Stop That Tank!

Stop That Tank! (1942)

A Disney educational animated short instructing the use of the Boys MK.1 Anti-Tank rifle.

Date of release
1942-01-01
TMDB
6.1 / 10 (9)
Runtime
22m
Genres
Animation, Documentary
Director
Ub Iwerks

Interesting facts

Stop That Tank! is a 22-minute 1942 instructional film created during World War II by Walt Disney Productions for the Directorate of Military Training, The Department of National Defence and the National Film Board of Canada (NFB). Its purpose, akin to "edutainment", was to instruct Canadian soldiers in the handling and care of the Boys Mk.1 Anti-tank rifle for use in combat against Nazi tanks. The film presented information in an entertaining manner as well as providing an anti-Nazi propaganda message.

Production

With the outbreak of a global war, Walt Disney Studios felt a great pinch in their finances due to the loss of much of their European market - further limited by the Nazi invasion of France in 1940. This meant that the next Disney release Pinocchio (1940) was only dubbed in Spanish and Portuguese, many fewer languages than previous Disney works.

This loss of profit, combined with losses on recent films, meant that Disney studios faced a bleak outlook, with a deficit of over half a million dollars, layoffs and pay cuts for the first time in the studio's history, and a $2.23 million ceiling on their credit allowance. With bleak prospects, the studio was made into a corporation in April 1940, which raised $3.6 million to help pay off debts owed by the studio.

In March 1941, Disney invited over three dozen representatives of various national defence industries to a lunch meeting, in an attempt to solicit work from them. He followed this luncheon with formal letters offering work "for national defence industries at cost, and without profit.

In response to Disney's efforts, John Grierson, the head of the National Film Board of Canada, entered into a co-production agreement for four animated films to promote the Canadian War Savings Plan. In addition, a training film for the Canadian Army was commissioned, eventually becoming Stop That Tank!.

The day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy issued Disney a contract for 20 training films. Later, Disney had contracts totalling 50 training films for the navy, and went on to become the most important producer of training films for the United States military.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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