The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life

Bibliographic Essay

Bibliographic Essay ~e literature, both scholarly and popular, on Walt Disney and his enterprise is simply enormous. The notes for this text cite hundreds ofprimary source materials on various aspects of Disney's history, from his birth to the late 1960s. The general reader interested in pursuing particular topics, however, can turn to a number of useful publications. Perhaps the best place to begin is with Kathy Merlock Jackson's Walt Disney: A Bio-Bibliography (Westport, Conn., 1993). This compilation offers a brief biography of the filmmaker, a reasonably complete listing of hundreds of articles, scholarly essays, and books on Disney that have appeared over the last six decades, a survey of Disney's impact on various aspects of media and popular culture, and extracts from a number of Walt's statements and interviews over the years. Persistence ofVision, a journal devoted to the history ofWalt Disney and his enterprise, is edited by Paul F. Anderson in Salt Lake City, Utah, and offers an array of fascinating articles on every aspect of Disney's evolution from the 1920S to the present. Those in search ofbiographies should begin with Bob Thomas's Walt Disney: An American Original (New York, 1976), a studio-sanctioned portrait by a veteran journalist . It is clearly written, factually accurate, and full of detail, ifunquestioning in its favorable analysis. Leonard Mosely's Disney's World: A Biography (New York, 1985), while well written and decently, if unevenly, researched, suffers from a reliance on psychobabble and a tendency to embellish the facts in the interests of scandalmongering . Marc Eliot's Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince (New York, 1993) travels much farther down the road of tabloid-style biography. This unrelentingly hateful treatment is full of far-fetched accusations - Walt Disney is presented as, among other things, a raging alcoholic and abuser of drugs, a Nazi sympathizer, and a dabbler in incest - and offers little of value. Richard Schickel's The Disney Version: The Life, Times, Art and Commerce of Walt Disney (New York, 1968) in many ways remains the most thoughtful and provocative critique of Walt Disney's life and his enterprise. This brilliant, biting analysis reveals a great deal about Disney's relationship to modern Anlerican culture, but it displays an annoying condescension and overlooks many crucial artistic and political connections in its scathing indictment of Disney and his audience. Richard L. Trethewey's Walt Disney: The FBI Files (Pacifica, Calif., 1994) presents 510 I Bibliographic Essay a thorough, balanced analysis of Disney's much-ballyhooed FBI file, which has recently come to light under the Freedom of Information Act. It sensibly notes the largely honorary, superficial relationship between Walt and the Bureau over several decades. It also details the FBI's investigation of Disney and the tension between the two over the 1960s films Moon Pilot and That Darn Cat. A number of books present useful surveys of Disney's artistic production over the decades. Leonard Maltin's The Disney Films (New York, 1973) is an indispensable guide to the subject, providing brief synopses of every Disney feature film made up to the date of publication, as well as sections on the studio's animated shorts and television productions. Robert Feild's The Art ofWalt Disney (New York, 1942) offers one of the earliest evaluations of the Mickey Mouse factory, its production techniques , and its impact on modern art. Christopher Finch's The Art ofWalt Disney: From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdom (New York, 1973), a highly informative and lavishly illustrated volume, relies on archival research and a host of interviews with Disney staffers to trace the development of the studio's artistic output over many decades. Bob Thomas's Disney's Art of Animation: From Mickey Mouse to Beauty and the Beast (New York, 1991) leads the reader on a briefjaunt through the development of animation at the studio. John Canemaker and Robert E. Abrams's Treasures of Disney Animation Art (New York, 1982) brings to light dozens of the sketches, drawings, and watercolors from the DisneyArchives that helped inspire the studio's animated movies for over fifty years. David Tietyen's The Musical World of Walt Disney (Milwaukee, 1990) surveys the hundreds of songs that constituted a crucial dimension of Disney films from the early shorts through Fantasia and Mary Poppins to the present. The structure, workings, and production techniques of the Disney Studio have prompted several explorations of its evolution. Richard Holliss and Brian Sibley's The Disney Studio Story (New...