Q: I’m with the Getty Research Institute and trying to find some information in the Disney Archives—I was hoping you might be able to help me. I am researching the involvement of Disney, among other movie studios, in the early 1940s with the war effort—in lending assistance to concealing and camouflaging airbases, factories and plants, etc. in California, so the locations wouldn’t be detectable by enemy forces. Disney, like other studios, helped in providing set designers, painters, art directors, landscape artists, carpenters, etc.; and I’m trying to find any records that Disney may have kept on these activities. If you could kindly let me know if you’re able to source anything in the Archives’ holdings relating to this, I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you in advance for your help.
Annie, Los Angeles, California
A: Disney artists helped paint the camouflage netting that was installed over the Lockheed Aircraft plant in Burbank, California. The Walt Disney Archives does not have any detailed information on this, just a photograph. You can contact them directly. Lockheed might have materials.
Dave Smith