Chapter 16: Building a New, Small World
Excerpt from The King is Dead: The Walt Disney Company After Walt Disney, an Unauthorized History by Sue Donym and Arman N. Said
Hollywood is a fantasy land, and Disney a fantasy within a fantasy. And yet, reality inevitably finds a way into the picture. The world of children’s entertainment in particular can be an ugly world of callous use and even abuse. From Jackie Coogan’s watershed lawsuit against his own parents up to the present-day substance abuse scandals with former child actors, stories persist of the Hollywood money machine grinding up and spitting out even the most innocent. Other stories see behind-the-scenes drama that spills over onto the set.
Judith Barsi 1987 (Image source “IMDB.com”)
Take the story of child actress Judith Barsi. She’d been a favorite of Steven Spielberg’s and in 1986 was providing voice work for
The Land Before Time as Stryker, the “haughty” Styracosaur.
The Land Before Time was the story of young, innocent herbivores attempting to escape from predatory carnivores. In a strange sort of meta-resonance, Judith Barsi was in danger from a predator in her own family. One day on the set while Jim Henson and Kermit were talking to her between takes, Henson started to realize that something was off with her. His years of working with kids had lent him a sense of perception with children that even the most seasoned Hollywood producers tended to lack. Over the course of the shoot, it became increasingly obvious that something was amiss. Henson, via Kermit, probed deeper. Barsi asked Kermit repeatedly about his relationship with Piggy, in particular the way that she always hit him. She confessed to Kermit that her daddy hit her and her mommy too.
“She was actually more worried about Kermit than she was about herself,” Henson said in a later interview, clearly still choked up by the event. “I seriously began to rethink the ‘Piggy karate-chops Kermit’ schtick after that.”
Henson brought in child psychologists and therapists, “friends of his and Kermit’s,” to talk to them both. Little by little, the story came out. It had been a long history of abuse. Her father József was an angry alcoholic who verbally threatened and physically abused her mother Maria and her. He had been arrested three times for driving while drunk and had repeatedly assaulted his wife and daughter and threatened suicide should his wife ever leave him. Maria was always on the verge of going to the police, but always hesitated[1].
One day when Judith’s mother Maria was on set (József was in prison for driving drunk at the time), producer Lisa Henson struck up a conversation. The conversations would continue over the course of the shoot. Maria eventually confessed to her that her husband was “drinking again” and was physically and verbally abusive to her and Judith. Lisa eventually convinced Maria to move into a room at the Villa Romana Hotel in Disneyland, which had 24-hour security and was “behind the gate”.
The security was needed. József would be arrested by security in late 1987 while attempting to break into the hotel. He had a pistol on him. Disney pressed full charges and, with his extensive arrest record, he was sent away to Folsom Prison for several years following a conviction on assault, assaulting a minor, trespassing, and breaking and entering with the intent to commit a felony.
Still, life wouldn’t be easy for Judith Barsi, who suffered serious post traumatic distress for years to come[2]. Jim Henson fought the Disney board of directors to put more money into a fund designed to assist child actors on the set of Disney productions, providing far beyond what the laws mandated. When the board hesitated, he offered to fund it out of pocket, which embarrassed the board so much with the potential negative press (“Disney CCO self-funds child actors’ care and education in the face of greedy board’) that they relented. As the Children’s Television Workshop had with
Sesame Street, Henson’s designated agents established a core of child psychology and educational experts to assist underage actors. He brushed off complaints like “we’re not an educational company” by retorting, “Then we’re in the wrong line of work.”
“It was a basic moral responsibility to him,” said Roy E. Disney. “If we made money off of children, then we had a moral and ethical obligation to be ‘as positive of an influence on their lives as we could be.’ We had tutors and physical therapists to keep them on track educationally and physically, we had councilors and nurses on hand for their physical and mental health. We had nutritionists to assist catering. We even had resources and training available for the crew. And I personally saw Jim fire a producer on the spot when he caught him buttering up a kid actor with false flattery and playing to their ego behind their parents’ back. That was standard business practice in Hollywood at the time, but not for Jim and not for Disney.”
Over time, Disney child actors started to show significantly lower rates of mental, emotional, and legal troubles when they reached adulthood compared to other studios. There were significantly fewer cases of petty crime, substance abuse, and embarrassing tabloid photos.
“I swore to the board that I wouldn’t rest until not a single headline said ‘former Disney child star arrested,’ or ‘former Disney child actor found dead from overdose,’” said Jim Henson in an interview with Larry King[3]. “The so-called ‘Child Actor Syndrome’ was going to be other studios’ problem, not ours. I was and I still am very adamant about that.”
[1] She ultimately went to the police in December of 1986 in our timeline, but decided not to press charges when the Police were unable to find signs of physical abuse.
[2] I generally try to keep a light and hopeful tone in this timeline. My characters occasionally joke about trauma and Xanax and the like, but seriously, mental health should be taken as seriously as physical health. There’s no shame in taking SSRIs or other psychotherapeutics. I’ve taken them myself and I feel no shame in admitting that. No different than taking aspirin when you have a headache, in my opinion. Health is health; fuck stigmas, and fuck you if you help propagate them. If you’re having a hard time mentally or emotionally, consult with your primary care doctor, or any doctor, for that matter. Even your dentist or optometrist. They can refer you to someone who can help. In an emotional emergency, call a crisis hotline. Don’t try to go it alone. You wouldn’t try to treat a broken leg by yourself, would you? Furthermore, if you’re in an abusive relationship then there’s help to be had. A variety of abuse hotlines are available in whatever country that you’re in. Search engines will find you the closest one to you. If you know someone suffering abuse, talk to a professional on how you can help them help themselves. This isn’t some damned obligatory PSA, I’d dead serious here.
Read what actually happened to Judith Barsi in real life here. It ain’t pretty, and it was, sadly, completely preventable. Don’t wait for things to “get better on their own”, because they won’t. I love you. Please take care of yourself.
[3] Requiem in pace to Larry King, who died just a few days ago from complications of COVID-19. Another light lost to this horrible pandemic.
