-Wis.) quoted in Grose, Operation Rollback, 204; Christopher Simpson, Blowback: America’s Recruitment of Nazis and Its Effects on the Cold War (New York:

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Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988), 289. The Hungarian revolt seriously affected Wisner. According to Tom Braden, a friend and associate, Wisner ‘‘went nuts . . . because here was this Hungarian thing [and] we weren’t doing anything about it’’ (ibid., 289). 18. Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 335, 172–73; Kennan quoted in Weiner and Crossette, ‘‘Kennan Dies,’’ in an excerpt from 1975 testimony before a Senate select committee. 19. Louis de Rochemont to Wolff, January 10, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 20. [Bryan?], memo, January 15, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. A copy of this memo wound up with de Rochemont because it summarized the January meetings. Based on internal evidence, such as projected travel dates (to London in March), references to Farr, and various comments about ‘‘our position,’’ as well as the fact that in early 1952 Bryan was the agency’s point man in dealing with the various scripts for the movie, I am assuming that he was the author of this memo, but if not it certainly has validity, since it was obviously composed by someone working closely with the ‘‘investors.’’ 21. Ibid. 22. De Rochemont to Wolff, January 10, 1952. 23. [Bryan?] Memo, January 15, 1952. 24. Ibid.; Wolff to de Rochemont, January 22, 1952, ibid. 25. [Bryan?] Memo, January 15, 1952, 3. 26. Memo by de Rochemont, January 21, 1952, ibid. 27. Louis de Rochemont to F. Bordon Mace and Lothar Wolff, January 21, 1952, ibid. 28. [Bryan?] Memo, January 15, 1952 (an attempt was made on this memo to erase Farr’s name and just leave the initial ‘‘F,’’ but it failed); Mace to Leab, April 16, 2003 (in author’s possession). 29. Lothar Wolff to Louis de Rochemont and J. Bryan, February 13, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 30. Ibid. 31. Wolff to Halas, February 28, 1952, ibid. 32. Attachment, 3, ibid.; Wolff ’s attachment to his letter to Halas and Batchelor is a slight reworking of the [Bryan?] memo of January 15, 1952. 33. Ibid. 34. Halas to Wolff, January 25, 1952, ibid. 35. Halas to Wolff, March 3, 1952, ibid. 36. ‘‘Animal Farm, 5th Revised Script,’’ March 20, 1952; ‘‘Commentary,’’ Sequence 2, p. 3, 噛17, Sequence 8, 噛5, 8, 9, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 37. Ibid., Sequence 7, 噛19, Sequence 11, 噛16–30.

CHAPTER 8

1. Halas quoted in A. H. Weiler, ‘‘Random Observations on Pictures,’’ New York Times, November 4, 1951, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 2. Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War, 101, 99. 3. Ronald E. Powski, The Cold War: The United States and the Soviet Union, 1917–1991 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 57; George Orwell, ‘‘As I Please,’’ Tribune (UK), January 26, 1945, in Davison, CWO, 17:30. 4. ‘‘Animal Farm, Guide to Time, Location, Mood, Dramatic Intensity,’’ 2d sheet, n.d. (but from internal evidence in the middle of the project), Halas & Batchelor Collection. 5. ‘‘Animal Farm by George Orwell, Screen Treatment, October 1950,’’ quoted in ‘‘Comments on 3rd Revised Script of ‘Animal Farm,’ July 13, 1951,’’ box 210A, de Rochemont Papers.

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6. ‘‘Comments on 3rd Revised Script of ‘Animal Farm,’ July 13, 1951; ‘‘Animal Farm, 5th Revised Script,’’ March 30, 1952, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 7. ‘‘Sequence 18, Alterations discussed with Mr. de Rochemont, September 17th–23rd, 1952 (cont’d),’’ n.d., 3, 4, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 8. ‘‘Meeting Between Louis de Rochemont and Halas and Batchelor, October 4–7, 1952,’’ n.d., 1, ibid. 9. Ibid., 2. 10. ‘‘Sequence 18, Alterations discussed with Mr. de Rochemont, September 17th–23rd, 1952 (cont’d.).’’ 11. Louis de Rochemont to John Halas, Joy Batchelor, F. Bordon Mace, November 4, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 12. Louis de Rochemont quoted in Manvell, Art and Animation, 9; Manvell, Animated Film, 19. 13. ‘‘Another Orwell Controversy Starts over Film,’’ Evening Times (UK), c. January 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection; Batchelor quoted in Bendazzi, Cartoons, 153; Halas quoted in Shaw, British Cinema and the Cold War, 101; Halas quoted in Wells, Dustbins, Democracy, and Defence, 62. 14. Nunally Johnson, associate producer and screenwriter for the Twentieth Century Fox production of Steinbeck’s book, quoted in Hanson, American Film Institute Catalog, ‘‘Film Entries, A-L,’’ 822. 15. Animal Farm, Hallmark Home Entertainment, distributed by Artisan Entertainment, 1999, 91 minutes, VHS 10075 (PAL); Dinosaur Interplanetary Network Gazetteer to Dan Leab, e-mail, August 2, 2000. 16. Rodden, Scenes from an Afterlife, 44; Richard Harland Smith, ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ Video Watchdog, April 2000, 8. 17. Smith, ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ 8; Animal Farm, Hallmark Home Entertainment. 18. Rodden, Scenes from an Afterlife, 44, 45; Smith, ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ 8. 19. ‘‘Sequence 18, Alterations discussed with Mr. de Rochemont, September 17th–23rd, 1952 (cont’d),’’ 3; ‘‘Meeting between Louis de Rochemont and Halas and Batchelor, October 4–7, 1952,’’ 1, 4. 20. ‘‘Animal Farm, Sequence 17, revised version, Suggested Alterations made by Mr. Louis de Rochemont to the existing animated material viewed on the 14th and 18th of September 1952,’’ n.d., Halas & Batchelor Collection. 21. Ibid.; ‘‘Animal Farm: Fifth Revised Script,’’ March 20, 1952; ‘‘Meeting between Louis de Rochemont and Halas and Batchelor, October 4–7, 1952,’’ 2. 22. Wolff to de Rochemont, October 1, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 23. Louis de Rochemont to [?], January 21, 1952, ibid. 24. Ibid.; R. Hirsch, ‘‘Comment on the ‘Animal Farm’ Script, January 23, 1952’’ (I am indebted to Frances Stonor Saunders for drawing my attention to the PSB memo and for providing me with a copy). 25. Hixson, Parting the Curtain, 19; Montague, General Walter Bedell Smith, 213. 26. Charles R. Norberg Jr., to John Sherman, April 10, 1952, ‘‘Proposal to Make a Series of Films on the General Subject ‘Why We Fight the Cold War,’ ’’ PSB 062.2, box 3, Psychological Strategy Board Files, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri (hereafter PSB Files). 27. Ibid.; Joseph McBride, Frank Capra: The Catastrophe of Success (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), 593; Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title: An Autobiography (New York: Macmillan, 1971), 452. 28. Townsend Hoopes, assistant to Secretary of Defense Robert A. Lovett, to General John Magruder, Department of Defense representative to the PSB, May 7, 1952; Wallace Irwin Jr., NSC staff member, ‘‘Memorandum: Impact of U.S. Commercial Films Abroad,’’

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October 12, 1952; Daniel N. Arizas Jr. to Charles Johnson, October 28, 1952; Johnson to PSB staff, November 17, 1952, all in 062.2, box 3, PSB Files. 29. Thomas, Very Best Men, 83; Lucas, Freedom’s War, 155n22; Tracy Barnes to Charles E. Johnson, January 14, 1952, box 18, 噛201, PSB Files. 30. Richard Hirsch, The Soviet Spies: The Story of Russian Espionage in North America (London: Nicholas Kaye, 1948); ‘‘John Anspacher, Curriculum Vitae,’’ John Anspacher Collection, American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming (he wound up his professional career in the 1970s working in a way not dissimilar to his government career as the producer/moderator of a ‘‘radio roundtable discussion’’ program that dealt with how resident foreign journalists viewed the United States). 31. Grose, Operation Rollback, 149, 215; Richard Watts Jr., ‘‘Voice of America,’’ New Republic, September 6, 1948, 26; Carroll quoted in Barrett, CIA and Congress, 104. 32. Carroll quoted in Mitrovich, Undermining the Kremlin, 113. 33. Wolff to Halas, January 14, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers; Brian Caws, Animal Farm . . . Resource Guide (Oxford: Oxford Vision Resources, Ltd., 1987), 42 (this guide is part of a series that presented students with texts, along with a video and a guide ‘‘to link the video and the book’’). 34. Wolff to de Rochemont, November 4, 1952; de Rochemont to John [Halas] and Joy [Batchelor], December 1, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 35. Mace, interview, August 7, 2001; Manvell, Animated Film, 12; Mace to Leab, August 19, 2001 (in author’s possession). 36. Wolff to Halas, January 13, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 37. Whitaker, phone interview; ‘‘Animal Farm Continuity Sheet,’’ April 28, 1953; ‘‘Animal Farm Continuity Sheet,’’ December 21, 1953, both in Halas & Batchelor Collection. 38. ‘‘Progress Report to Messers. Ayres, Humberstone [animators on the film] . . . and Mr. Halas,’’ July 1953, box 126, de Rochemont Papers; untitled article, Variety, April 27, 1954, Halas & Batchelor Collection.

