No Women Need Apply: A Disheartening 1938 Rejection Letter from Disney Animation

Put your­self in the mind of an artis­tic young woman who goes to see Dis­ney’s Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs when it first opens in 1937. Cap­ti­vat­ed by the film’s ground­break­ing cel-based cin­e­mat­ic ani­ma­tion, under­stand­ing that it rep­re­sents the future of the art form, you feel you should pur­sue a career with a stu­dio your­self. Alas, in response to the let­ter of inquiry you send Dis­ney’s way, you receive the terse rejec­tion let­ter above. “Women do not do any of the cre­ative work in con­nec­tion with prepar­ing the car­toons for the screen,” it flat­ly states, “as that work is per­formed entire­ly by young men. For this rea­son girls are not con­sid­ered for the train­ing school.” Your only remain­ing hope? To aim low­er on the totem pole and become an “Inker” or “Painter,” but “it would not be advis­able to come to Hol­ly­wood with the above specif­i­cal­ly in view, as there are real­ly very few open­ings in com­par­i­son with the num­ber of girls who apply.”

Times have changed; women now cre­ate ani­ma­tion. But to catch a glimpse of the indus­try in decid­ed­ly pre-changed times, revis­it the 1939 pro­mo­tion­al doc­u­men­tary short How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made. In it, you’ll see these very young men hard at work, as well as those “pret­ty girls” hired to do ink­ing and col­or. Pre­war Dis­ney turned out some mas­ter­pieces, no doubt, but by today’s stan­dards their atti­tudes toward gen­der may leave some­thing to be desired. “This let­ter orig­i­nal­ly belonged to my grand­moth­er,” writes the user who dis­cov­ered the note above. “After she passed away we dis­cov­ered it and were sur­prised at how well it was pre­served for being near­ly 70 years old.” Young women like her, aspir­ing to high places in ani­ma­tion, found them­selves forced to find alter­nate routes in, although after receiv­ing that rejec­tion let­ter on that sta­tionery — embla­zoned with Snow White her­self, adding insult to injury — I would­n’t blame them for look­ing into oth­er fields entire­ly.

via Soci­o­log­i­cal Images & Mefi

Relat­ed con­tent:

How Walt Dis­ney Car­toons Are Made

Don­ald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Tax­es (1943)

Walt Dis­ney Presents the Super Car­toon Cam­era (1957)

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture and writes essays on lit­er­a­ture, film, cities, Asia, and aes­thet­ics. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.