Donald Duck Wants You to Pay Your Taxes (1943)

Dur­ing World War II, some of the great­est liv­ing film­mak­ers put aside their com­mer­cial aspi­ra­tions and direct­ed pro­pa­gan­da films for the Allies. Frank Capra, Alfred Hitch­cock, Howard Hawks, John Ford, John Hus­ton – they all made a cin­e­mat­ic con­tri­bu­tion to the war effort. (More on that here.) And so did Walt Dis­ney, big time. 90% of Dis­ney employ­ees pro­duced pro­pa­gan­da films for the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment, cre­at­ing 68 hours of con­tin­u­ous film, includ­ing this short film for the Trea­sury Depart­ment. The Spir­it of ’43 puts Don­ald Duck in the always unen­vi­able posi­tion of ask­ing Amer­i­cans to pay high tax­es to fund their wars. (Imag­ine doing that today!) Some 26 mil­lion Amer­i­cans viewed the short film, and appar­ent­ly 37% of those inter­viewed in a Gallup poll lat­er admit­ted that the film affect­ed their will­ing­ness to pay Uncle Sam. You can find this Dis­ney film and oth­er wartime pro­pa­gan­da films (among oth­er good­ies) in our col­lec­tion, 4,000+ Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns, Doc­u­men­taries & More.

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