The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney

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All of us at Hook Towers have collaboratively put these lists together in response to The Guardian’s top 50 kids’ shows to binge over the summer. I really enjoy reading about Walt Disney and the Walt Disney Company and have read 14 Walt Disney biographies alone. The world of pop culture is riddled with iconic characters, but few have stood the test of time quite like the Ninja Turtles.

I'm not really a Disney fan and probably wouldn't have sought out a book about him but heard about this book and decided to give it a try. I wonder what Walt would say today about the accolades bestowed upon animated films that he was initially embarrassed to release and he considered failures. Mike Barrier began this scholarship in his great fanzine, Funnyworld, which I was able to read in the 1970s.But every once in a while his eyes would narrow, the rural twang would disappear from his voice and he'd discuss financial projections for 1962, the modern art of Picasso and Diego Rivera, and Freudian psychiatry. Although he may not have had the unfettered access to the Disney archives accorded Neal Gabler, one would hardly be aware of that particular handicap. Author Michael Barrier manages to weave together various threads and the various parts of Walt's career and show how one interest lead to the next and the next. To help welcome children in primary aged groups back to school, we’ve put together ten free resources.

The poor assumptions made during the planning were corrected by spending plenty of time joining guests on the rides and walking through the park. This book could have been so much better with some tightening and a lot of red ink from a concise editor.This book is important not just as a biography, but also as a cultural history that provides great insight to one of the best-known creative minds of the twentieth century. This means, inevitably, that after a close narration of the making of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with which Disney was intimately involved, and a less detailed discussion of the animated features that immediately followed it, the book shifts perspective from Disney as animator and supervisor, to his interest in educational films and nature documentaries, his ventures into live action features and television, his excitement and talent for miniature-building and steam trains and, finally, Disneyland and EPCOT. Having said that, it's vital to point out that author Michael Barrier also doesn't turn this into a tabloid biography by dwelling on rumors of some of Walt Disney's faults. Walt Disney is a hero of mine, and I enjoyed this biography that didn't pull any punches and revealed him as an actual human, faults and genius both.

Time seems to have smoothed over many of Walt's blunders, leaving behind a legacy and an enduring brand.This narrative paints an honest portrait of Disney, a flawed human being with great dreams and aspirations that he was largely successful in achieving.

Take for example, the 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride, one of my favorites I had taken many times as a child.Yet, they all line up today to take the same ride I did- in its current incarnation as Finding Nemo. Michael Barrier's years of discussion with Disney's collaborators and family members make for a richly textured discussion of a figure often dismissed by the scholarly community as a vulgarian of the worst sort.