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In the 1950s, America’s spies secretly bankrolled the iconic animated film Animal Farm (1954), a cornerstone of a sneaky Cold War strategy to fight communism with culture.
Ironically, it was George Orwell himself, the author of Animal Farm, who first coined the term ‘Cold War’ in a prescient 1945 essay on conflict between superpowers.
The CIA imposed their ending on the film, in which the animals would rise up against their corrupt leadership, to show that revolt against totalitarian regimes is both possible and justifiable.
"There were at least nine versions of the script and heated discussions about the end,” said Vivien Halas, daughter of British co-directors Joy Batchelor and John Halas. It seems however the directors didn’t realize that arguing with producer Louis de Rochemont (and his unseen CIA masters) was futile. The fighting was so intense that it delayed the movie premiere by a year.
Behind the scenes, CIA ‘dirty tricks’ expert and future Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt was pulling the strings. Hunt’s team bought the film rights from Orwell’s young widow, Sonia, in exchange for cash plus an introduction to movie star Clark Gable. In an ironic twist, Animal Farm - a satirical allegory cautioning against a concentration of power - was now in the hands of the CIA Psychological Warfare Workshop. An Orwellian nightmare hand-painted in pastels.
The film was just one part of bigger plans that spies had to exploit Orwell’s legacy:
- In a colorful display of cunning, the CIA packed Animal Farm novels into West German hot air balloons and sent them wafting into Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary from 1952 to 1957. The mission undermined Soviet censors and used literature as a secret weapon to stir up intellectual debate about communism.
- British spies, who’d lost out on the bidding war for the Animal Farm film rights, secured the strip cartoon rights. The British Foreign Office’s Information Research Department funded a newspaper comic strip in the early 1950s which ran in Brazil, Burma, Eritrea, India, Mexico, Thailand, and Venezuela.
- Once the propaganda teams had wrung the opportunities from Animal Farm, they turned to Orwell’s dystopian masterpiece 1984, completed 75 years ago. CIA PsyOps experts now oversaw Orwell’s world of thoughtcrime, ‘doublethink’, and total surveillance where culture was controlled to the degree that citizens could not think independently.
In addition to seeing the SPYSCAPE Squealers & Spies exhibition, Orwell fans can also own a piece of Cold War spy movie artwork from the film itself. Original Animal Farm animation cels and drawings, acquired directly from the filmmakers, are now available for sale through the SPYSCAPE website.
ENDS
About Us: ABOUT SPYSCAPE SPYSCAPE is an innovative edutainment company that engages and inspires people through stories and experiences based on secrets. SPYSCAPE’s 60,000 square feet flagship location in midtown Manhattan is New York City’s #1-rated museum & experience.
Contact Info:
Name: Francis Jago
Email: Send Email
Organization: SKYSCAPE
Website: http://www.spyscape.com/animalfarm
Release ID: 89116019
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