Original subtitles

Here is the most unusual feature film Walt Disney ever made.

A film intended not so much to entertain,

but to send a message.

Walt, like many people, was impressed by the text

of a book called Victory Through Air Power,

written by Major Alexander P. De Seversky.

In it, this Russian born naturalized American citizen,

who became a key figure in the advancement of U.S. military aviation,

called for an overhaul of our priorities.

He was convinced that the only way to win the war

was to focus our energies

on creating long-range bomber planes.

Remember that when this film was released in 1943,

victory in Europe and the Pacific was far from certain.

...spearhead of short-range aviation,

pushed step by step through the Balkans.

There was no end in sight and our losses were tremendous.

Walt believed in the principles of Seversky's book.

And felt it was his patriotic duty to spread the word.

By making a Technicolor feature film about the subject,

with limited commercial potential,

in the midst of many other wartime duties,

Walt quite simply put his money where his mouth was.

The message Seversky delivers, quite convincingly in this film,

isn't about aggression or warmongering.

It's about winning a war against enemies

who were bent on world domination.

A war America stayed out of,

until we were attacked without provocation at Pearl Harbor.

That's the historical context

that gives meaning to this film today.

For animation buffs, it's yet another example

of how skillfully the Disney artists

adapted their visual storytelling techniques

to a deadly serious purpose.

And how successful they were.

In the introductory history of aviation,

there's room for humor.

Even in the later sections of the film,

there's tremendous creativity.

From the staging of battle scenes and explosions to the use of visual metaphors.

To make sure Major Seversky made his presentation

as persuasively as possible,

Walt hired a professional director,

a man of long experience on stage and in Hollywood,

H.C. Potter, to film these lecture segments.

Potter's many movie credits include

Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House,

The Farmer's Daughter, Hell's A'Poppin',

and the story of Vernon and Irene Castle.

But more importantly, he was a flier himself,

and already acquainted with its star.

He certainly did his job well in this movie,

because Seversky comes off quite well,

and doesn't seem stiff or severe.

When I interviewed Mr. Potter years ago, he had fond memories of Seversky,

whom he knew as Sasha. But he also remembered

he had to shoot those sequences at night

because Walt didn't have sufficient soundproofing

to drown out the noise from Lockheed Aircraft nearby.

Potter's approach was to make Seversky's speeches seem as far

from a lecture as possible.

So he gave him lots of movement and other suggestions

to make the speeches seem as casual as possible.

He especially remembered one night, when Sasha couldn't hit his marks,

the places where the camera and lighting were set up for him.

He said, "Hank, how can I remember the words,

"the expression, the meaning, the walking without limping,"

because he had one wooden leg, "and hit these marks,

"and think of what I'm saying at the same time?"

Potter replied, "When you're flying airplanes,

"you're flying a plane, you're navigating,

"you're looking at the ground to see if you're going

"where you're supposed to be going.

"You're listening to the radio, watching for other planes,

"and checking your instruments, all at the same time. "

He concluded in a mock Russian accent,

"Your model should be, 'Dewide the attention'."

Seversky loved that, and from that time on

before every shot, the crew would chant,

"Dewide the attention. "

Movie critics weren't crazy about the film.

Walt Disney's own distributor, RKO, didn't want to release it.

So Walt put the film in theaters through United Artists.

But the most important response to the movie came from Winston Churchill.

When he flew to Quebec for an Allied conference,

and learned that President Roosevelt

hadn't seen the movie, he and Air Marshal Tedder

prodded him until he ordered that a print be sent to him.

H.C. Potter was told by Walt that it was only after

Roosevelt saw Victory Through Air Power,

that our country made the commitment to long-range bombing.

And that, after all, was the reason

Walt committed to making this movie in the first place.

Because of its topicality,

the Disney Studio decided to keep this film

in the vaults at the close of World War ll.

Only the history of aviation sequence

was seen in the years since then.

It's with great pleasure that we present

Victory Through Air Power, in its entirety.

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