![]() “Because no one’s life resolves into neat, narrative episodes. “When you have this narrative, you’ve created a fiction,” he noted. The author, a trim, gray-haired man who lives in Amagansett, N.Y., and teaches at USC Annenberg’s Norman Lear Center, said: “I tell students there are six words that summarize what you need to do in writing a biography: ‘What’s the story?’ and ‘What’s the point?’ ” A biographer, he said, must find a narrative arc within the massive details of one person’s life. But that only underscored the dilemma that he and other biographers confront. When his campaign to gain full, unprecedented access to Disney’s records succeeded, Gabler said family members’ sole condition was that he write a “serious” book. A historian who previously wrote about Jewish filmmakers in Hollywood, the life of Walter Winchell and the collision between entertainment and reality, he wanted to write a definitive biography of Disney. Even his death in 1966 was controversial for years it was rumored his body had been frozen.Įnter Gabler. Was he a smiling, genial man, the reassuring “Uncle Walt” made famous by television appearances to millions of viewers? Or was he a closet anti-Semite and redbaiter? Did Disney’s films convey an innocent, gee-whiz view of American life, or were they part of a calculated plan to spread a political doctrine of patriotism and obedience? Outwardly polite and gracious, Disney suffered a mental breakdown in 1931 and was a reclusive, remote figure for much of his life. But his inner nature and the forces driving him remain elusive, if not mysterious. While some believe Disney’s obsession with small-town America was phony and calculated, few dispute his continuing influence. “Can you imagine a modern corporation allowing an individual to make ‘Pinocchio,’ which bombed, ‘Fantasia,’ which bombed bigger, and ‘Bambi,’ which also bombed? And then giving that person the OK to build an amusement park?” Although Disney has some obvious heirs, such as Steven Spielberg, it is “highly unlikely” that another free-spending chief like him could come along today, Gabler said. Later in his life, blessed with one triumph after another, Disney failed in his ultimate quest: He dreamed of building an idyllic, problem-free city, modeled after his films, to be filled with real people. They told him that animated films were unprofitable. Gabler offers fascinating insights in his 858-page book: Until he completed Disneyland in 1955, the mogul spent much of his career fighting off creditors and bankers. And the secret of his success is that his visions coincided with America’s yearning for the same kind of escape and wish fulfillment.” “Everything he did was designed to perfect this new world. “The ultimate message of Walt’s life is that he believed he could reinvent everything, on the screen, in amusement parks, in all aspects of his creative life,” Gabler said during a recent interview at his publisher’s office. Just like Ariel, the Little Mermaid who rose happily ever after from the murky sea into a brighter realm, Disney built an elaborate fantasy world that transformed the face of American pop culture. Knopf), the setting was a symbolic echo of his book’s central theme: For much of his life, Disney sought to escape the dull, suffocating limits of daily routine, trying to replace them with a more entertaining creative reality that he alone could control. Others might find it incongruous, noting that the original story was dark and troubling, while the Disney remake was upbeat and lighthearted.īut for biographer Neal Gabler, who wrote the just-published “Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination” (Alfred A. The setting might strike some as a coincidence, since Disney’s studio turned Andersen’s tale into a box office hit. Standing nearby, in a patch of flowers, is a small white statue of Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid. WALT DISNEY’S ashes are buried in a Forest Lawn mausoleum, in a private garden.
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