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The definitive portrait of one of the most important cultural figures in American history: Walt Disney.
Walt Disney was a true visionary whose desire for escape, iron determination and obsessive perfectionism transformed animation from a novelty to an art form, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films–most notably Snow White, Fantasia, and Bambi. In his superb biography, Neal Gabler shows us how, over the course of two decades, Disney revolutionized the entertainment industry. In a way that was unprecedented and later widely imitated, he built a synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise. Walt Disney is a revelation of both the work and the man–of both the remarkable accomplishment and the hidden life.
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography
USA Today Biography of the Year
- Sales Rank: #80052 in eBooks
- Published on: 2006-10-31
- Released on: 2006-10-31
- Format: Kindle eBook
Amazon.com Review
Neal Gabler's meticulously researched biography, Walt Disney offers the full story (Gabler is the first writer to gain complete access to the Disney archives) of the American icon. Readers will discover the whole story, witnessing Disney's invention of a "synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise." What fans don't know could fill a book (this book in fact), and we asked Gabler to point out a few of the juicy bits. Read our interview with him, and his "10 Things That May Surprise You" list below. --Daphne Durham
10 Second Interview: A Few Words with Neal Gabler
Q: Why Walt Disney?
A: When you write about someone as grandiose as Walt Disney, you may tend to get a little grandiose yourself, so forgive me. But I had always set the task for myself to examine the forces that helped define American culture in the twentieth century and those individuals who might be regarded as the architects of the American consciousness. Walt Disney was certainly one of those forces and one of those architects. His visual sensibility is arguably one of the two most important in the last century, along with Picasso's, yet Picasso has received dozens of biographies and Walt Disney had, when I began, not received a single full-scale, fully-annotated biography. I wanted to fill that gap in our cultural studies. I thought that if one could understand Walt Disney, one could go a long way to understanding American popular culture.
Q: One thing that strikes you when reading the book is that Walt Disney never had any money. With all his success how is that possible?
A: It is astonishing that Walt Disney was always--and I do mean always--in dire financial straits until the opening of Disneyland. The primary reason wasn't that his cartoons weren't making money, because they were--at least until the war in Europe when the loss of that market meant disaster for the features. But even as they were making money, the studio was losing money because Walt was constitutionally incapable of cutting corners, enforcing economies, laying off staff. The only thing about which Walt Disney cared was quality. He thought that quality was the way to maintain his preeminence, though quality also had the psychological advantage of letting him perfect his world. The problem was that quality was expensive. To cite just one example, Walt spent more than a hundred thousand dollars setting up a training program for would-be animators, though even then the return was small because Walt was so picky that very few of the candidates actually qualified to work at the studio. Money meant very little to Walt Disney. It was only a means to an end, never an end in itself.
Q: When did Walt first conceive of the idea for Disneyland and what were the initial reactions to the idea?
A: It is very difficult to determine exactly when Walt hatched the idea for Disneyland, though he seems to have been thinking about it for a long time, at least since the early 1930s. Certainly by the time he was taking his daughters, Diane and Sharon, to amusement parks on Sunday afternoons in the late 1940s, he had formulated the idea to establish a park that was clean and wholesome and where parents wouldn't be afraid to take their children. The original plan was to build the park on a plot adjacent to the studio in Burbank, where there would be a train, a town square, an Indian village and kiddieland rides, but as Walt's ideas expanded, so did the need for a bigger plot. As for the reactions to his idea, Roy was initially reluctant, as usual, and Walt's wife, Lillian, was firmly opposed, though she had also been opposed to his making Snow White. Still, Walt exaggerated the opposition as a way, I think of elevating his own foresight and determination. In fact, as the plan grew closer to realization, corporations sought to be included as lessees, and even banks, that had been skeptical, became more receptive. When the park opened, it was an instant success.
Q: What do you think has been Walt's most lasting impact/legacy on American culture?
A: One could answer this question in a dozen different ways depending on one's priorities, but I think his largest bequest is a matter of the American mind. Walt Disney helped change the national consciousness. He got people to believe in the power of wish fulfillment--in their own ability to impose their wills on a recalcitrant reality. That's what Walt Disney did all his life. He managed to replace reality with his illusions--what some people now refer to disparagingly as Disneyfication. He sold us on the idea of control because Walt Disney was himself a master of control. We see the results everywhere--from film to theme parks to virtual reality to virtual politics.
You Don't Know Disney: 10 Things That May Surprise You
1. He is not frozen. His body was cremated, and his ashes are interred at the Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California, near his studio.
2. Mickey Mouse's original name allegedly was Mortimer but Disney's wife Lillian objected because she thought it too "sissified."
3. Some of the names originally considered for the dwarfs in Snow White were: Deafy, Dirty, Awful, Blabby, Burpy, Gabby, Puffy, Stuffy, Nifty, Tubby, Biggo Ego, Flabby, Jaunty, Baldy, Lazy, Dizzy, Cranky and Chesty.
4. Walt Disney suffered a nervous breakdown in 1931 and descended into depression after the war, concentrating his attention on model trains rather than on motion pictures.
5. Fantasia was the result of a chance meeting between Walt Disney and symphony conductor Leopold Stokowski at Chasen's restaurant.
6. During World War II the Disney studio became a war factory with well over 90% of its production in the service of government training, education and propaganda films.
7. The studio stopped production for six months on Pinocchio because Walt felt the title character wasn't likable enough. During this time he devised the idea of introducing Jiminy Cricket as Pinocchio's conscience.
8. Walt Disney received more Academy Awards than any other individual--32.
9. Disney modeled Mickey Mouse on Charlie Chaplin and that Chaplin later assisted the Disneys by loaning them his financial books so they could determine what kind of proceeds they should be getting from their distributor on Snow White.