CHAPTER 9

1. Mace to Leo Jaffe, Columbia Pictures Corporation, March 19, 1954, box 43, de Rochemont Papers. 2. Halas to Mace, April 8, 1954, box 3, ibid. 3. Joy Batchelor interviewed in Masters of Animation: A Series by John Halas; ‘‘Animal Farm: Guide to Time, Location, Mood, Dramatic Intensity,’’ last sheet, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 4. George Orwell, Animal Farm, 1. 5. John Halas and Joy Batchelor, ‘‘Drama Versus Satire in Movie Cartoon,’’ New York Herald Tribune, January 16, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 6. Wear, ‘‘The Fighting Lady,’’ Variety Film Reviews, 1906–1980 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1982), vol. 7, 1943–1948, December 20, 1944; Wolcott Gibbs, More in Sorrow (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1958), 12; T. S. Mathews, Name and Address: An Autobiography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960), 218. 7. Loudon Wainwright, The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of LIFE (New York: Ballantine Books, 1988), 6; Gibbs, More in Sorrow, 12. 8. Louis Fischer, ‘‘Russia, Pre- and Post-Lenin,’’ Saturday Review of Literature, January 12, 1946, 6. 9. ‘‘Animal Farm, Martin commentary, Draft One, June 5 [1954],’’ dated June 14, 1954, in author’s possession (hereafter Martin Commentary).

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10. Vivien Halas, interview by author, October 22, 2000, London, England; ‘‘Animal Farm Commentary—Detailed Observations by Joy Batchelor,’’ Halas & Batchelor Collection. 11. ‘‘Animal Farm Commentary—Detailed Observations by Joy Batchelor,’’ excerpts in Sarah Vincent, B.A. honors thesis, Department of Graphic Design—animation year 3, n.d., 9, partial copy in Halas & Batchelor Collection (Vincent’s undergraduate thesis includes a great deal of valuable primary source material). 12. ‘‘Animal Farm, Continuity Sheet,’’ December 21 1953, Sequence 1, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 13. Martin Commentary, 11. 14. Ibid., 2–11. 15. Ibid., 2, 5, 6. 16. Ibid., 6. 17. Ibid., 11–12. 18. Ibid., 11. 19. Louis de Rochemont to John Halas, August 28, 1954, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 20. Mace to Halas, August 20, 1954, 1 (copy in author’s possession). 21. ‘‘Animal Farm, 7th Revised Commentary,’’ September 1954, Gordon Heath Papers, MS372, box 23, folder 274, W. E. B. DuBois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts (hereafter Gordon Heath Papers). 22. F. Bordon Mace, interview by author, Salisbury, Connecticut, June 20, 2001. Alsop’s first name appears as both Carlton and Carleton. Though the FBI favored the latter spelling, it used both in its reports. Generally he was known as ‘‘Carl.’’ ‘‘Carleton William Alsop,’’ Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, D.C., FOIPA 噛0934652-000 (hereafter FBIAlsop). 23. ‘‘The Great Life,’’ clipping, Herrick Library; Farr to Bryan, October 14, 1966, Bryan Papers; Louella Parsons, ‘‘Martha Scott Wed to Carlton Alsop,’’ September 25, 1940; Louella O. Parsons, ‘‘Sylvia Sidney and Carlton Alsop to Wed,’’ March 6, 1947; Hedda Hopper, ‘‘Mate Departs: Sylvia Sidney Sues to Divorce Third Husband,’’ March 23, 1951, all three clippings in Herrick Library. 24. Hal Kanter, Oral History, 19, Herrick Library; Finis Farr, John O’Hara: A Biography (Boston: Little, Brown, 1973), 204; ‘‘Report on Alsop,’’ December 27, 1950, FBI-Alsop. 25. Sidney Skolsky, ‘‘Tintypes,’’ September 30, 1941; ‘‘Sylvia Sidney Divorced from ‘FedUp’ Mate,’’ July 24, 1951, clippings, Herrick Library. 26. Gerald Clarke, Get Happy: The Life of Judy Garland (New York: Random House, 2000), 248; Vincente Minnelli, with Hector Arce, I Remember It Well (London: Angus & Robertson, 1974), 199, 198; Kanter, Oral History, 118; ‘‘Carleton William Alsop,’’ December 13, 1950, FBI-Alsop. Frances Stonor Saunders was right to tag Alsop as a CIA employee, but, as with his role in the filming of Animal Farm, her conclusions about his role in other CIA movie activities are flawed. She errs in attributing to Alsop reports about the agency’s putative efforts to influence Hollywood movies to present a more acceptable face for the United States, for example, by playing down ‘‘racial divisions in America.’’ Alsop, as the English scholar David Eldridge convincingly argues, had never been ‘‘a major player’’ in the film industry, and the fourteen unsigned reports sent to a ‘‘CIA contact’’ dealing with the attempts to influence production were written by Paramount executive Luigi Luraschi. Conservative newspaper columnist George Sokolsky, anxious to deny U.S. distribution of Italian films employing blacklisted Americans, queried the FBI about where Alsop ‘‘fits into the picture’’ and got the cautious response that ‘‘there was nothing that we could say to this.’’ Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? 290; David N. Eldridge, ‘‘ ‘Dear Owen’: The CIA, Luigi Luraschi, and Hollywood, 1953,’’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 20, no. 2 (2000):

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158–95, includes all the reports, splendidly annotated; Sokolsky quoted in L. B. Nichols, assistant to the director, to Mr. [Clyde] Tolson, associate director, October 6, 1952, FBI-Alsop. 27. Wolff to Halas, February 28, 1952, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 28. ‘‘Funny Voices,’’ The Star (UK), July 24, 1953, Halas & Batchelor Collection; obituary, New York Times, July 31, 2002. 29. ‘‘Maurice Goes the Whole Hog,’’ n.d., n.p., clipping, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 30. Denham interviewed on Stay Tooned, the ‘‘extra’’ on the Polygram video of the movie version of Orwell’s book; ‘‘Orwell Fantasy,’’ Lincolnshire Echo, n.d., 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 31. Peter Noble, in the Daily Film Renter, September 28, 1955, clipping, Gordon Heath Papers; William Greaves, ‘‘A Black Filmmaker Remembers Louis de Rochemont,’’ Film Library Quarterly 12, no. 4 (1979): 15. 32. Doris Abramson, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Gordon Heath, Deep Are the Roots: Memoirs of a Black Expatriate (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1992), 4; Heath, Deep Are the Roots, 133; U.S. Congress, House of Representatives, Committee on Un-American Activities, Hearings, ‘‘Investigation of Communist Activities in the New York City Area—Part 2,’’ 83d Cong., 1st sess., May 5, 1953 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953), 1306, 1307; Bernard Gordon, scriptwriter and producer, interviewed by Patrick McGilligan in Patrick McGilligan and Paul Buhle, Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997), 272. 33. Heath, Deep Are the Roots, 94; the commentator was Tony Robinson, the presenter of Stay Tooned; Mace to Halas, August 30, 1954 (copy in author’s possession). 34. Mace to Halas, August 30, 1954; James Fraser, Heath’s UK agent, to Heath, September 2, 1954, Gordon Heath Papers. 35. Heath comments written on ‘‘Animal Farm, 7th Revised Commentary,’’ 3, 4, 6, 8, Gordon Heath Papers. 36. Abramson, ‘‘Introduction,’’ 6; Ekwueme Mike Thelwell, ‘‘Afterword,’’ 195, both in Heath, Deep Are the Roots. 37. Mace to Joseph Breen, director, PCA, October 10, 1953; Geoffrey M. Shurlock, deputy director, PCA, to Mace, May 13, 1955; ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ Production Code Administration Files, Herrick Library (hereafter PCA Files). 38. Gordon S. White to Shurlock, May 16, 1955, PCA Files.

