The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney
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"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. Barrier's engaging and highly informative writing style offers excellent perspective on how much changed in the world of animated cartoons during Disney's lifetime, and just how much the Disney studio brought about these changes. The remarkable quantity of first-person accounts, interviews, and other primary evidence is one of the book's most important attributes. This biography chronicles Disney's life while keeping in view the technological and stylistic developments in animation and filmmaking that Disney helped bring about. Barrier's deft navigation of a wide variety of historical streams gives Animated Man a uniquely comprehensive and compelling story about Walt Disney."—Daniel Goldmark, author of Tunes for 'Toons: Music and the Hollywood Cartoon"Michael Barrier's biography of Walt Disney is impressive, with a remarkable range of interviews. I was fascinated to see this mysterious world laid out as an industrial process—somehow, this makes what we see on the screen even more miraculous."—Kevin Brownlow, Director, Cecil B De Mille: American Epic and Garbo"The Animated Man is by far the best critical study to date of Walt Disney and his worlds: corporate, personal, ideological, architectural. 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. Barrier shows us a tireless innovator, a man of deep feeling, a true American original who has woven himself into the very fabric of modern culture."—Karal Ann Marling, editor, Designing Disney's Theme Parks: The Architecture of ReassuranceJeff Ayers - Library JournalBarrier (founder & editor, Funnyworldmagazine; Hollywood Cartoons) purports to reveal the mind of Walt Disney by examining his creative output. Without access to the Disney archives, he uses interviews and primary sources to determine what made Disney tick. Nothing new is revealed, and Barrier often uses his research to belittle and complain about Disney's classic work (e.g., Mary Poppins"suffers from debilitating weaknesses") as well as other endeavors bearing his name; Barrier writes of rides designed for the 1964 World's Fair and Disneyland, "All these exhibits invited aesthetic and intellectual objections that could not be applied seriously to the earlier rides at Disneyland." Certain seminal events in Disney's life, such as his polo injury and the death of his parents, are barely discussed. More of a critical slam of Disney's cartoons and films than a useful biography, this book will disappoint, bore, or anger fans of the man. For a more thorough and balanced Disney biography, read instead Neal Gabler's Walt Disney: Triumph of the American Imagination. Not recommended.
Preface ixAcknowledgments xvIntroduction: "It's All Me" 1"The Pet in the Family": On the Farm and in the City, 1901-1923 9"A Cute Idea": The Self-Taught Filmmaker, 1923-1928 39"You've Got to Really Be Minnie": Building a Better Mouse, 1928-1933 68"This Character Was a Live Person": The Leap to Feature Films, 1934-1938 100"A Drawing Factory": Ambition's Price, 1938-1941 134"A Queer, Quick, Delightful Gink": On a Treadmill, 1941-1947 168"Caprices and Spurts of Childishness": Escaping from Animation, 1947-1953 200"He Was Interested in Something Else": Escaping from Film, 1953-1959 235"Where I Am Happy": Restless in the Magic Kingdom, 1959-1965 270"He Drove Himself Right Up to the End": Dreaming of a Nightmare City, 1965-1966 301Afterword: "Let's Never Not Be a Silly Company" 319Notes 327Index 379
