Meryl Streep Lambasted Walt Disney in Front of Hollywood Elite

On anti-Semitism and gender bigotry

  • Share
  • Read Later
Meryl Streep
Dan MacMedan / WireImage / Getty Images

When Meryl Streep took the stage this week at a dinner party filled  with the who’s who of Hollywood, what began as a tribute to Emma Thompson for her work in Saving Mr. Banks turned into a diatribe against the late Walt Disney.

Although Streep read a poem for her friend — “she’s practically a saint!” — titled An Ode to Emma, or What Emma is Owed, she also took the time to lambaste Walt Disney for his anti-Semitism and sexism at the National Board of Review dinner Tuesday, a precursor to the Golden Globes. Streep, Variety reports, read a letter that Disney, described as a “gender bigot,” sent to a female animator in 1938 that included the line: “Women do not do any of the creative work in connection with preparing the cartoons for the screen, as that task is performed entirely by young men.”

That and his association with an anti-Semitic industry lobbying group were left out of Saving Mr. Banks.

[Variety]