07-25-07 Podcast with Disney Biographer Neal Gabler

[Chuck Oberleitner]

Neal Gabler: The Wonder of Control

July 25, 2007

Neal Gabler, professor, journalist, author, political commentator, and author of Walt Disney, The Triumph of the American Imagination, is our guest for this edition of the o-meon grown up geeks’ guide podcast. With the full cooperation of the Walt Disney Company, and especially the Disney Archive, Gabler’s seven years of painstakingly meticulous research has produced the most complete portrait yet of one of the most influential lives of the 20th Century, even as he puts to rest some of the biggest myths surrounding Disney’s life.

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[Waltsicle]

If I hear this numbnutz use the word "animationS" again, I'm going to shave his head. It's not only incorrect, it's annoying.

His book is OK, but not as concise or informative as Michael Barriers. But neither comes close to Steven Watts book "Walt Disney and the American Way of Life."

[Hayley B]

hmmm? I might give it one try and listen to it next week. I normally sync my podcasts stuff on my iPod in the end of the week and listen to it the following week.

[David Nethery]

I appreciate the opportunity to hear Gabler speak for himself on the podcast , but your party line description of his book is disappointing:

"... seven years of painstakingly meticulous research has produced the most complete portrait yet of one of the most influential lives of the 20th Century, even as he puts to rest some of the biggest myths surrounding Disney’s life."

I think readers interested in Walt Disney's life and work should compare Gabler's book with the recent one published by Michael Barrier "The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney" and after reading both books decide which book one thinks is actually painstakingly , meticulously researched .

Barrier has documented the mistakes in Gabler's "meticulous" research here:

Gabler book Factual Errors and Ambiguities

and here:

Gabler's Misrepresentation of Walt Disney's personal character


Diane Disney Miller has spoken out strongly against Gabler's misrepresentation of her parents and against the seeming "endorsement" given to the book by the Disney Co.

Early this month, Diane Disney Miller, Walt's surviving daughter, sent a fax to a number of executives at the Walt Disney Company, denouncing the book as "a monstrous piece of libelous junk. My parents were not the people he creates in this book, and I cannot understand why all of you who aided and abetted Gabler in writing this book, and who praise it and promote it, can do so without suffering serious qualms."

As Diane writes in her fax, she at first wanted to have nothing to do with Gabler, who in a previous book carelessly repeated a discredited slur of Walt he had picked up from an unreliable source. To her present regret, she relented "at the urging of some [in the Disney Company] who assured me I would like his book," and she and Gabler met for an interview in San Francisco. She recalls being "startled and dismayed" by some of his assumptions about her parents' courtship and marriage.

In a recent comment on his web site (Aug. 17, 2007) Barrier notes:

(Gabler's) "...portrayal of Walt Disney himself so much at odds with any reasonable interpretation of the facts of his life. Gabler's haunted, tormented, traumatized Disney is the invention of a writer with a fatally deficient imagination, one who can conceive of no reason for Walt's interest in model trains other than mental illness, and who can dismiss Walt as a "terrible husband" because he didn't conform to some present-day paradigm. Gabler writes about "animations" without ever showing any grasp of what's involved in making animated cartoons, and his limited understanding of business reveals itself in the exaggerated importance he assigns to Roy O. Disney's role and to some of the "crises" the company passed through.

In short, Gabler has written about Walt Disney with the blinkered vision of a middle-aged journalist from an exceptionally self-contained milieu—the urban, liberal, skeptical, and sophisticated Northeast (I can understand why the evil geniuses at Fox News hired him for on-camera duty as one of their liberal punching bags). Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination has often been reviewed by people of much the same sort. It's no wonder that Gabler's peers have greeted the book so warmly, since its ultimate effect is to validate a picture—Warped Walt—they've always carried around in their heads.

As the library statistics alone testify, the worst damage has already been done. Not just the reviewers but also many Disney fans have embraced Gabler's book, which has, after all, received the imprimatur of the Walt Disney Company. It's hard to resist the urge to snuggle up to power.

It might be tempting for some people to dismiss Barrier's comments about Gabler's book as mere "sour grapes" , the green-eyed musings of a jealous author who's own book is not (yet) receiving the same critical attention and sales figures as his "competitor" Gabler ... except for the fact that Barrier has been researching Walt Disney's life and work for many years prior to Gabler's interest in the subject and has the meticulous factual research to back up his claims . Again, the proof is to be found in comparing the two book and looking at Barrier's list of Gabler's Errors . (by the way Barrier has been man enough to have also documented the errors in his own book here: Barrier's Errors in The Animated Man. ) The errors and bad research in Gabler's book are not Barrier's opinion, they are provable, factual errors. Some of Gabler's errors are so basic, so easy to have corrected if he had actually done the "meticulous, painstaking research" claimed, that one is forced to reevaluate whether the book holds any value as a serious scholarly work on Walt Disney.

[Waltsicle]

I agree about the use of "animations." If I hear him use this term incorrectly once more, I'm going to sew his mouth shut!

Gabler's book is shallow, and gives no sense of the man. It's a glossed over puff piece--no wonder Diane Disney Miller is pissed. She was hoping for a well rounded book, not a corporate stamp.

Barrier's book, while cut and dried, fills in a few of the gaps Gabler missed out on, but it's not terribly interesting as a whole. His OCD with trivia can be tiresome, but at least he keeps his obnoxious pontificating to a minimum (which for him, is saying something).

No, the best book about Walt Disney, the Man, is still "The Magic Kingdom: Walt Disney and the American Way of Life," by Steven Watts.