David Hilberman

The studio gave its artists great freedom and pioneered the modern style of animation. As Animator and Professor Tom Sito noted: "Arguably, no studio since Walt Disney exerted such a great influence on world animation." He and Zack Schwartz went on to start Tempo Productions which became an early leader in television animated commercial production. In short, he played an important role in the new directions the art form took in the 1940s and '50s.

Hilberman studied art in schools in both Detroit and Cleveland. The Great Depression began when he was 18, and with its huge economic dislocation promoted political activism and consequential legislation: the Social Security Act and the National Labor Relations Act. In 1932 he traveled with friends to Russia, where all of their parents had been born. He stayed for six months in Leningrad, worked in a theater and studied stagecraft and art. Unable to speak Russian and finding Russians too dogmatic, he returned to Cleveland. There he resumed his education at Case Western Reserve University, earning a B.S. in Art Education in 1934 and continuing his involvement with theater at the Cleveland Play House eventually securing a job teaching art in high school. He married, became aware of a talent search for artists being held by Walt Disney Productions and submitted a portfolio. He became one of 29 artists hired out of several thousand applicants. Hilberman began in animation as an assistant animator and shortly was asked by Bill Tytla to join his unit working on the dwarf sequences in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney's first animated feature film. The film, which had been a major gamble for the Walt Disney studio became a huge artistic and financial success and lead to a series of pioneering animation features. He went on to do layout on six short films and was then put in charge of pre-production layout for Bambi. In preparation, he learned how to use the studio's huge new multiplane camera used for the panoramas through the woods. He was proud of the work done at the studio. The rise of Hitler in Germany during the 1930’s was of growing concern for many. David, (pen name Mark David) with Jerome Lawrence Schwartz worked together in late 1939 to produce Oscar the Ostrich. It featured a screaming Hitler Ostrich who gathered up followers and loose sand dunes. Oscar was the good ostrich who stuck his head in the sand and ignored the screaming, dangerous one. Then the Hitler Ostrich seized the sand dune to the East. This clearly referred to the September 1, 1939 German seizure of Poland which marked the start of World War II, even as Stalin still supported Germany. Oscar and his buddies decide it is time to get angry and fight back.

Many artists had worked long unpaid hours on Snow White. Instead of overtime pay, virtually all employees were promised bonuses for their efforts, some large, some small. Many were never paid as much of the revenues from the feature went into building the new Disney Studio in Burbank. Importantly, the Studio's revenues had been cut in nearly half by the WWII in Europe. By early 1941 artists were being let go without explanation, even when senior and very skilled. These layoffs lead directly to the Disney animators' strike in the spring of 1941. In an FBI interview three weeks after the strike began, Disney blamed these staff cuts for the strike. Nevertheless, two weeks later Disney placed an ad in Hollywood trade papers stated the strike was caused by Communist agitation! Many of these issues are discussed in Karl F. Cohen's 1997 book: Forbidden Animation.

The after effects of the Studio's economic downturn and the strike included a major exodus of talent from Disney. In 1943 David Hilberman, Zack Schwartz and Steve Bosustow, set up a new studio, which became UPA. Notable early films to which he contributed included his most political films: Point Rationing of Foods which was shown nationwide as part of the war effort, then for FDR's 1944 re-election campaign: Hell-Bent for Election and subsequently: Brotherhood of Man. The pamphlet, Races of Mankind on which Brotherhood was based, was written by two eminent anthropologists, Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish and based on U.S. Army studies of recruits in WWI. It was nevertheless banned by the War Department as subversive due to its assertion that racial differences were superficial.