CHAPTER 10

1. Mace, interview, August 7, 2001; untitled article, Today’s Cinema, January 14, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection; ‘‘Yahoo Travel Discount Vacations in New York,’’ http://travel .yahoo.com/p-travelguide-2736646-paris_theater_new_york_city-1. 2. Mace, interview, August 7, 2001; Archer Winsten, untitled article, New York Post, December 30, 1954, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 3. Nancy Schoenberger, Dangerous Muse: The Life of Lady Caroline Blackwood (New York: Nan Talese/Doubleday, 2001), 134–35; Hilary Spurling, phone interview by author, July 15, 2004; Vivien Halas, interview by author, July 13, 2004, London, England; Mace, interview, August 7, 2001. 4. ‘‘ ‘Animal Farm’ Film,’’ Yorkshire Post, December 24, 1954; untitled article, Evening News (Glasgow), December 30, 1955; ‘‘Super Cartoon Released,’’ Natal Mercury (South Africa), December 31, 1954; William Percival, ‘‘TV Rats Fail to Terrorize Elizabeth,’’ New York World-Telegram & Sun, December 30, 1954, all in Halas & Batchelor Collection; ‘‘BBC-TV Does Repeat of Controversial Show Despite Press Squawks,’’ Variety, December 22, 1954,

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reprinted in Variety Television Reviews, vol. 5, 1954–1956 (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991). 5. Mace, interview, August 7, 2001; photo in Today’s Cinema, January 14, 1955, clipping, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 6. Louis de Rochemont to L. B. Nichols, August 25, 1953, which was accompanied by tear sheets of Louis Berg, ‘‘The Fable That Rocked the Kremlin,’’ This Week Magazine, August 9, 1953, 10–11 (this Sunday supplement article used illustrations drawn from the film); L. B. Nichols to Mr. [Clyde] Tolson, January 11, 1955, which forwarded the batch of New York newspaper reviews that de Rochemont had sent to Nichols, both in FBI-de Rochemont. 7. The New York Post called it ‘‘an utterly serious minded message of the political pitfalls of our time. What George Orwell said in his book . . . is clearly illustrated in the picture.’’ These reviews can be found in the December 30, 1954, edition of the respective newspapers. 8. ‘‘Walter Winchell of New York,’’ January 27, 1955; ‘‘The New Pictures,’’ Time magazine, January 17, 1955, both clippings in Halas & Batchelor Collection. 9. ‘‘Shrill Shrieks from Redbirds,’’ New York Daily News, January 9, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection (the editorial was occasioned by the outcry of English Communists against the BBC-TV version of Nineteen Eighty-Four, and the paragraphs on the movie version of Animal Farm, while more than an afterthought, were not at the heart of the vehemently antiCommunist editorial). 10. Untitled article, Film Daily, January 5, 1955; untitled article, Variety, January 26, 1955, both in Halas & Batchelor Collection. 11. Rodden, Politics of Literary Reputation, 282. The perceptive Rodden is spot on in most of his remarks about the response to the film, but he makes a few egregious errors, which he did not correct in his reworking of the material for other publications. Thus he describes the Hungarian-born and educated Halas as ‘‘an anti-Nazi war refugee from Poland,’’ in the 1989 edition of this book, as well as in the 2003 edition, which has a new introduction, and also in his masterly 1999 collection Understanding Animal Farm, in which, on page 149, he quotes the 1989 work and repeats that error and others. 12. Delmore Schwartz, ‘‘Films,’’ New Republic, January 17, 1955, 22, 23. 13. Robert Hatch, ‘‘Film,’’ The Nation, January 22, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 14. Spencer Brown, ‘‘Strange Doings at Animal Farm,’’ Commentary, February 1955, quoted in Rodden, Understanding Animal Farm, 152; ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ CUE, January 1, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 15. Gerald Weales, ‘‘Films from Overseas,’’ Quarterly Journal of Film, Radio, and TV (fall 1955), quoted in Rodden, Understanding Animal Farm, 152; untitled articles, Variety, January 17, 1956, January 26, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 16. Jay Robert Nash and Stanley Ralph Ross, ‘‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,’’ in The Motion Picture Guide (1927–1983), vol. S, ed. Jay Robert Nash and Stanley Ralph Ross (Chicago: Cinebooks, Inc., 1987), 2993–94; ‘‘No Innocent Gambols,’’ Newsweek, January 17, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 17. William Moritz, ‘‘Animation,’’ in The Oxford History of World Cinema, ed. Geoffrey Nowell-Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996), 271; Bendazzi, Cartoons, 133. 18. ‘‘Cartoon Horizons Growing Wider,’’ Film Daily, January 10, 1955; Batchelor quoted in William Peper, ‘‘Picture Plays and Players: Cartoonists Who Dare,’’ n.d. [c. 1955], both in Halas & Batchelor Collection. The animated format for serious feature-length films did not become commercially viable until the 1970s. Ralph Bakshi, a talented and experienced animator who had begun his career in the 1960s, inking such cartoon characters as Mighty Mouse, was the first of the ‘‘anti-Disney’’ artists to employ anthropomorphism to create what has been termed ‘‘animated cinema for adults.’’ Bakshi’s first cartoon feature, Fritz the Cat (1971), used sex, drugs, and coarse humor to comment on the contemporary scene, and at a

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production cost of slightly more than $1 million earned more than $30 million. Bendazzi, Cartoons, 232. 19. Leo Jaffe, Columbia Pictures Corporation, New York, to Mace, March 2, 9, 1953; Jaffe to de Rochemont, August, 2, 1951, both in box 43, de Rochemont Papers. 20. Jaffe to de Rochemont, August 13, 1953; Mace to Jaffe, August 2, 4, 1953, ibid. 21. Mace to Jaffe, August 4, 14, 1953, ibid. 22. ‘‘Animal Farm for DCA,’’ Hollywood Reporter, March 16, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 23. Motion Picture Association of America spokesman quoted (December 19, 1985) in Rodden, Politics of Literary Reputation, 445n96. 24. ‘‘De Rochemont’s Maloney to London on Distrib Deal,’’ Hollywood Reporter, March 16, 1953, Halas & Batchelor Collection; Halas to Mace, September 9, 1953, box 126, de Rochemont Papers; Mace to Halas, August 30, 1954, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 25. ‘‘Films ‘Monopoly’ Attacked,’’ Oxford Mail, February 20, 1967, Halas & Batchelor Collection; Mace to Halas, August 30, 1954, 2, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers. 26. Mace to Halas, August 30, 1954, 2, box 210A, de Rochemont Papers; ‘‘Chill Wind from ‘Animal Farm,’’’ Glasgow Herald, January 13, 1955; ‘‘Pig Brother Watches a First Night,’’ Newcastle Journal, January 14, 1955; untitled article, Evening Standard, January 14, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 27. Harold Conway, ‘‘Pig Brother Has Scared Them,’’ Daily Sketch, January 13, 1955; ‘‘Another Orwell Controversy Starts over Film,’’ Evening Times, n.d. (probably early January 1955), Halas & Batchelor Collection. 28. Sonia Orwell quoted in ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ Today’s Cinema, December 28, 1954, ibid. 29. Dilys Powell, ‘‘Orwell’s Fable,’’ Sunday Times (London), January 16, 1955; C. A. Lejeune, ‘‘Pig Business,’’ Observer, January 16, 1955, ibid. 30. Our London Film Critic, ‘‘Animal Farm,’’ Manchester Guardian, January 10, 1955; Fred Majdalany, ‘‘The Pig Who Came to Supreme Power,’’ Daily Mail, January 12, 1955; ‘‘Cinema: Animal Farm, Ritz,’’ Truth, January 14, 1955; Muggeridge quoted in John Lynne, ‘‘Watch Napoleon Oust Big Brother,’’ Daily Record and Mail (Glasgow), January 12, 1955, ibid. 31. Thomas Spencer, untitled article, Daily Worker (UK), January 15, 1955, ibid. 32. Gerald Kaufman, ‘‘Orwell Plus Disney,’’ Tribune, January 21, 1955, ibid. 33. Catherine de la Roche, untitled review in Sight and Sound, spring 1955, ibid. 34. Reg Whitley, ‘‘At the Films: A Revolt,’’ Daily Mirror (London), January 14, 1954, ibid.; ‘‘Minutes of a Meeting to Discuss the Film Animal Farm,’’ c. mid-1955, 1; H. L. French, director general, British Film Producers Association to [?], March l, 1955, FO1110/740, PRO/ UKNA. 35. Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 637. 36. Stonor Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? 230, 231; Sol Stein to Managing Director, Paris Theatre, January 5, 1955, American Committee for Cultural Freedom Papers, Tamiment Library, New York University, New York (hereafter ACCF Papers). I am indebted to Daniel Bell for granting me access to these papers. 37. Lillian Girard, vice president, Paris Theatre, to Stein, January 10, 1955; Stein to Joseph Gould; Louis de Rochemont Associates to Stein, January 7, 1955, all in ACCF Papers. 38. Stein to Hecksher, January 13, 1955; Mace to Stein, January 14, 1955, ibid. 39. Typical of the letters sent out was Stein to Tom di Lorenzo, a local UAW official, January 17, 1955, ibid. Stein urges the union to subscribe to the ‘‘ACCF program for promotion of the sale of discount tickets to that remarkable film.’’ It is worth noting that in 1955 Stein did not manage as well as the late dynamic labor leader Tony Mazzochi in 1958—then an officer of the Oil, Gas, and Atomic Workers Union, he convinced a local to support an offBroadway production about the life of Joe Hill, the popular Wobbly songwriter and organizer (Barry Stavis’s The Man Who Never Died). Mazzochi did just what was attempted with Animal

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Farm, but more successfully. It seems to me that one can read too much into Stein’s activities. He recognized that the ACCF needed visibility; the de Rochemont group did just what is done to this day to promote rock concerts, feature films, Broadway and off-Broadway shows, academic conferences, and so on, productions that, like the Halas and Batchelor film, face problems in attracting an audience. 40. ‘‘Come with Us to Animal Farm,’’ Daily Dispatch (Manchester, England), January 15, 1955, Halas & Batchelor Collection; Information Section, British Embassy, Saigon, to Information Policy Department, Foreign Office, S.W. 1, March 9, 1955, FO1110/740, PRO/ UKNA. 41. H. A. H. Cortazzi to Douglas Williams, Colonial Office, January 28, 1955, FO1110/ 740, PRO/UKNA. 42. From Foreign Office, editorial advisor, January 15, 1955, Minute, J. W. Rennie, February 16, 1955; H. A. H. Cortazzi to W. J. A. Cox, Colonial Office, February 1955; Minute, H. A. H. Cortazzi, May [?], 1955, ibid. 43. Aldrich, Hidden Hand, 133; Tony Shaw, ‘‘ ‘Some Writers Are More Equal Than Others’: George Orwell, the State, and Cold War Privilege,’’ in Across the Bloc: Cold War Cultural and Social History, ed. Rana Mitter and Patrick Major (London: Frank Cass, 2004), 160. In keeping with the same Cold War objectives that influenced the making of Animal Farm and its altered ending, the 1956 movie of Nineteen Eighty-Four initially ended with Orwell’s main protagonist, Winston Smith, being shot down while running through the streets shouting, ‘‘Down with Big Brother.’’ This deviation from Orwell’s original ending caused such a hullabaloo that a new ending, faithful to the novel, was filmed. The scripts for each version can be found in the Daniel J. Leab George Orwell Collection at Brown University, which can be searched at http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/University_Library.

