New Disney Minority Hiring Plan : Fellowships: The studio says it will hire 27 writers for a yearlong program involving its three divisions.

The movie studio that ranked at the bottom of two consecutive surveys on job opportunities for minority writers is now pursuing one of the most aggressive minority hiring programs that Hollywood has ever seen.

Walt Disney Studios said it soon will announce the names of 27 writers--all of whom are African American, Latino, Asian American or women--who have been selected for a new writing fellowship program. The writers will be assigned to work with the studio’s creative teams. Each will be paid a salary of $30,000 for a year’s work and training, and the group will be divided among the studio’s three divisions: Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Walt Disney Pictures.

“The hope is that we’ll be able to develop first-rate screenwriters,” said Cheryl Hill, the Hollywood Pictures creative executive who heads the program. The 27 finalists were recruited from more than 2,000 applicants from around the country who submitted screenplays, said Hill. “If we happen to produce something they write, they’ll be compensated additionally.”

Disney’s efforts drew praise from civil-rights groups and the Writers Guild of America West, which had conducted the surveys of job opportunities for minority writers in 1987 and 1989. Both surveys showed that writers were being shut out of the market because of age, sex and ethnicity, said Jeff Wallace, WGAW human resources coordinator.

“In ’87 and ‘89, Disney came in the worst,” Wallace said in an interview Wednesday. “It’s refreshing to see them take this aggressive approach.” Wallace, who has been with the Writers Guild since 1986, said Disney’s is the first such program of its scale. “Some of the studios have responded with pro-active suggestions, and others have yet to respond.”

He noted that Warner Bros. had a similar program in the 1970s on a much smaller scale and that 20th Century Fox has made an effort to employ minority writers on its episodic TV shows. “Not to belittle the efforts of any of the other companies, but so far, Disney is the only company to come to us with a program of this size. Disney just took the lead.”

Wallace commended Disney for not only “responding to the problem with bucks, but with sending other types of messages (to the entertainment industry). They sent letters to agents asking for more material representing ethnic minorities.”

No one contacted by The Times on Wednesday could recall a similar-size effort, and most termed the program unprecedented in the industry.

The American Film Institute’s Willard Rodgers, who has headed that organization’s Alumni Assn. Writers Workshop since its founding in 1979, said he didn’t think “any studio in the history of the business has ever had that many minority writers.

“I was skeptical at first,” he said about the studio’s dedication. “But I think they’ve gotten first-class writers.” Rodgers noted that three or four of the individuals may be from his own AFI workshop. Disney, he said, “has to be commended very highly.”

Disney’s program will begin amid a backdrop of heightened awareness of job opportunities--or the lack thereof--for minorities and women in the film industry.

In early July, the Beverly Hills/Hollywood Chapter of the Nation Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People issued a report suggesting that there are fewer opportunities for blacks in Hollywood executive suites now than there were 10 years ago. Chapter president Sandra Evers-Manly said the report was based on surveys and talks with all the major studios. She anticipates issuing a “report card” for each company’s recruitment activities beginning this fall.

Evers-Manly called the Disney program “encouraging and a start in the right direction” to correcting the situation for groups “who have not been traditionally hired. It will show that there has been an abundance of talent that has not been previously recognized.”

Evers-Manly credited Disney “for making a commitment that says, ‘Hey, when the next report comes out, we don’t want to be last again.’ ”

A lack of opportunity for women on screen was documented in a Screen Actors Guild report issued Aug. 1, showing startling decreases in both women’s roles and relative income. In 1989, it said, 71 percent of all roles in feature films and 64 percent of all roles in TV went to men.

At the convention of the National Assn. of Black Journalists earlier this month, the subject of “Blacks in Hollywood” also was a topic for a panel of entertainment figures, many of whom concluded that blacks must not rely on the studios to advance their image and economic status.

However, Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg, one of the panelists, said he believed that the major entertainment companies “must change the way we do business and (must) create opportunity.” He acknowledged the company’s previous poor record and said Disney management had made correcting it a priority.

Disney’s Hill attributed the push for establishing the fellowship to Katzenberg’s “real aggressive position” on the issue.

She said the names of the individuals chosen will be announced at a later date. They will report to work Sept. 17.