Writing in the London Review of Books, magazine editor Mark Greif considers two recent biographies of Walt Disney: Neal Gabler’s Walt Disney: The Triumph of The American Imagination and Michael Barrier’s The Animated Man: A Life Of Walt Disney. (via)
Greif looks at an issue raised by the glorification of Walt Disney — is it really legitimate to credit him as an artist considering that he stopped doing any animation himself as far back as the early 1930s? The title of Greif’s review is “Tinkering”, which is an excellent one-word precis of Disney’s actual life’s work — finding a lifetime’s worth of things that fascinated him and tinkering with them to exercise his creative abilities. It’s easy to see that the success Disney was granted with in his early work enabled him to spend the rest of his life exploring and indulging in various pet projects and hobbies. Some of them contributed directly to the creative output of Walt Disney Pictures; Greif talks about Disney’s legendary ability to act out characters and scenes for his animators to provide them with his vision of the stories they would turn into art. But Disney was also personally responsible for developing the multiplane animation camera which created the lush depth of the imagery in the studio’s first (and best) feature films. Other obsessions like his backyard train were merely personal indulgences. And his final obsession, EPCOT, transcended art altogether.
The friction comes from many writers, critics and animation buffs wanting to ascribe total creative credit to Walt himself rather than to the “Seven Old Men” and other creative people who were more directly responsible for the Disney “ouevre”. Sure, it’s his name on the door, but you don’t often see much creative genius credit given to Louis B. Mayer or Carl Laemmle. Yet it’s undeniable that Walt was a man of vision and talent, even if he sometimes frittered it away. In today’s age, we wouldn’t really have this dilemma over how to think of Walt. Billionaire amateurs abound. Nobody thinks Bill Gates codes software do they? Or Steve Jobs? (Did Steve EVER code software?) Yet these guys get to be seen as visionaries in their own field and even dabble into other fields — indeed, these days it’s good old Steve Jobs who has the reins over the Disney movie studio itself.
Excellent review of both books. I am very likely to read the Gabler book; Gabler has pretty good cred as a film historian and I have enjoyed some of his other books. Greif takes him to task for some of the writing, but I think the subject material is good enough to overlook the pop style.