CHAPTER 11

1. Grierson quoted in Brian Winston, Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited (London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1995), 65. 2. Edgar Anstey, ‘‘John Grierson: Founder of Film Documentary,’’ in Lloyd et al., The Movies 7, 135; Barnouw, Documentary, 85; John Grierson, ‘‘The Nature of Propaganda,’’ Documentary Newsletter, May 1941, 92; Grierson quoted in Winston, Claiming the Real, 65. 3. Nicholas Reeves, The Power of Film Propaganda: Myth or Reality (London: Cassell, 1999), 5; Grierson quoted in Winston, Claiming the Real, 65. 4. ‘‘Television: Revolution in Retrospect,’’ Yorkshire Post, June 4, 1969, Halas & Batchelor Collection. 5. ‘‘Animal Farm—Der Aufstand der Tiere,’’ Cinema, n.d. [later 1980s], Halas & Batchelor Collection. 6. Davison, Orwell: A Literary Life, 147; Paul Foot, ‘‘The Last But Not the Final Word,’’ The Spectator, November 4, 2000, http://www.spectator.co.uk/bo...e-old§ion-back& issue-2000-11-04&id⳱115; Rodden, Politics of Literary Reputation, 461n257. 7. Victor Lee, series editor, Animal Farm . . . Resource Guide (London: Oxford Vision Resources, Ltd., 1987), 5; Caws, ibid., 41, 46, 47. 8. Rodden, Understanding Animal Farm, 149. 9. Untitled article, Variety, April 30, 1952; William W. Turner, Hoover’s FBI, rev. and updated ed. (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993), 112. It seemed as if de Rochemont had lost vitality and his ability to command by the time he made a movie of the Williams novel; Wolff recalls imploring Warren Beatty, ‘‘who wouldn’t part from his makeup mirror—to kindly come on the set where everybody was waiting for him.’’ Wolff, ‘‘Reminiscences of an Itinerant Filmmaker,’’ 91.

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170

NOTES

10. Mace to Vivien Halas, June 20, 2000 (copy in author’s possession). 11. Mace, interview, August 7, 2001. 12. Robert Brustein, ‘‘The New Hollywood: Myth and Anti-Myth (1959),’’ Film Quarterly 12 (spring 1959): 24. 13. Gerald Mast, ‘‘Revolution in Hollywood,’’ in The Movies in Our Midst: Documents in the Cultural History of Film in America, ed. Gerald Mast (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), 646. 14. F. Bordon Mace, ‘‘Louis de Rochemont: Portrait,’’ in 70mm.com: The 70 mm Newsletter, http://www.70mm.com/news/2003/louis_de_rochemont/ldr.htm. 15. Mace to Vivien Halas, June 20, 2000 (copy in author’s possession); Kazan, A Life, 316; Mace to Leab, April 15, 2000 (in author’s possession); Hoover comment on L. B. Nichols to Clyde Tolson, November 10, 1956, FBI-de Rochemont. 16. J. Dennis Robinson, ‘‘Honoring the Father of Docu-Drama,’’ June 17, 2000, http:// www.seacoastnh.com/arts/please061700.html. 17. Wolff, ‘‘Reminiscences of an Itinerant Filmmaker,’’ 93; ‘‘Lothar Wolff, Produzent . . . ,’’ D2, D5. In both his association with de Rochemont and on his own, Wolff oversaw award-winning joint projects with Lutheran Church Film Associates, serving as producer of the film on Martin Luther’s life and on the feature Question 7. Released in 1961, Question 7 had a fascinating anti-Communist slant, dealing as it did with East Germany’s campaign ‘‘to turn students away from their Christian heritage.’’ The OPC investors would have found its tone congenial. The film concentrates on an East German pastor’s talented teenage son, a pianist who wants to enter a state music conservatory. To do so he must fill out a questionnaire, the seventh question of which asks what has influenced him most. Since religion is not a correct answer in East Germany, the teenager discusses possible answers with his father, his girlfriend, and a sympathetic state-oriented teacher. The boy initially goes along with the state as the most important influence, especially after he is sent to a music festival in the Communist part of Berlin; but after much soul searching he flees to the West, affirming his religion after all. ‘‘Question 7,’’ in Feature Films, 1961–1970, a volume of The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures, ed. Richard P. Krafsur (New York: R. R. Bowker Co., 1976), 880. 18. J. Bryan III and Charles L. V. Murphy, The Windsor Story (New York: William Morrow and Co., 1979), dust jacket. In his introduction Murphy makes it very clear that both authors knew the Windsors ‘‘rather well’’ (5). 19. Farr to Ashbel Green, managing editor, Alfred Knopf, September 12, 1966, Knopf Papers, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin; Farr to Bryan, May 6, 1972, Bryan Papers. 20. Farr, Rickenbacker’s Luck: An American Life (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1979), 261; Farr, Elephant Valley, 33. 21. Nichols to Tolson, October 6, 1962; Director FBI to SAC New York City, August 30, 1965; SAC New York City to Director FBI, January 26, 1967, all in FBI-Alsop. 22. Ron Kessler, Inside the CIA: Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Most Powerful Agency (New York: Pocket Books, 1992), 44; Vidal, United States, 878. 23. Szulc, Compulsive Spy, 167; Publisher’s Weekly review (2000) of Sonora; Kirkus Reviews review (1997) of Dragon Teeth, both viewed on amazon.com; Alexander Cockburn, ‘‘Propaganda of the Victors,’’ 16. 24. ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team,’’ 4; Wells, ‘‘From the Wildest Fantasy,’’ 172. ‘‘Halas and Batchelor,’’ British Film Institute, Screenonline, http://www.screenonline,org.uk/people/ id/58149 (accessed August 13, 2004). 25. Louis de Rochemont to John [Halas] and Joy [Batchelor], December 1, 1952, box 43, de Rochemont Papers; ‘‘From Orwell’s ‘Animal Farm’ to ‘Pilgrim’s Progress,’’’ Citizen (Gloucester, England), December 17, 1954; ‘‘Cartoon Horizons Growing Wider,’’ Film Daily,

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171

January 10, 1955, both clippings in Halas & Batchelor Collection. Fifty-two scenes that were storyboarded and the script for the unmade Pilgrim’s Progress are in the Halas & Batchelor Collection—they can also be found online at http://www.surrart.ac.uk/arc/archive/bb_story board.html; Toon Hound, ‘‘The Halas and Batchelor Ruddigore (1957),’’ A Gilbert and Sullivan Discography, http://www.cris.com/⬃oakapple/gasdisc/urdanim.html; for the quotation by a Savoyard, see Jim Walker, ‘‘Halas and Batchelor Studios: Historical Development,’’ Animation Research Centre, http://www.surrart.ac.uk/arc.archive/bb_history.html. 26. Halas and Batchelor 50th Anniversary (London, 1990), 1 (in author’s possession). 27. Ibid. 28. ‘‘Cartoon G & S,’’ Sunday Telegraph, November 14, 1965; ‘‘In Orbit,’’ Financial Times (UK), January 21 1965; ‘‘Challenging Walt Disney,’’ Financial Times (UK), October 28, 1965, all in Halas & Batchelor Collection. 29. DoDo—the Kid from Outer Space, Toon Tracker: Home of Lost Cartoons, http://www .toontracker.com/dodo/dodo.htm. This website includes a full-length DoDo and the Astronaut as well as an audio version of the song that opened the cartoons: DoDo, the kid from outer space, DoDo can go, can go any place. With propellers on his heels, antennas on his ears, He the science fiction pixie from a strange atomic race. DoDo, the kid from outer space. Stephenson, Animation in the Cinema, 84; ‘‘Popeye the Sailorman Goes British,’’ Daily Herald (London), December 5, 1960; ‘‘ ‘Lone Ranger’—Triumph for H & B,’’ Kine Weekly, April 22, 1967, both clippings in Halas & Batchelor Collection. 30. ‘‘In Orbit’’; ‘‘Halas and Batchelor as a Team,’’ 4. 31. Walker, ‘‘Halas and Batchelor Studios’’; Whittaker, phone interview, July 27, 2004. 32. Halas quoted in Grant, Masters of Animation, 18; Bendazzi, Cartoons, 154; John Halas, ‘‘Not for Fun,’’ Films and Filming, November 1956, 6. 33. Child quoted in Noel Riley Fitch, Appetite for Life: The Biography of Julia Child (New York: Doubleday, 1997), 30; Shaw, ‘‘ ‘Some Writers Are More Equal Than Others,’ ’’ 156. In my opinion Shaw is a bit off the mark in so referring to Halas; Wells, ‘‘From the Wildest Fantasy,’’ 158. 34. Robert Conquest, Tyrants and Typewriters: Communique´s from the Struggle for Truth (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books/D.C. Heath, 1989), 88.

