Walt Disney (ISBN 0233051228)

I grew tired of this book very fast:
If you don't know anything about Walt Disney and you want to know more don't let this be the first book you read. Read, How to be Like Walt or Walt Disney: An American Original. Then read this book if you want. It does give more detailed information on events like the strike by his employees or that he was a hard task master, which you can get from any other book and not this one. First this book wants you to look at Disney in a negative way. Why we like to see the bad in people I do not know. I mean yes he had flaws but this book wanted to bash Disney's image all together. Then a lot of so called facts are not hard evidence which makes the book seem like a tabloid trash book. Like for example he tries to prove that Disney was 10 years older than he really was. That makes no sense because when he changed his birth year on his passport so that could be 17 to get into the army, Disney looks like he's 15 or 16 years old. He looks very young. He doesn't look like he could be 27. Maybe if he had said 2 years instead of 10 I would have believed that but 10 years is a large gap. A person does a lot of changing in 10 years. I don't know about you, but if I do great things in my life I don't want someone trying to discredit my good deeds by posting my flaws in a book. I'm human and I have flaws, I don't care if you know, but if I did some good some time, I would want that to be my legacy. I think it should be Walt's to. He was a genius. We love him.

Serious Credibility Issues:
I'm not saying don't read this book, just take the author's pronouncements with a grain of salt. It is a fascinating subject that deserves better research, but at least the book's negative conjectures help balance out the corporate suppressions found in the authorized biography. In the first chapter, the author informs us that Elias Disney (Walt's father) got married in the spring of 1888 and his first child (Herbert) was born later that year. Elias soon got bored with the tedium of having a new baby in the house and enlisted to fight in the Spanish-American War. Seven days into basic training he became disillusioned and was given a medical discharge for a suspect knee. He returned to Florida in time to see his Florida orange grove destroyed by a record frost in the spring of 1889. The problem with this account is that the Spanish-American War actually happened ten years later (from April-August 1898). This is one of the few assertions in the chapter that can be easily checked. If Eliot was that careless or indifferent about his research, one is reluctant to credit his more "out-there" conjecture, like: "Because paper and pencils were rarely available, Walt improvised, usually with a piece of coal on toilet paper. That was all he needed to pass a free hour sketching the gentle farm animals he considered his only true friends. He especially loved the feeling when they brushed up against him while he lay in the tall grass trying to capture their likenesses". It is hard to imagine any biographical subject prone to as much distortion as Walt Disney; for corporate reasons or for personal ones. So readers would be advised to read ANY Disney biography for its entertainment value, not for its historical accuracy or objectivity. Than again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Helpful if only to balance the company line, but ...:
Other readers have pointed out the flaws in this book, most of them dealing with errors of fact and the author's tendency to spin yarns from a few disconnected pieces of Disney's life. While it's true that he's done that, he also has unflinchingly laid bare the abuse in Walt's early life (which is glossed over in other authorized bios) and how he reacted to it. If Eliot really wanted to do a number on Disney, he might have charged many other things, but even he doesn't dare suggest that, for example, Disney's interest in the Mouseketeers was anything other than absolutely normal paternal interest. (He does suggest, from one photograph reprinted in the book, that Disney may have had an affair with Dolores del Rio, but there's absolutely no substantiation for that in the text.) I personally am a huge fan of all things Disney and a great admirer of Walt Disney himself. His achievements were so towering that it seems petty to worry about his less-than-perfect side. When Eliot refers to `careers ruined' at Disney Studios, he's speaking of employees who felt stifled by the atmosphere and who did not receive as much credit as they would have liked for their achievements. But Disney made it plain from the beginning that he was going to promote the Disney name and nothing else, and it worked beautifully. Anyone who was looking for more personal glory had the option of leaving, and many did. Those who stayed had to know what the rules were. The one new revelation here that I have to admit intrigues me is Eliot's assertion that Disney's favorite breakfast, when he ate alone at his studio desk, was fresh doughnuts dunked in scotch. (Eliot claims Disney's drinking was excessive.) Photos of the aging Walt Disney show him with the red cheeks and bloodshot eyes of a habitual drinker. So perhaps Eliot is right about this. However, if Walt really did begin his day with fresh doughnuts dunked in scotch (I can't explain why, but I find this endearing), and every bio of him has already stressed his extreme dependence on cigarettes, well, to me the wonder isn't that he died as young as he did, but that he LASTED as long as he did ... And how lucky for all of us that he did. I thought parts of this bio were genuinely interesting, but it did not make me love Disney less, just sympathize with him more.

A Very Negative Diatribe against Walt:
Jeesh! I tried to give this book an honest chance, but found it to be too focused on every-negative-aspect-of-Disney - to the point I also began to wonder about the credibility of the author. When the author writes such tripe as: "Bugs Bunny, Warner's number-one animated star, was a rabbit in the heat of his pubescence. Mickey's fundamental roundness - eyes, ears, face, body - recalled maternal security in the comfort of their breastlike shape. In contrast, Bugs Bunny's ears were phallic..." blah blah blah?! I have to say - GIVE ME A BREAK!! Eliot obviously didn't make it past PSY 101. This book is hard to stay with because it bounces back and forth between the past and present sequences, which is very confusing. This book is unforgiving, focusing on Disney's paranoia and tendency to be secretive in regard to the possibility he may have been adopted, and to his general intelligence and creativity. It is clear a lot of executives with money made attempts to destroy Disney, no doubt. Jealousy is human nature. In the 1940's many people handled their psychoses with alcohol - so what? Does that mean Disney HATED Jews? In those days all Americans had very strong views of Communism, Disney was no exception. I think Disney was unique, a grown man striving for a more Utopian vision of people being together, coming together. It's a small world, after all! I believe he understood people of all races struggled with jealousies of all kinds in those days as they do now. Like many people who shunned psychotherapy as being only for those who were "crazy", perhaps he choose not to seek constructive outlets for help; and we all need help now and then. I think it was hard for someone like Disney to rise above such stigmas and still be creative. There was a birth certificate for a Walt Disney who came into the family 10 years earlier than the Walt who was born on December 5th. Mistakes happen. What we know about Walt Disney is he WAS a genius, someone born way ahead of his time. This author seems to prey on such facts like a viper. The author forgets... Unlike most of the people around him, Disney had a vision. He was a visionary and he learned how to market that potential; he was a story-teller and an artist as well. From reading this book, I come to conclude that Disney was NOT adopted. Although Eliot uses his theories around Disney's possible adoption and agreements with the FBI for his spin-doctoring? these issues are given WAY-too much gravity. All you have to do is hold up a photo of Disney next to his brother Roy to see that they were brothers!! With that, the bottom of this book falls out - with all the nasty intentions it took to write it.

An enjoyable, albeit sensationalist, look at an American icon:
Allegedly the first biography released without full consent of the studio, Eliot offers an unflattering portrait of Uncle Walt. While some of his assertions are absurd (Disney's incestous relationship with his daughter, Disney's predisposition to cross dressing as part of an alleged Norman Bates complex), the book does address many of the issues that had not been publicly acknowledged prior to it's release. Disney's involvement with the House of UnAmerican Activities Commitee in the 1950s, the animator's strike of the 1940's that nearly crippled the studio, and the fact the Disney studio was the first animation studio to delegate menial tasks to women, are all addressed in this book. Is it totally legit? No. Does it make for an enjoyable read? Yes.