Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination
The 2006 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Biography recognized Neal Gabler's Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination.
Work Information
A biography of Walt Disney and the creation of his cultural empire.
The Los Angeles Times honored the biography in Biography. It traces Walt Disney's creative and business legacy in full scale.
Book Information
- Publisher
- Knopf
- Published
- 2006-10-31
- Pages
- 880 pages
- Language
- 英語
- Size
- 16.61 x 4.98 x 24.18 cm
- ISBN-13
- 9780679438229
- ISBN-10
- 067943822X
- Category
- 洋書/Arts & Photography/Graphic Design/Animation
From Neal Gabler, the definitive portrait of one of the most important figures in twentieth-century American entertainment and cultural history. 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. We see him reimagine the amusement park with Disneyland, prompting critics to coin the word Disneyfication to describe the process by which reality can be modified to fit one’s personal desires. At the same time, he provided a new way to connect with American history through his live-action films and purveyed a view of the country so coherent that even today one can speak meaningfully of “Walt Disney’s America.” We see how the True-Life Adventure nature documentaries he produced helped create the environmental movement by sensitizing the general public to issues of conservation. And we see how he reshaped the entertainment industry by building a synergistic empire that combined film, television, theme parks, music, book publishing, and merchandise in a way that was unprecedented and was later widely imitated. Gabler also reveals a wounded, lonely, and often disappointed man, who, despite worldwide success, was plagued with financial problems much of his life, 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, an embittered alcoholic. But whatever the characterizations of Disney’s personal life, he appealed to the nation by demonstrating the power of wish fulfillment and the triumph of the American imagination. Walt Disney showed how one could impose one’s will on the world. This is a masterly biography, a revelation of both the work and the man—of both the remarkable accomplishment and the hidden life
Neal Gabler is the author of An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for history. His biography Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity was named best nonfiction book of the year by Time. He appears regularly on the media review program Fox News Watch , and writes often for The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. He is currently a senior fellow at the Norman Lear Center for the Study of Entertainment and Society in the Annenberg School for Communications at the University of Southern California. He lives with his wife in Amagansett, New York.
Reviews
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Awesome
Perfect for any Disney fan! It's very informative and told me many things I didn't know
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天才だって人間。でもやっぱり天才か。。。
完璧主義者。よき父。コントロールフリーク。二枚目。気分屋。カリスマ。セレブリティ。時には冷酷。一人の弱い人間。 ウォルトディズニーの人物に関する書物を全く読んだことのなかった私は、ウォルトディズニーといえば、夢のようなアニメーション、夢の国ディズニーランドを創った、夢のようなおじさんなのではないかと勝手に想像していた。 本書を読んでウォルトディズニー（とそのスタッフ）によって手がけられた映画、ディズニーランドという作品はただの夢見がちなおじさんではなく、そこに現実があり、現実を見てきた人だからこそ、世に送り出すことのできたものだった、ということが理解できた。 一人の人間として、ディズニーマジックを完成させた彼の情熱、才能、惜しみない努力のすごさに圧倒されるとともに、決して遠い世界の人間ではないことも感じ取れます。 どのような状況で作品が製作されてきたのかも記されており、本と照らし合わせ改めてウォルトディズニー作品を見てみたくなります。ウォルトが文字通り隅々まで歩き回りこだわりぬいたアナハイムのディズニーランドにも行ってみたい！
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He sacrificed everything.
In Orson Welles’ famous movie “Citizen Kane”, Kane’s friend(played by Joseph Cotton) says to Kane; "You used to write an awful lot about the working man. He's turning into something called organized labor. You’re not going to like that one little bit when you find out it means that your working man expects something as his right, not as your gift. When your precious underprivileged really get together, that’s going to add up to something bigger than your privileges. And then I don’t know what you’ll live. Sail away to a desert island probably and lord it over the monkeys." I fancy that this can be said to Walt Disney. He did not care about his workers. They were his instruments. It was with these instruments that he achieved a marvelous feat. But it was not only his workers that he did not care about. He did not think that to live was the object of life; for him the object of life was to revolutionize the entertainment industry. No monk in his cell more resolutely sacrificed the pleasures of the world to the love of God than Disney sacrificed the fullness and variety of life to his ambition to create a revolution in the entertainment industry. He sacrificed not only himself, but also his home, his friends, his staff, and his workers. In a sense, he was a very cruel man, far from the genial image of him one can get from his wonderful movies such as "Snow White" and "Bambi". But if he had been a decent and considerate person, he could not have made such wonderful movies.
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This author sucks
This author sucks. There are lots of meaningless and boring explanation. He does not deserve to write this book.
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Impecavelmente detalhada e completa! Biografia inspiradora e bem escrita. Leitura obrigatória para que aprecia a obra deste gênio. Muito Motivadora .
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What surprises me the most is - how come this biography of unmatchable stature is not in the list of the Best Biographies Ever? Had no idea of this Biography even a few months ago. By chance I read two other books related to Disney - Bob Iger's "The Ride of a Lifetime" and then "Be Our Guest." The information I read about the person Walt Disney made me interested to know him more and this I found this very book and ordered in scecptically as it was relatively expensive and also not much known. But, I'm more than overwhelmed with this stately Biography of a man who change many of my inherent notions about the best of the CEOs ever and moreover about what all someone can achieve from whatever meagre background and adverse situations in life against all odds from all ends in life and livelihood. Read it. And recommend it to anyone looking for one of the Must Read Biographies Ever!!
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Gabler's biography of Disney is the best I have read and I have read nearly all of them. The product of huge amounts of research, it is a well balanced and even handed review of the man's life and work. The writing is superb, drawing the reader on as Disney and his staff make ever greater leaps into the unknown in the 20s and 30s. The disappointments of the 40s and early 50s are well documented and Disney's move toward the theme parks is covered with impressive detail. More of the man behind the films emerges from this book than any previous biography I have read, (Leonard Maltin's was previously the best in my view) and although he remains a tantalisingly unfathomable subject, something of his personality emerges via the interviews and documentary evidence. The overall impression one gets from this book is of a man driven in everything he did, eventually stretched to point where, at his dealth aged 65, he'd packed in several normal lifetimes. Most highly reccommended.
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Meticulously researched, exquisitely written. Gabler is clearly a professional writer who has gone to great lengths to give his reader a detailed-as-possible rendition of Walt Disney's life and work. The length of this book may be offsetting for some - and it was indeed exasperating at times - yet I personally found it to be difficult to stop reading and became genuinely addicted to "the story" of this American icon. I have read no other biographies of Walt Disney, but I cannot imagine there is a better one out there. Highly recommended.
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Really comprehensive autobiography of Walt Disney. Amazing story of a inventive mind that changed Hollywood and the world. Also learn a lot about the animation business and how it developed.