CHAPTER 12

1. Jeffreys-Jones, Cloak and Dollar, 156; Wise, American Police State, 187. 2. Stanisfield Turner, Secrets and Democracy: The CIA in Transition (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983), 75; David Caute, The Dancer Defects: The Struggle for Cultural Supremacy During the Cold War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 3. 3. Thomas W. Braden, ‘‘I’m Glad the CIA Is Immoral,’’ Saturday Evening Post, May 20, 1967, 10. 4. Lucas, ‘‘Revealing the Parameters of Opinion,’’ 27. 5. Alan Johnson, ‘‘The Cultural Cold War: Faust, Not the Pied Piper,’’ New Politics (summer 2001), http://www.wpunj.edu/newol/issue31/johnson31. 6. Warren S. Walker, ‘‘Spying: The Second Oldest Profession,’’ Saturday Review, May 25, 1963, 30. 7. Harry Howe Ransom, ‘‘Containing Central Intelligence,’’ New Republic, December

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NOTES

11, 1965; Geoffrey Wheatcroft, ‘‘Better Read Than Red,’’ Times Literary Supplement, July 16, 1999, 9. 8. David Welch, ‘‘Black Propaganda,’’ in Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present, ed. Nicholas J. Cull, David Culbert, and David Welch (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003), 41; Raymond Durgnant, ‘‘The Ugly American,’’ Films and Filming, July 1963, 21. 9. Del Pero, ‘‘United States and ‘Psychological Warfare’ in Italy,’’ 1304, 1306. 10. Wells, Dustbins, Democracy, and Defence, 62, 65. 11. Geoff Brown quoted ibid., 64. 12. Edward Buscombe, ‘‘Columbia, 1926–1941,’’ Screen (autumn 1975): 72. 13. Piers Brandon, The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s (New York: Knopf, 2000), 499. 14. Winston, Claiming the Real, 65. 15. Sarris quoted in Richard Corliss, ‘‘Confessions of a Sarriste,’’ in Citizen Sarris: Essays in Honor of Andrew Sarris, ed. Emanuel Levy (Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2001), 131. 16. David Wallechinsky, ‘‘Parade’s Annual List of the World’s Ten Worst Dictators,’’ Parade, January 22, 2006, 4–6. 17. Fred J. Cook, ‘‘The CIA,’’ The Nation, June 24, 1961, 529. 18. Davison, Orwell and Politics, 233; Crick, George Orwell, 490. 19. Orwell quoted in Peter Crowcroft, ‘‘Power and Writing: the Orwell Analysis,’’ New Republic, January 3, 1955, 17; see also 18. 20. David Welch, ‘‘Propaganda, Definitions of,’’ in Cull, Culbert, and Welch, Propaganda and Mass Persuasion, 321, 322. 21. Barbara Tuchman, The Zimmermann Telegram (New York: Macmillan, 1958), 200.

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SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

ARCHIVES

American Heritage Center, University of Wyoming, Laramie, Wyoming John Anspacher Collection Louis de Rochemont Papers Animation Research Centre, Surrey Institute of Art and Design, Farnham, England Halas & Batchelor Collection W. E. B. DuBois Library, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts Gordon Heath Papers Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills, California Hal Kanter, Oral History Production Code Administration Files International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York Lothar Wolff Papers Munger Library, Boston University, Boston, Massachusetts Finis Farr Papers National Archive (UK), Kew, Richmond, Surrey, England Public Records Office George Orwell Archive, University of London, London, England Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey Firestone Library: J. Bryan III Papers Mudd Library: ‘‘Nassau Herald’’ Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center, University of Texas, Austin, Texas Alfred A. Knopf Papers Tamiment Library, New York University, New York, New York American Committee for Cultural Freedom Papers Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri Psychological Strategy Board Files

F E D E R A L B U R E A U O F I N V E S T I G AT I O N S O U R C E S

Carlton Alsop, FOIPA 噛0934652-000 Louis de Rochemont, FOIPA 噛0929536-001 Finis Farr, FOIPA 噛09433002-570 Lothar Wolff, FOIPA 噛09402681-002

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Abramson, Rudy. Spanning the Century: The Life of W. Averill Harriman, 1891–1986. New York: William Morrow and Co., 1992. Agee, James. Agee on Film: Reviews and Comments. Boston: Beacon Press, 1958. ‘‘Agreement Between RD-DR Corporation . . . and Halas & Batchelor Cartoon Films, Ltd. and John and Joy Halas.’’ December 15, 1951. (Copy in author’s possession.) Aldrich, Richard J. The Hidden Hand: Britain, America, and Cold War Secret Intelligence. Woodstock, Vt.: Overlook Press, 2001. Alexander, Geoff. ‘‘Philip Stapp.’’ http://www.cine16.com/stap/htm. Alpers, Benjamin. Dictators, Democracy, and American Culture: Envisioning the Totalitarian Enemy—1920–1950s. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. Alsop, Stewart, and Thomas Braden. Sub Rosa: The OSS and American Espionage. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1964. The American Film Institute Catalog of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States: Feature Films, 1931–1940, Feature Films, 1941–1950, ed. Patricia King Hanson. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993, 1999. Andrew, Christopher, and Oleg Gordievsky. KGB: The Inside Story of Its Foreign Operations from Lenin to Gorbachev. London: Sceptre, 1991. Andrew, Christopher, and Vasili Mitrokhin. The Mitrokhin Archive: The KGB in Europe and the West. London: Penguin Books, 2000. Anstey, Edgar. ‘‘John Grierson, Founder of Film Documentary.’’ In The Movies 7, ed. Ann Lloyd et al., 135. Leicester, UK: Orbis Publishing Co., 1980. ———. ‘‘The March of Time: News as Entertainment.’’ In The Movies 7, ed. Ann Lloyd et al., 124. Leicester, UK: Orbis Publishing Co., 1980. Ash, Timothy Garton. ‘‘Introduction.’’ In Orwell and Politics: Animal Farm in the Context of Essays, Reviews, and Letters Selected from the Complete Works of George Orwell, ed. Peter Davison, xi–xviii. London: Penguin Books, 2001. ———. ‘‘Under the Blanket . . .’’ The Guardian, July 10, 2003, 21. ———. ‘‘Orwell’s List.’’ New York Review of Books, September 8, 2003, 6–11. Barnouw, Eric. Documentary: A History of the Non-Fiction Film. 2d rev. ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Barrett, David M. The CIA and Congress: The Untold Story from Truman to Kennedy. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005. Barrett, Edward W. Truth Is Our Weapon. New York: Funk and Wagnells, 1953. Bayley, John. ‘‘The Last Puritan.’’ New York Review of Books, March 29, 2001, 48–51. ‘‘BBC-TV Does Repeat of Controversial Show Despite Press Squawks.’’ Variety, December 22, 1954. Reprinted in Variety Television Reviews (New York: Garland Publishing, 1991). Behmler, Rudy, ed. Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck: The Golden Years at Twentieth Century-Fox. New York: Grove Press, 1993. Bendazzi, Giannalberto. Cartoons: One Hundred Years of Cinema Animation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. Berghahn, Volker P. America and the Intellectual Cold War in Europe: Shepherd Stone

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———. ‘‘A Singular Opportunity: Gaining Access to CIA Records.’’ Studies in Intelligence 5 (1996). http://www.odei.gov/csi/. ———. Phone interview by author, May 29, 2003. Thomson, David. ‘‘Sir Alfred Hitchcock.’’ In The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, 341–43. New York: Knopf, 2002. Toon Hound. ‘‘The Halas and Batchelor Ruddigore (1957).’’ A Gilbert and Sullivan Discography. http://www.cris.com/⬃oakapple/gasdisc/urdanim.html. Trento, Joseph J. The Secret History of the CIA. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2005. Tuchman, Barbara. The Zimmerman Telegram. New York: Macmillan, 1958. Turner, Stansfield. Secrets and Democracy: The CIA in Transition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. ———. Burn Before Reading: Presidents, CIA Directors, and Secret Intelligence. New York: Hyperion, 2005. Turner, William W. Hoover’s FBI. Rev. and updated ed. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1993 [1970]. U.S. Congress. House. Committee on Un-American Activities. Hearings, ‘‘Investigation of Communist Activities in the New York City Area—Part 2.’’ 83d Cong., 1st sess., May 5, 1953. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1953. U.S. Department of State. Bureau of Public Affairs, Office of the Historian. History of the National Security Council, 1947–1997. http://www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/ history.html. USIS Filmdienst Filmkatalog, N.p., May 1955. Variety Film Reviews: 1907–1980. New York: Garland Publishing, 1980. Vicary, Elizabeth Soe. ‘‘Louis de Rochemont.’’ In American National Biography, ed. John Garraty et al., 4:475–76. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Vidal, Gore. The United States: Essays, 1952–1992. London: Abacus, 1994. Wainwright, Loudon. The Great American Magazine: An Inside History of LIFE. New York: Ballantine Books, 1988. Walker, Jim. ‘‘Halas and Batchelor Studios: Historical Development.’’ Animation Research Centre. http://www.surrart.ack.uk/arc.archive/bb_history.html. Walker, Warren S. ‘‘Spying: The Second Oldest Profession.’’ Saturday Review, May 25, 1963, 30. Wall, Wendy L. ‘‘‘America’s Best Protagonists’: Italian Americans and the 1948 Letters to Italy Campaign.’’ In Cold War Constructions: The Political Culture of United States Imperialism, 1945–1966, ed. Christian G. Appy, 17–31. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2000. Wallechinsky, David. ‘‘Parade’s Annual List of the World’s Ten Worst Dictators.’’ Parade, January 22, 2006, 4–6. Wall Street Journal. ‘‘Generation ‘X.’’’ February 20, 2004, A16. ———. ‘‘In Quest for Oil Security.’’ February 4, 2004, A6. Warburg, Frederic. All Authors Are Equal. London: Hutchinson, 1973. Warner, Michael, ed. CIA Cold War Records: The CIA Under Harry Truman. Washington, D.C.: Central Intelligence Agency, Center for the Study of Intelligence, 1994. Watts, Richard, Jr. ‘‘Voice of America.’’ New Republic, September 6, 1948, 26.

