Review by Booklist Review
Walt Disney's squeaky-clean image was based not only on the family entertainment he produced but also on his role as the avuncular host of his TV series. However, this revisionist biography reveals Uncle Walt to have been anti-Semitic, alcoholic, a sexually inadequate husband, and a neglectful father. His extreme political conservatism--particularly his union busting (he felt a 1941 strike was the result of a Marxist-Jewish conspiracy against his studio)--has been detailed elsewhere. Eliot reveals -- besides the sexual difficulties, nervous breakdowns, and preoccupation in later years with his mortality--Disney's ties with organized crime, his attendance at prewar American Nazi Party meetings, and his status as an official Hollywood informant for the FBI. Author of last year's Down Thunder Road , a similar icon-busting bio of Bruce Springsteen, Eliot is, however, out of his depth when it comes to assessing Disney's films and the art of animation. Moreover, his attempts at psychoanalyzing his subject are often strained. In the end, then, this work remains supplemental to previous Disney biographies, for all of their sacrifice of bluntness for the sake of Disney studio approval. The more benign the image the greater the cry for the inevitable tell-all bio, however. That--plus a major push from the publisher (including coverage on "Entertainment Tonight")--may mean heavy demand for Eliot's effort. (Reviewed Apr. 15, 1993)155972174XGordon Flagg
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
This book is called the first truly unauthorized biography, and in the case of Disney, unauthorized is important because all previous ``authorized'' biographies had to pass the scrutiny of Disney Studios. Without manuscript approval, the Disney archives were off-limits to Eliot ( Down Thunder Road: The Making of Bruce Springsteen , LJ 8/92), although their contents could be gleaned from other works on his subject. This volume includes interviews--both anonymous and attributed--with former Disney animators. The darker side of Disney includes his cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee and the FBI, as well as ``Uncle Walt's'' strong antiunion campaigns. His troubled personal life is explored both as biography and as the source of his creative expressions. While not without flaws, this book is essential for any library that wants to provide an alternative to the sanitized versions of Dinsey's life.-- Sherle Abramson, Williamsburg Regional Lib., Va. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Muckraking, unauthorized biography of Disney that nonetheless paints such a rending picture of his childhood and young manhood that one forgives most of his later lapses. Eliot (Down Thunder Road, 1991, etc.) thinks that Disney was a great artist--which may account for what turns out to be a largely sympathetic biography of the filmmaker's dark side. Disney's fundamentalist father, Elias, was such a monster to his sons, whom he beat mercilessly, that Walt came to believe he wasn't his father's child--nor would Walt's mother protect him from Elias's savagery. These trials, and especially the anxiety about his parentage, became the template for Disney's later cartoon stories, Eliot says, and account in part for the mogul's endless troubles with his stable of animators, whom he underpaid and refused to give any power to. Nor would Disney grant Mickey Mouse's real creator, fellow animator Ub Iwerks, his proper credit, though Iwerks was Disney's oldest friend aside from the filmmaker's brother, Roy. On his marriage night, Disney found himself impotent, Eliot says, a state that later recurred during times of stress, which were exacerbated by a drinking problem and bouts of depression. Meanwhile, Disney's father had instilled in the boy a hatred of Jews, and Walt never curbed his tongue about Jews among his animators--and especially not when talking about fellow studio heads. He felt cut out of the real money in Hollywood since he could only produce movies with his own money while other studios monopolized distribution and exhibition. Following WW II, Disney helped organize resistance to the studio monopolies and in many ways brought about the downfall of the studio system. Earlier, he had become an informant for the FBI--according to Eliot, Disney wanted J. Edgar Hoover to investigate whether he really was the son of his alleged father--and, here, the author draws from some 500 pages of Disney's reports to the Bureau. Very readable, actually quite laudable, work. (Sixteen pages of photographs--not seen)
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
