Media capture · 1954 · US, UK

The CIA's Animal Farm

The 1954 British animated film of George Orwell's Animal Farm was made by Halas and Batchelor, who were not told that the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination was behind it. Agents bought the film rights from Orwell's widow Sonia; E. Howard Hunt chose Louis de Rochemont's company as the front. Hunt claimed credit for the project in his 1974 memoir and later said the film was "carefully tweaked to heighten the anti-Communist message"; in the film the other animals overthrow the pigs. The film and the novel are real; the hidden sponsor and the shaped ending are the operation.

Run by
CIA (OPC)
Through agents Carleton Alsop and Finis Farr and the front company of Louis de Rochemont
Reported budget of the film (sources differ)
$350,000-500,000
Variety (1974) gave $350,000; other accounts say about $500,000, most of it from the CIA. J. Hoberman (London Review of Books, 2007) says the CIA almost entirely underwrote it
New York premiere
29 Dec 1954
It opened in London on 7 January 1955 and lost money at first
Time to exposure
1974; documented 1990s-2007
Hunt claimed credit in his 1974 memoir Undercover; later documented in Tony Shaw's archive research, Daniel Leab's Orwell Subverted (2007) and Hunt's American Spy (2007)

Timeline

  1. 1950 · Context

    George Orwell dies. His widow, Sonia Orwell, sells the film rights (1950; some accounts say 1951) to Carleton Alsop and Finis Farr, described as undercover agents of the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination.

  2. Early 1950s · It worked

    E. Howard Hunt is said to pick Louis de Rochemont and his company as the front. De Rochemont agrees partly to release "frozen pounds" from his earlier film Lost Boundaries. Hoberman cautions that the self-aggrandising Hunt "may have exaggerated his own importance in the operation".

  3. Production · It worked

    John Halas and Joy Batchelor direct; John Reed leads about eighty animators from Rank's disbanded animation unit. Investors want Snowball shown as a "fanatic intellectual" and Jones as the only bad farmer, and de Rochemont is reported to rewrite the ending so the animals overthrow the pigs (Hoberman says the script always concluded with a successful uprising, so the ending was a standing requirement rather than one rewrite). Batchelor opposes the change; Halas later defends it. Halas, Batchelor and the crew are not told of the CIA link.

  4. 29 Dec 1954 · It worked

    The film premieres in New York City; it opens in London on 7 January 1955. A 1955 Manchester Guardian review says "Orwell would not have liked this one change".

  5. 9 Jan 1974 · Context

    Variety reports that the film took 15 years to recoup its $350,000 cost.

  6. 1974 · Exposed

    Hunt's memoir Undercover: Memoirs of an American Secret Agent takes credit for initiating the project (as reported by Hoberman in the London Review of Books, 2007).

  7. About four decades after release · Exposed

    Cold War historian Tony Shaw finds the CIA's alteration of the ending in the film's archives (CBC News account of his research).

  8. 2007 · Exposed

    Daniel Leab publishes Orwell Subverted: The CIA and the Filming of Animal Farm; Hunt's memoir American Spy says the film was "carefully tweaked to heighten the anti-Communist message".

A famous anti-totalitarian story was turned into an anti-communist film in which the animals overthrow the pigs, and the studio making it did not know who was paying.

“carefully tweaked to heighten the anti-Communist message”

E. Howard Hunt, American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond (2007), p. 50, on the film

The playbook

  1. 1

    Hidden messenger

    The animators and directors carried a message shaped by an undisclosed sponsor they did not know about.

  2. 2

    Front group

    Hunt used Louis de Rochemont's company as the front for the CIA's ownership of the rights.

  3. 3

    Borrowed authority

    Orwell's name and a celebrated novel lent credibility to an altered ending Orwell had not written.

Through the FATE framework

  • Focus4/10

    It put an anti-communist reading of a well-known story in front of a mass audience.

  • Authority6/10

    Orwell's standing was borrowed for a version he did not write.

  • Tribe5/10

    The film framed the pigs as a ruling elite the other animals can and should overthrow.

  • Emotion5/10

    It used the familiar pathos of the novel with a more hopeful, mobilising ending.

Propaganda techniques used

Same playbook today

The same playbook can be run by anyone, on any side. We list every current PSYOP that matches The CIA's Animal Farm, whoever is behind it.

No live PSYOP we track matches this playbook right now. When one does, it will appear here.