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Watts, Stephen. ‘‘Metamorphosis of a Menagerie.’’ In The New York Times Encyclopedia of Film, November 2, 1952. New York: Times Books, 1985. Wear. ‘‘The Fighting Lady.’’ Variety Film Reviews, 1906–1980, vol. 7, 1943–1948, December 20, 1944. New York: Garland Publishing, 1982. Weiler, A. H. ‘‘The Screen: New York and Hollywood.’’ In The New York Times Encyclopedia of Film, November 2, 1952. New York: Times Books, 1985. Weiner, Tim. ‘‘The Spying Game.’’ New York Times Book Review, April 10, 2005. Weiner, Tim, and Barbara Crossette. ‘‘George F. Kennan Dies at 101; Leading Strategist of Cold War.’’ New York Times, obituaries, March 18, 2005. Weinstein, Allen, and Aleksander Vassiliev. The Haunted Wood: Soviet Espionage in America—the Stalin Era. New York: Random House, 1999. Welch, David. ‘‘Black Propaganda.’’ In Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present, ed. Nicholas J. Cull, David Culbert, and David Welch, 41–42. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003. ———. ‘‘Propaganda, Definitions of.’’ In Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present, ed. Nicholas J. Cull, David Culbert, and David Welch, 321–22. Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2003. Wells, Paul. ‘‘Dustbins, Democracy, and Defence: Halas and Batchelor and the Animated Film in Britain, 1940–1957.’’ In War Culture: Social Change and Changing Experiences in World War Two, ed. Pat Kirkham and David Thomas, 61–72. London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1995. ———. ‘‘From the Wildest Fantasy to the Coldest Fact.’’ In Halas & Batchelor, ed. Halas and Wells, 157–80. Wheatcroft, Geoffrey. ‘‘Better Read Than Red.’’ Times Literary Supplement, July 16, 1999, 9. Whelan, Bernadette. ‘‘Marshall Plan Publicity and Propaganda in Italy and Ireland, 1947–1951.’’ Historical Journal of Film, Radio, and Television 23 (October 2003): 311–29. ———. ‘‘Ireland, the Marshall Plan, and U.S. Cold War Concerns.’’ Journal of Cold War Studies 8 (2006): 69–81. Whitaker, Harold. Phone interview by author, July 27, 2004. Whitaker, Harold, and John Halas. Timing for Animation. Jordan Hall, U.K., and Woburn Hall, Mass.: Focal Press, 1999. Widmer, James. ‘‘Radio Days: The March of Time.’’ http://www.ptr.ckm/march .html. Wilcox, Christopher. ‘‘Book Shelf: A Secret Soldier in the War of Ideas.’’ Wall Street Journal, March 27, 2000, 46. ‘‘William G. Sebold, Wilhelm Georg Debrowski, AKA: William G. Sawyer—U.S. Double Agent During World War II (1899–?).’’ http://www.angeldfie.com/ oz/1spy/Sebold. Winks, Robin. Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961. New York: Quill/William Morrow, 1987. Winston, Brian, Claiming the Real: The Documentary Film Revisited. London: British Film Institute Publishing, 1995. Wise, David. The American Police State. New York: Random House, 1976. Wise, David, and Thomas B. Ross. The Invisible Government. New York: Random House, 1965.

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Wolff, Lothar. ‘‘Reminiscences of an Itinerant Filmmaker.’’ Journal of the University Film Association 24, no. 4 (1972): 88–95. ———. Interview by Elaine Felsher. Time, Inc., Oral History Project, June 4, 1985. (Copy in author’s possession.) Woodhouse, C. M. Something Ventured. London: Granada, 1982. Yarmolinsky, Adam. The Military Establishment: Its Impact on American Society. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. Zacherias, Elias M., in collaboration with Ladislas Farago. Behind Closed Doors: The Secret History of the Cold War. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1950. Zegard, Amy B. Flawed by Design: The Evolution of the CIA, JCS, and NSC. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Zolotow, Maurice. ‘‘Want to Be a Movie Star?’’ Saturday Evening Post, March 29, 1952, 24–28. Zuckerman, Laurence. ‘‘U.S. CIA Made Orwell’s Animal Farm, 1984 Film Is AntiCommunist.’’ New York Times, March 18, 2000.

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Agee, James, 27 Albania, 66 Alsop, Carlton afterlife of, 127 narration and, 103–5 production and, 70–71 reputation of, 19 rights negotiated by, 41, 44, 45 American Committee for Cultural Freedom (accf ), 117–18 Angus, Ian, 43, 143 n. 2 Animal Farm (book) in education, 122–23 ending of, 73–74, 81–82, 85–86, 101 in narration, 97–98 politics of, 6–9, 73–74 publication of, 1, 2–6 radio adaptation of, 139 reviews of, 4, 5–6 rights to negotiated, 35–36 writing of, 1–2 Animal Farm (film) afterlife of, 121–22, 137, 138 animation of, 59–72, 95–96, 100–101, 112, 116–17 characters in, 75–77, 79–80, 81–82, 83– 84, 91, 95–96, 101, 105 completion of, 96, 97, 107–8 contracts concerning, 57–58 cost of, 57–58, 66, 69–70, 95–96, 100– 101, 102 de Rochemont selected for, 21, 34 distribution of, 108, 109–10, 112–15, 117– 19, 121–22, 138 in education, 123, 137 ending of, 73–74, 77, 80, 81–82, 83, 84, 85–89, 101–2, 115–16, 136 funding for, xiii, xiv, 18, 37–38, 39–41, 44–45, 54, 57–58, 69–70, 70–71, 113 Halas & Batchelor selected for, 53–58 Hallmark/Artisan Entertainment version of, 90

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INDX

length of, 59, 96 narration for, 97–107 plot lines for, 62–64, 66, 73–74, 77, 80, 81–82, 85–92, 96 politics of, filming and, 85–96 politics of, narration and, 97–105 politics of, vision for, 73–84, 130–31 premieres of, 109–10, 114, 115 profits of, 112, 117 reviews of, 109, 110–12, 115–17, 138 rights to negotiated, 36–37, 39–45, 57, 78, 104 scholarship on, xv–xvii, 44–45 screenplays for, 37–38, 73–74, 75–77, 78– 84, 81–84, 85–92, 95–96, 97–98, 107–8 storyboards for, 39, 57, 62–64 women in, 95 animation, 47–48, 59–72, 95–96, 100–101, 112, 116–17 Anspacher, John, 94 Ash, Timothy Garton, 9 Associated British-Pathe´, 115 Association Internationale du Film d’Animation, 130 Atlee, Clement, 51 Bakshi, Ralph, 167 n. 18 Baptism of Fire, 25 Barnes, Tracy, 94 Barrett, Edward, 16–17 Bass, John, 65 Batchelor, Joy, 48–49, 129. See also Halas & Batchelor Benjamin, 88–89, 91 Bolshevik Revolution, 6–7 Book-of-the-Month Club, 5 Boomerang, 27, 29 Boxer, 91–92, 102 Braden, Tom, 134, 135, 138, 161 n. 17 British Animated Films, Inc., 49 British Cinema and the Cold War (Shaw), xiv

