Meryl Streep. 'Racist proclivities'
Photo: Reuters
Walt Disney. Misleading image?
Photo: Getty Images
Meryl Streep: Disney was an anti-Semite
While honoring British colleague Emma Thompson for her role in 'Saving Mr. Banks,' veteran actress reminds audience that Walt Disney, who is portrayed in film as amiable and tolerant man, 'formed and supported an anti-Semitic industry lobbying group' and 'was a gender bigot'
Academy Award-winning American actress Meryl Streep has a lot of respect for her British colleague Emma Thompson
for both her acting skills and public activity. Streep appears to have a little less respect for Walt Disney, the founder of the huge cinema enterprise.
Speaking during the National Board of Review Awards in New York City early Thursday, Streep got on stage to honor Thompson for her role as the author who worked with Disney to produce the film "Mary Poppins." In the movie, which was directed by John Lee Hancock and distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Disney is portrayed as an amiable and tolerant man.
When asked to present an award to Thompson for her role as P. L. Travers in "Saving Mr. Banks," which presents Disney in a positive light, Streep reminded the audience that Disney was an anti-Semite and a sexist.
Mistake?
Associated Press
State television apologizes for broadcasting 1930s 'Three Little Pigs' that critics say reinforces anti-Semitic stereotypes of era
Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson in 'Saving Mr. Banks'
But from the stage, in a nine-minute speech, Streep lashed out at Disney's misleading image. "Disney, who brought joy, arguably, to billions of people, was perhaps... or had some racist proclivities," she said. "He formed and supported an anti-Semitic industry lobbying group. And he was certainly, on the evidence of his company's policies, a gender bigot.
"When I saw the film, I could just imagine Walt Disney's chagrin at having to cultivate P.L. Travers' favor for the 20 years that it took to secure the rights to her work," she added. "It must have killed him to encounter a woman, an equally disdainful and superior creature, a person dismissive of his own considerable gifts and prodigious output and imagination."
Streep then went on to praise Thompson as a "saint" and "a rabid, man-eating feminist, like I am."
