Walt's Thoughts in Audio
Walt's Recollections of the South American Tour
Q. How did the project come about?
Q. Who accompanied you on the journey?
Q. What was the result of the trip?
Q. How did the project come about?
"Well, the government came to me about that time and wanted me to go to South America . . . to build up our relationship down there. And they wanted me to go down kind of representing the cultural side. . . Nelson Rockefeller's group -- through Jock Whitney, under the State Department, the coordinator of Inter-American Affairs. They wanted me to just go on a tour. I said, 'I'm no good at that.' I said, 'I can't do that.' So they said, 'Well, just go down and you'll meet the people and everything.' 'No,' I said. Our pictures were rather popular down there. There was a kind of a Nazi influence down there, you see. I said, 'No. I won't do it. ' So then they came back and said 'Well, will you go down and make some pictures?' They said, 'Well you go down and see if you can't find something that you can make about those countries.' . . . They said, 'We're basically interested in what we call the ABC countries. You see? Argentine, Brazil, Chile. And I said, 'Well, yes I'd like to do that. I said, 'That could be stimulating, and I think we could get something interesting out of that.' I said, 'I'd feel better about going down there and really doing something instead of going down there and shaking a hand.'
Q. Who accompanied you on the journey?
"I picked 18 of my artists. I brought a representative group -- cartoonists, storymen, musicians, and things. The strike was still on and they said 'Go (to South America). Don't worry -- we'll take care of that. We'll have the Labor Board come in, and we'll get 'em together and we'll settle this strike.'"
"It was a good time . . . I had the place all buttoned down and wasn't doing too much. We made a tour and everything and it lasted about six weeks. I set up a shop. Never went near the embassy. Didn't go around the usual haunts of the goodwill people. I went right in. I set up my studio in Brazil. It was open to all crafts, all the artists and things, and everything . . . I went and visited the ambassador, but told him, 'Look,' I said. 'I'm here on a mission of trying to get the material.' I did the same in Argentina. We visited Chili. I divided my crew and sent some of 'em back by plane so they could see some of the other stops. I took another group on the boat from Valparaiso, and we had our story meetings every morning. They were free in the afternoon and everything else . . . by the time I got back, I had most of my stories ready. I had four."
Q. What was the result of the trip?
"I made the pictures. Four of 'em. I made one on Brazi --; one on the Argentine -- one on Chile -- and one on Peru. And when I got 'em made, a little problem came up. The distributor said, 'Walt. If we try to release the Brazilian in the Argentine, they won't want it. We can't sell the Argentine to Brazil. The Peruvian we know won't go in Chile and the Chilean won't go in Peru and . . .' They said, 'You've got to put these together somehow. So I didn't know how to put 'em together but I had taken a16 mm film of our trip, of artists working and different things like that. I took the 16 mm film, blew it up to 35, used it as connections between the four subjects and presented it as a tour of my artists around and it all went as a package, and we called it 'Saludos Amigos.' . . . And the thing cost $280,000 and the government never put up a nickel. . . Never had to put up a nickel. We never took a nickel from 'em. We paid our own trip out of the thing. . . And the thing grossed about a milion two or a million three. . . It went big here. It went big all over!"
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