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190

INDEX

British Color Cartoons, Ltd., 49 British Film Producers Association, 117 Brown, Geoff, 137 Bryan, Joseph J., III afterlife of, 126 animation and, 65–66, 70 Farr and, 161 n. 6 narration and, 104–5 in Office of Policy Coordination, 19, 39 Orwell, Sonia, and, 41, 42 in politics of Animal Farm, 73–74, 78– 79, 81, 83–84, 85–86, 95 Burgess, Guy, 21 Cagney, James, 29 Cape, Jonathan, 3 capitalism, 83, 89 Capra, Frank, 93 Carroll, Wallace, 94 Caute, David, 133–34 censorship, 157 n. 28 Central Intelligence Act of 1949, 17 Central Intelligence Agency (cia). See also Office of Policy Coordination (opc) animation and, 65–66, 70–71 anonymity of, 70–71, 135–36, 137–38 covert action by, 66, 77–78, 133–36, 137–40 files of, xiii–xiv, xx, 42 funding for Animal Farm, xiii, xiv, 18, 39–41, 44–45, 57–58, 69–70, 70–71 narration and, 103–5 Office of Policy Coordination and, 14– 20, 38–39 origins of, xvii–xviii, 11–12, 133 politics of Animal Farm, 73–77, 78–84, 85–86 Socialism and, 8–9 Central Office of Information (coi), 51–52 characters cost of production and, 95–96 politics of developing, 75–77, 79–80, 81– 82, 83–84, 91, 101 voiceovers for, 105 Charley, 52, 54, 55 Churchill, Winston, 7 Cinemiracle, 125 Cinerama Holiday, 124–25, 160 n. 42 Clapperboard, 155 n. 8 Cline, Ray, xviii Clover, 95

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Cohen, Karl F., 45 Cohen, Nick, xvii, 42, 134 Cold War, xiv–xv, xvi–xvii, xvii–xix Columbia Pictures, 23, 30, 33, 40, 113–14 Commentary, 112 communism. See also socialism; Soviet Union in Albania, 66 de Rochemont and, 30 in Iran, 145 n. 26 in Italy, xvii–xviii liberation from, 77–78, 80, 86–89 in Spain, 1 in Western Europe, 12, 15–20 Wolff on, 76 condoms, 19 Congress for Cultural Freedom, 117 Conquest, Robert, 130 containment, 13, 18, 77–78 Cortazzi, H. A. H., 119 cost of production, 57–58, 66, 69–70, 95– 96, 100–101, 102 covert action. See also propaganda projects; psychological warfare by Central Intelligence Agency, 66, 77– 78, 133–36, 137–40 by Information Research Department, 35–36 by National Security Council, 12–15 by Office of Policy Coordination, 14–20, 77–78 Crick, Bernard, xix, 4, 139 Cripps, Stafford, 52, 54 Crowther, Bosley, 28–29, 111 Cry of the World, 23 CUE, 112 Cummings, Homer, 29 Daily Worker, 116 Davison, Peter, xv, xix, 3, 122–23, 139 D. C. Heath, 124 de Corsia, Ted, 24 Deep Are the Roots, 106 de la Roche, Catherine, 116–17 Denham, Maurice, 105 de Rochemont, Louis afterlife of, 123–26 animation and, 66, 68–69 distribution and, 113–14 drinking by, 125 early life of, 21–23

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PAGE 190

INDEX

funding provided for, xiv, 37–38, 39–41, 69–70, 113 Halas & Batchelor and, 53–54, 68–69, 70, 95, 102–3 Man on a String, xiv–xv The March of Time, 23–26, 29–30 narration and, 98–99, 102 papers of, xv, xx plot lines and, 63 politics of, 30–31, 34 politics of Animal Farm, 73–74, 75, 78– 79, 80–81, 85–86, 88, 92, 95, 98– 99, 102 at rd-dr, 31–34 on Reed, 68 reputation of, 21, 34 reviews and, 110 rights negotiated by, 39–41, 57, 78 screenplays and, 75 selected for Animal Farm, 21, 34 at Twentieth Century Fox, 26–29, 31 Wolff and, 55, 56 Dial Press, 4 Disney, Walt, 54, 58, 66–67, 95, 112 distribution, 108, 109–10, 112–15, 117–19, 121–22, 138 Distributors Corporation of America (dca), 114 Donovan, William, 28 Doskow, Ambrose, 40 Dulles, John Foster, 77–78 Dustbin Parade, 50 Dyer, Anson, 60–61

afterlife of, 126–27 animation and, 66 Bryan and, 161 n. 6 on Hunt, 44, 154 n. 30 in Office of Policy Coordination, 19–20, 39 Orwell, Sonia, and, 41, 42 in politics of Animal Farm, 73–75, 78–79 rights negotiated by, 44, 45 Federal Bureau of Investigation (fbi), 28, 29–30, 31, 56–57, 104. See also Hoover, J. Edgar Feldzug in Polen, 25 The Fighting Lady, 26–27, 99 Filling the Gap, 50 Filmdienst Filmkatalog, 31 Film Service Film Catalogue, 31 Fischer, Louis, 99 Flying Free, 51 Foldes, Peter, 51, 156 n. 17 Foreign Affairs, 13 Forrestal, James V., xvii–xviii Fox Movietone, 22–23 Frederick, 76 Fritz the Cat, 167 n. 18 funding by Central Intelligence Agency, xiii, xiv, 39–41, 70–71 by Columbia Pictures, 113 by de Rochemont, 54, 57–58, 69–70 by Office of Policy Coordination, 18

East of Farewell, 154 n. 30 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 (Marx), 2 Economic Cooperation Administration (eca), 17–18, 52–53, 54, 55, 65, 76 education, 122–23, 137 Eldridge, David, 165 n. 26 Eliot, T. S., 3 Elster, Lemist, 37–38 Europe, 12, 15–20, 52–53, 77–78. See also individual countries European Recovery Program, 17–18, 52–53 Evans, Richard, xx Faber & Faber, 3 farmers, 79–80. See also Jones, Farmer Farr, Finis

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191

INDX

Gable, Clark, 41–43 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 22 Garland, Judy, 104 G. B. Animation, 61 General Film Distributors, 114 Germany, 25, 28, 76, 78, 122 Gibbs, Wolcott, 99 Girard, Lillian, 118 Gollancz, Victor, 2–3 The Grapes of Wrath, 89–90 Great Britain. See also Information Research Department (ird) animation in, 47–48, 59–60, 64 distribution in, 117, 118–19 in India, 22 in Iran, 145 n. 26 Marshall Plan in, 52–53 Pilkington as, 76 reviews in, 115–17

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192

INDEX

Great Britain (continued ) Socialism in, 51–52 trade by, 89 Greaves, William, 106 Greene, 144 n. 7 Grierson, John, 50, 55, 121, 136, 138 Guardian, 154 n. 31 Gunther, John, 22

Hoffmann, Paul, 18, 54 Homage to Catalonia, 2, 3 Home Vision Entertainment, 65, 155 n. 31 Hoover, J. Edgar, 29–30, 34, 125, 127 The House on 92nd Street, 27–28, 29 Howard, Michael, 77 Hungary, 78 Hunt, E. Howard, xvi, 41, 44–45, 127–28, 154 n. 30

Hadden, Briton, 99 Halas, John, 39, 48–49, 59, 130, 155 n. 8, 167 n. 11. See also Halas & Batchelor Halas, Vivien, 41, 55, 65, 70, 100, 154 n. 21 Halas & Batchelor afterlife of, 128–30 animation by, 59–72 anniversary of, 155 n. 8 de Rochemont and, 53–54, 68–69, 70, 95, 102–3 distribution and, 113, 114–15 early work of, 49–54, 69, 136–37 on funding, 71 narration and, 97–98, 100–103, 104–6, 107 in politics of Animal Farm, 75, 78–79, 81–84, 85–92, 95–96 at premiere, 110 reputation of, 47–48 screenplays and, 75, 78–79, 81–84, 85– 92, 95–96, 97–98, 100–103, 104–5 selected for Animal Farm, xiv, 53–57 storyboards prepared by, 39, 57, 62–64 studio of, 60, 61, 67, 129–30 Hale, Wanda, 111 Hall, Jacquelyn Dowd, 45 Hallmark/Artisan Entertainment, 90 Hand, David, 61 Handling Ships, 50–51 Harcourt, Brace, 5–6 Harriman, W. Averill, 18, 54 Hatch, Robert, 112 Hathaway, Henry, 27 Heath, Gordon, 106–7 Hecksher, August, 118 Heideman, Leonard, 37–38 Hemsing, Albert, 157 n. 28 Henderson, Loy, 145 n. 26 Heppenstall, Rayner, 139 Hirsch, Richard, 94 The History of Communism, 31 Hitchcock, Alfred, 62

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India, 22 Information Research Department (ird), 35–36, 118–19, 139–40, 152 n. 2 International Film Foundation, 23 Iran, 145 n. 26 Italy, xvii–xviii J. Arthur Rank Organization, 60, 61, 64 Jones, Farmer, 75–76, 79, 88 Jones, Mrs., 95 Judt, Tony, 42 J. Walter Thompson agency, 49 Kael, Pauline, 32 Kanter, Hal, 103, 104 Kaufman, Gerald, 116, 152 n. 2 Kazan, Elia, 27, 29, 106, 125 Kennan, George, 12–14, 18, 77–78 Kennedy, Robert, 127 Kerry, John, 157 n. 28 Kirwan, Celia, 152 n. 2 Korean War, 30 Krahberger, Franz, 45 Kulturkampf, 133–34 Larsen, Roy, 23–24, 26 Lasswell, Harold, 140 League of American Writers, 74 Lejeune, C. A., 116 Life magazine, 99 Long, Huey, 109 Long Telegram, 13 Lost Boundaries, 32–33, 40–41 Luce, Henry, 24, 25, 30, 99 Luraschi, Luigi, 165 n. 26 Macdonald, Dwight, 7 Mace, F. Bordon on afterlife projects, 124, 125 on costs, 58, 70 distribution and, 109, 113–14, 115, 118

