DVDizzy Forum

I'm reading one of the latest biographies of Walt Disney now, Neal Gabler's "Walt Disney, triumph of the American imagination". I bought it because I've read some good things about it and int seemed to me a decent and balanced biography.
Now I'm not so sure anymore. There's another bio just published, "The animated man, a life of Walt Disney" by Michael Barrier. He severely criticises Neal Gabler's work and he has even published a whole list of factual errors he found in Gablers's book on his website. I've printed it out, so that I can check when reading Gabler's!

So is ther anyone on this board who has read both biographies and wants to voice his/her opinion? Is it better to purchase "The animated man" to get insight into Walt? Are there other biographies you would recommend?

Thanks!

I recommend "Walt Disney: An American Original" by Bob Thomas. If I'm not mistaken, it's an "official" biography.

Paging Lars Vermundsberget...Paging Lars Vermundsberget...enlighten us again with your extensive Disney bibliography...

If I can remember correctly, some of the other Disney bios include:

Walt: An American Original
The Disney Version
Hollywood's Dark Prince
Walt Disney and the American Way of Life

Also, the book at hand (Gabler's) is already discussed here:

New Biography on Walt Disney: Author interviewed by Pluto Region1, created November 30, 2006.

Scas

Dark Prince has been ranked the most fictional Walt bashing "bio" ever written.


One of my favorites is Disney's World. It ends with a great Ward Kimball quote "A lot of people ask me if Walt is frozen in a bunker somewhere . . . Well, I don't know but one thing's for sure. When they thaw him out there will be Hell to pay." and this was before the bad Eisner stuff. This book talks about post Walt family politics between Roy Jr., Ron Miller, and Diane Disney Miller like no other book ever has but it's all TRUE. A lot of he stories you see on official sources is hear but a lot are not, including some that some parties would use as fodder to bash Walt as a racist. But they come from people Disney HAS used in MANY official films before and are not meant to bash. It just shows that Walt was a product of his time, a time when ethnic jokes were made by ALL ethnicities and no one took offense. They just shot back another ethnic joke in return and both had a good laugh over it. I respect any thing or any one a lot more who tells the story as it was rather than hiding aspects of it that current politics could latch onto as fodder. One passage is from David Swift about some Jewish jokes Walt would tell. Swift appeared on several Disney DVDs but not in Man Behind the Myth. this may be why. But others, the usual players like Peter Ellenshaw are here and tell some very touching stories about Walt and some are really funny. In one Ellenshaw tells about how he and Walt stayed over night on an air craft carrier and Ellenshaw took the top bunk and Walt was acting strange and finally said "You're not one of those bed wetters are you?" Something like that. But it's stories like this that make me enjoy this book and you hear for the first time what Epcot was really designed to be. Nowhere else have I ever read or seen that.

I could list more titles, but (the) one I'd really recommend is:

Watts, Steven. The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American way of life. Boston and New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997

It's been quite a few years since I read it, though.

UncleEd wrote:Dark Prince has been ranked the most fictional Walt bashing "bio" ever written.

There's also the play 'Disney in Deutschland', which has Disney meeting and getting on with Hitler, with a program actually stating the meeting actually happened. The page below has a discussion in which playwright John J. Powers attempts to convince animation historians that Disney never employed Jews. Fun stuff.

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/disney/disney-in-deutschland

That link is freakin' great! I'd never heard of the play but it's fun to see Jeff Kurti, dare I say, kick the playwrights ass in a debate on Walt being a znazi. I love it! Kurti debunks every statement the playright makes with FACTs and the playright ALWAYS says things like "Well I still believe it anyway" and he even admitted he only wrote rthe play to smear Walt's clean image because he hates it. Then the set designer joins it. This is awesome! It's like Disney Jerry Springer action but with substance.

Is the new Walt Disney: The Biography by Neil Gaiman just a cut-down version of The Triumph of the American Imagination or has it been rewritten?