Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination Author: | Language: English | ISBN:
B000KLPGP8 | Format: EPUB
Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination Description
Seven years in the making and meticulously researched - Gabler is the first writer to be given complete access to the Disney archives - this is the full story of a man whose work left an ineradicable brand on our culture but whose life has largely been enshrouded in myth.
Gabler shows us the young Walt Disney breaking free of a heartland childhood of discipline and deprivation and making his way to Hollywood. We see the visionary, whose desire for escape honed an innate sense of what people wanted to see on the screen and, when combined with iron determination and obsessive perfectionism, led him to the reinvention of animation. It was Disney, first with Mickey Mouse and then with his feature films - most notably Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, and Bambi - who transformed animation from a novelty based on movement to an art form that presented an illusion of life.
The author also reveals a wounded, lonely, and often disappointed man, who, despite worldwide success, was plagued with financial problems, suffered a nervous breakdown, and at times retreated into pitiable seclusion in his workshop, making model trains. Gabler explores accusations that Disney was a red-baiter, an anti-Semite, and an embittered alcoholic. Yet whatever his personal failings, Disney appealed to millions by demonstrating the power of wish fulfillment and the triumph of the American imagination.
- Audible Audio Edition
- Listening Length: 33 hours and 24 minutes
- Program Type: Audiobook
- Version: Unabridged
- Publisher: Books on Tape
- Audible.com Release Date: November 16, 2006
- Whispersync for Voice: Ready
- Language: English
- ASIN: B000KLPGP8
Walt Disney has become a legendary character of the twentieth century. So much was written about him, and so much was inaccurate, that the legends often attained a currency that was not deserved. How many times have we heard that he was frozen? Gabler (who was the first of Walt's biographers to work with rare Disney family records) opens the book with this statement (it's not true.)
The truth is much more interesting than that.
Disney was an optimistic, hardworking go-getter with an astounding capacity for concentration who fell in love with the early twentieth century's high technology--motion pictures. Motion pictures drawn by hand.
He had the perseverance to start over again every time he failed artistically and financially. And fail he did. This is one of the most unlikely success stories ever told, since the Disney Brothers studio was working in a marginal field (animation) in a minor city (Kansas, then Hollywood, when the animation studios were all in New York), and attempting to make it as an independent producer just as the big studios were forming, eliminating independent competition in all but a few areas by 1928.
He made it because he had the unfashionable idea that quality would out, he had a tremendous amount of luck and he knew how to make appealing entertainment(Mickey Mouse was NOT the first successful character he created). Disney also had a real genius for hiring talented people. A surprising number of remarkable artists started with him in Kansas City, others were trained right on the studio lot.
Mr. Gabler's book is readable and contains much new information. Who would have thought that Charlie Chaplin was, at one time, Snow White's Prince?
"Gabler gained access to the Disney Archives, unexpectedly I'd guess, and found himself in the awkward position of writing a full-scale biography of someone whose best work he didn't care for--in 1995, he referred to Snow White and Dumbo as `treacle cartoons.' Disney clearly interested him less as a person than as a cultural influence." -from the book review by Michael Barrier (google GablerBook - the whole thing is well worth the read)
So, Gabler doesn't like or understand animation and doesn't much care for Walt Disney either; he's only interested in his influence on society? That almost completely explains why I didn't like this book. Of the 880 pages, I only got to page 194 before coming here to read some reviews and try to figure out what's so great about this book and if it's worth trudging through the rest of it. I found myself completely agreeing with all the 3-stars-and-under reviews. In fact, the Q & A with Gabler on this Amazon product page shows what Gabler thinks of Disney. There is an underlying tone of disdain and negativity in his comments; you can tell he's trying to be PC about it but it shows through.
I really wish I'd read that and the reviews before purchasing it. But I relied solely on the hype. It's one thing for a biographer to write an openly negative book about a person (like "Hollywood's Dark Prince.") It's quite another to write a negative book about a well-loved person under the guise of its being the "definitive biography!" And apparently, it also has many factual errors in it that could have easily been avoided.
My other reason for not liking this book besides Gabler's derisive treatment of his subject and ignorance of animation (he refers to Disney's films as "animations") is that it is extremely boring.
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