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INDEX

on funding, 40, 71 narration and, 102, 107, 108 in politics of Animal Farm, 80–81, 85–86 on production, 37, 97 Mackenzie, Norman, 143 n. 7 Maclean, Donald, 21 The Magic Canvas, 51 ‘‘Magic Carpet of Movietone,’’ 22–23 Magoo, Mister, 113 Major, old, 98 Maloney, Martin, 114 Man on a String, xiv–xv, 123–24 Manvell, Roger, 58, 89 March of the Years, 23 March of Time (film), 24 The March of Time (film series), 24–26, 29– 30, 109 The March of Time (radio), 23–24 Marshall, George, 17 Marshall Plan, 17–18, 39, 52–53, 65, 76 Martin, John Stuart, 26, 98–103 Marx, Karl, 2 Mazzochi, Tony, 168 n. 39 McFee, William, 154 n. 30 Menand, Louis, xvi Meyer, Michael, 2 Meyers, Jeffrey, 7 Ministry of Information (moi), 50 Minnelli, Vincente, 104 Mollie, 95 Morley, Christopher, 5 Morley, Frank, 5 Morros, Boris, xv, 124, 141 n. 8 Mossadegh, 145 n. 26 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, xiv Mr. District Attorney, 161 n. 6 Much Binding in the Marsh, 105 Muggeridge, Malcolm, 116 Napoleon narration and, 101 politics of developing, 75–76, 79, 81–82, 84, 87, 88 narration, 97–107 Nation, 6 national security, xiii–xiv National Security Act of 1947, 11–12 National Security Council (nsc), 12–15. See also Office of Policy Coordination (opc)

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193 New Masses, 6 New Republic, 4, 5 New York Daily News, 111 New Yorker, 6 Nichols, Louis B., 56–57 Nineteen Eighty-Four, 110, 115, 119, 169 n. 43 Office of Policy Coordination (opc) covert action by, 15–20, 77–78 de Rochemont and, 31, 34 files of, 42 funding for Animal Farm, 37–38, 39–41, 69–70 Halas & Batchelor and, 69 organization of, 159 n. 25 origins of, 14–15 rights negotiated by, 104 Office of Special Operations, 14 Office of Special Projects. See Office of Policy Coordination (opc) Office of Strategic Service (OSS), 15, 28 O’Hara, John, 104 Operation Penis Envy, 19 Orwell, George on happiness, 145 n. 23 Homage to Catalonia, 2, 3 Information Research Department and, 139–40 politics of, 1–2, 6–9 on propaganda, 140 radio adaptation by, 139 reputation of, 4, 43–44 scholarship on, xix–xx writes Animal Farm, 1–2 Orwell, Sonia Alsop and, 103 approval required by, 39, 41–44 biography resisted by, xix on Nineteen Eighty-Four, 115 plot lines and, 63 at premiere, 110 as widow, 43 Oxford Vision Resource Pack, 123 Pal, George, 49 Paris Theatre, 109, 118 Pathe´ Cine´ma, 109 Pearson, Drew, 56–57 Philby, Kim, 3, 36, 66 Pichel, Irving, 151 n. 29

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PAGE 193

194

INDEX

pigs in Boxer scene, 92, 102 in ending, 77, 81–82, 86–89, 101–2 symbolism of, 79 Pilkington, 76, 81, 89 Pimlott, Ben, 8 plausible deniability, 14–15 plot lines Boxer scene, 91–92 development of, 62–64, 73–74 for ending, 66, 77, 80, 81–82, 85–89 miscellaneous, 96 Policy Planning Staff (PPS), 12–13 Politics, 6 Powell, Dilys, 115–16 premieres, 109–10, 114, 115 Production Code Administration (pca), 107–8 profits, 112, 117 propaganda projects, 16–17, 18–20, 50–53, 117–19, 133–40. See also covert action; psychological warfare Psychological Strategy Board (psb), 92–95 psychological warfare, 16–17, 18–20, 92–95, 134–35, 153 n. 11. See also covert action; propaganda projects Putin, Vladimir, 130–31 Question 7, 170 n. 17 race, 32–33, 106 Radios, xviii, 16–17, 78 Rahv, Philip, 4–5 The Ramparts We Watch, 24–25 Rank Group, 48 rd-dr Corporation, 31–34, 39–41, 57–58 Reader’s Digest, 31–34 Reed, John, 66–68, 112 Reeves, Nicholas, 122 Rennie, John, 119 reviews, 109, 110–12, 115–17, 138 rights, negotiation of, 36–37, 39–45, 57, 78, 104 Ritz Theatre, 115 rko, 26, 114 Rodden, John on distribution, xvi–xvii on education, 123 on Hallmark/Artisan Entertainment version, 90 on Marx, 2

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INDX

on Orwell’s code, 6 on reviews, 111, 167 n. 11 on Woodhouse, 8 Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, 124 Roosevelt, Franklin D., 7 Ruddigore, 128 Russia, 130–31, 138–39 Sarris, Andrew, 138 Scherman, Harry, 5 Schlesinger, Arthur, Jr., 5, 15, 44 Schwartz, Delmore, 111–12 Scott, Martha, 104 screenplays cost of production and, 95–96 early versions of, 37–38, 73–74 final versions of, 107–8 narration and, 97–98, 104–5 politics of developing, 75–77, 78–84, 85–92 Sebold, William, 28 Secker, Martin, 3 Secker & Warburg, 3–4 Seven Commandments, 87, 96 Shaw, Tony, xiii, xiv, xvii, 35–36, 41, 85 Sheen, Fulton J., 25 sheep, 87 Sheridan, Lesley, 36 The Shoemaker and the Hatter, 53, 65 Sidney, Sylvia, 104 Smith, Walter Bedell, 38–39, 77, 93, 153 n. 11 Smollett, Peter, 3, 143 n. 7 Snowball, 75–76, 79, 83, 84, 101 Snow White, 95, 112 socialism, 7–9, 51–52, 76, 80. See also communism Sokolsky, George, 165 n. 26 ‘‘The Sources of Soviet Conduct,’’ 13 Soviet Union. See also Stalin, Joseph Animal Farm criticizes, 1–2, 6–9 bear symbol in, 145 n. 27 containment of, 13, 18, 77–78 de Rochemont and, 30 threat of, 12–13, 130–31, 134 trade with, 89 West’s view of, 82–83 Spain, 1 Spender, Stephen, 42 Spiegel, Sam, 141 n. 8 Spurling, Hilary, 42 Squealer, 84, 87, 91–92, 102

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PAGE 194

INDEX

Stalin, Joseph, 1–2, 4–5, 6–9, 38, 75–76. See also Soviet Union Stapp, Phil, 64–65 Steichen, Edward, 26 Stein, Sol, 118 Steinbeck, John, 89–90 Stonor Saunders, Frances on Alsop, 165 n. 26 on covert action, 134 on cultural warfare, 117 on funding for Animal Farm, xiii on Hunt, 45 on Orwell, Sonia, 41 scholarship of, xvi–xvii storyboards, 39, 57, 62–64 Story of the Vatican, 25 Tanner, Louise, 24 Teheran Conference, 86 The Third Man, 144 n. 7 13 Rue Madeleine, 27, 28–29 Thomas, Evan, xiv, 41, 42 Time, Inc., 23–24, 26, 30 Time magazine, 99, 111 Todd-AO, 125 totalitarianism, 1–2, 6–9, 76, 80, 138–39 Touchstone, Inc., 40 Tourtellot, Arthur, 26 To Your Health, 65 Trotsky, Leon, 38, 75–76, 79, 84 Truman, Harry, 11–12, 17–18, 30 Truth, 116 Tuchman, Barbara, 140 Twentieth Century Fox, 26–29, 31 United Productions of America (upa), 112–13 U.S. Army, 36 U.S. Coast Guard, 55–56 U.S. Information Service (usis), 31 U.S. Navy, 32

................. 16251$

195 Variety, 112 Vidal, Gore, xvi, 127 Viereck, Peter, 5 Vogue, 6 Walk East on Beacon, 30, 57, 123 Wallace, De Witt, 32 Walter Lantz Company, 36 Wandering Through China, 22–23 Warburg, Frederic, 2, 3–4 Watergate scandal, 127–28 We Are the Marines, 25 Welles, Orson, 24 West, Rebecca, 2 The Whistle at Eaton Falls, 33 Whitaker, Harold, 61, 67, 129 White, W. L., 32, 33 Whymper, 84 Wilson, Edmund, 6 Winchell, Walter, 111 Windjammer, 125 Winds of Freedom, 19 Winsten, Archer, 109, 111 Wise, David, 133 Wisner, Frank Gardiner, 15–20, 38, 39, 77, 78, 161 n. 17 Wolff, Lothar afterlife of, 126 Halas & Batchelor and, 53–54, 55–57, 68, 69 in politics of Animal Farm, 76–77, 79, 80–81, 82, 83–84, 85–86, 92, 95 rights negotiated by, 39 Woodcock, George, 1 Woodhouse, C. M., 8, 145 n. 26 Worberg, Charles R., Jr., 93 World War I, 24–25 World War II, 25, 86 Yarmolinsky, Adam, 12 Zanuck, Darryl, 27, 31

INDX

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PAGE 195