two Academy Award winners (Flowers and Trees and The Three Little Pigs), and also featured important firsts such as the introduction of the Pluto character and the first animated short to be produced in full-color three-strip Technicolor. Due to the success of The Three Little Pigs, Gillett was recruited to run the Van Beuren Studios in 1934. While working there, he directed the Technicolor Rainbow Parade animated shorts featuring Molly Moo-Cow, Toonerville Folks, and several color Felix the Cat cartoons. He also was the one that hired Joseph Barbera for US$25 a week. In 1934 Gillett shifted the studio production to producing only color cartoon shorts, an innovative step for early animation. The Rainbow Parade shorts imitated the Silly Symphonies, though produced with a lower budget. Tom and Jerry were replaced with newer characters. Gillett introduced Disney-influenced ideas, and invited young Disney artists to lecture the New York veterans of Van Beuren. However, this was taken as condescension by his artists, and resulted in their resentment. It didn't help that he fired about fifty people in a six-month period, citing as his reason their failure to meet his standards. Staff morale took a blow. At Van Beuren, Gillett attempted to introduce the rigorous quality standards of Disney, but he did so while maintaining the same working conditions which had plagued the animators of the studio up to that point: low-budget work, and deadlines filled with uncompensated extra work hours. Artists saw their work rejected as substandard, then having to work overtime to replace it. The hard-drinking Gillett gained a reputation for emotional outbursts and instability. As a result of all this, a number of artists initiated contact with the Animated Motion Picture Workers Union (AMPWU), and discussed their plans to join the union, but Gillett had his informants among them. On February 14, 1935, Gillett called a staff meeting to announce his knowledge of their union talk. He intimidated the artists into changing their plans, though their discontent remained. He later discovered that an inker named Sadie Bodin had encouraged female staff members to stand up to Gillett and refuse to do extra work. He fired her, despite her protest that this violated the recently passed National Labor Relations Act, claiming that he fired her for her attitude rather than her stance in favor of unionizing. On April 17, 1937, Bodin and her husband began picketing outside the studio; for