10. MGM head Louis B. Mayer once rejected the opportunity to distribute Mickey Mouse cartoons shortly after Walt had invented the character because Mayer said that pregnant women would be frightened by a giant mouse on screen.
From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Few men could be said to have as pervasive an influence on American culture as Walt Disney, and Gabler (Winchell) scours the historical record for as thorough an explanation of that influence as any biographer could muster. Every period of Disney's life is depicted in exacting detail, from the suffering endured on a childhood paper route to the making of Mary Poppins. The core of Gabler's story, though, is clearly in the early years of Disney's studio, from the creation of Mickey Mouse to the hands-on management of early hits like Fantasia and Pinocchio. "Even though Walt could neither animate, nor write, nor direct," Gabler notes, "he was the undisputed power at the studio." Yet there was significant disgruntlement within the ranks of Disney's employees, and Gabler traces the day-to-day resentments that eventually led to a bitter strike against the studio in 1941. That dispute helped harden Disney's anticommunism, which led to rumors of anti-Semitism, which are effectively debunked here. At times, Gabler lays on a bit thick the psychological interpretation of Disney as control freak, but his portrait is so engrossing that it's hard to picture the entertainment mogul playing with his toy trains and not imagine him building Disneyland in his head. 32 pages of photos. 100,000 first printing. (Nov. 6)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Bookmarks Magazine
Neal Gabler, who penned a well-received biography of journalist Walter Winchell and An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, among other books, is the first writer to have complete access to the Walt Disney archives. Much of that wealth of information makes its way into this hefty tome. At nearly 900 pages (including 200 pages of notes), the author risks losing all but the most devoted Disney fans. Gabler uses engaging prose, numerous anecdotes, and firsthand accounts of the events of Disney's life, however, to balance the more mundane details about production budgets and the day-to-day workings of Disney's empire. For the most part, Gabler succeeds. The book works best when he focuses on Disney's often contradictory and mercurial character.
Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Disney Fans - This is not the book you are seeking
By Dwight Bain
Gabler's biography of Walt Disney is only for avid readers of history by examining all sides of this famous persons life, and at over 900 pages you have to be dedicated to press on into this well researched but ofttimes sad story.
WARNING to die-hard D23 Disney fans... this is not the book you are seeking; because some of the personal struggles and business decisions you don't hear about are carefully described in these pages. The success of this luminary is covered, as are the dark times, the nervous breakdown, the bankruptcy, the anger... and I'll stop there for fear of hurting your feelings by going further into the darkness. Uncle Walt was a genius in every way... including troubled childhood which fueled his driven need to create the "Happiest Place on Earth."
If you want to protect the happy Americana image of Walt Disney pick up the wonderfully cheerful biographies written by Bob Thomas or Pat Williams. They offer interesting stories of Walt, teach powerful life-application lessons about perseverance and creativity in a clever way that protects the fairy tale ending, while leaving out the dragons along the way.
Hard reading, but explained a lot to me as a life-long resident of Orlando about how one mans driven desire really did change the world.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Tremendously Detailed Biography of Walt Disney: a Man of Great Vision, a Risk Taker and a Success
By Daniel Hurley
If you ever wanted to know virtually everything about Walt Disney and the Disney company, this is the book for you. The author has almost overwhelming detail of Walt's early upbringing and difficult life to his unfortunate early death while in the middle of planning out Disney World and Epcot. This book is not for the light reader on the subject, the biography is massive with over 600 pages not counting the notes and index. But you will come away from the book adoring the man that never stopped planning and making improvements from not just the way cartoons were drawn but by making them more artistic, utilizing new techniques and cameras with an analyzing eye for detail. Often on the brink of bankruptcy, Walt, with the huge contribution of brother Roy, continued to make improved products equiring outstanding loans throughout much of his career. Betrayed initially by a film distributor who not only stole, legally, Disney's Oswald character and stole many of his staff, Disney and his top artist Ub Iwerks, develop the life changing Mickey Mouse. But as Gabler tells the story, Disney's studio grows and so do the risks with perhaps the greatest risk at that time, Snow White, the first full length animation film. What almost seems like a pattern, Walt continues to make improvements, hire increased staff and take out loans as he produces more, works staff long hours to put out a higher quality package. The book also provides a sobering view of Disney as sometimes the pressure was too great for the great story teller and the advent of unions and the need for stock sales along with bankers starting to provide over sight leads to greater restrictions and frustration but then Disney thrives with less costly non-cartoon films such as Davey Crocket that become quite a rage along with the Mickey Mouse TV show and eventually his plan for Disneyland that was an attempt to fulfill his boyhood dreams of his small town life in Marceline, Missouri. Fascinating detail on such things as Ub Iwerks as the actual artist who drew the early Mickey, the need for Donald Duck as a charcter to offset the corporate wholesomeness now required of the mouse, Roy Disney who held the finances together to allow Walt to plunge on and and Disney's plan for developing not only Disney World with modern monorails but Epcot. The sad end of the book of course is Walt's death of cancer that is well hinted very early on by references to a hacking cough many years before. What is really unfortunate was Walt Disney's plan for Epcot that was never completely fullfilled that was to be more of a town with living areas for Disney employees creating a village concept that is actually being realized in many communities today (office parks with stores, landscapped lakes, and condos or apartments). Regretfully as Roy Disney said, the great plans for Epcot died with Walt. Primarily because Walt reached higher and higher, his ultimate plans with stringent notation to detail crerated a fascinating entertainment industry.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
Definitive Biography on Walt Disney, detailed, thorough, objective and brilliantly written.
By RobT
This is a deep dive on one of America's icons. The flow of the book is seamless it's rich content and perspective. This book could have been several volumes given Walt Disney's amazing life and accomplishments and the author does an exceptional job of pulling this together. Wonderful.
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