The Animated Man

A Life of Walt Disney

By: Michael Barrier

Narrated by: Jack de Golia

In his compelling new biography, noted animation historian Michael Barrier avoids the well-traveled paths of previous biographers, who have tended to portray a blemish-free Disney or to indulge in lurid speculation. Instead, he takes the full measure of the man in his many aspects. Barrier describes how Disney transformed himself from Midwestern farm boy to scrambling young businessman to pioneering artist and, finally, to entrepreneur on a grand scale. Barrier describes in absorbing detail how Disney synchronized sound with animation in Steamboat Willie; created in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs sympathetic cartoon characters whose appeal rivaled that of the best live-action performers; grasped television’s true potential as an unparalleled promotional device; andnot leastparlayed a backyard railroad into the Disneyland juggernaut.

The Animated Man offers freshly documented and illuminating accounts of Disney’s childhood and young adulthood in rural Missouri and Kansas City. It sheds new light on such crucial episodes in Disney’s life as the devastating 1941 strike at his studio, when his ambitions as artist and entrepreneur first came into serious conflict.

What emerges is a portrait of Walt Disney as a flawed but fascinating artist, one whose imaginative leaps allowed him to vault ahead of the competition and produce work that even today commands the attention of audiences worldwide.

The book is published by University of California Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"A uniquely comprehensive and compelling story about Walt Disney." (Daniel Goldmark, author of Tunes for 'Toons)

"Michael Barrier's biography of Walt Disney is impressive, with a remarkable range of interviews." (Kevin Brownlow, Director)

"The best critical study to date of Walt Disney and his worlds." (Karal Ann Marling, editor, Designing Disney's Theme Parks)

©2007 Michael Barrier (P)2023 Redwood Audiobooks

Unnecessary and Nothing New

TLDR: A boring restatement of better biographies (for the best, see Neal Gabler's Walt Disney) stuffed at the end with pompous unsupported opinions.

It's astonishing that a biography of Walt Disney would be thought of as a worthwhile endeavor after Neal Gabler's magisterial treatment of the subject came out in 2007. With almost 200 pages of notes, a 10 page bibliography, and the only biography written by an outsider who had access to the Disney archives, it is an incredible claim to suggest that sufficient new information has come to light to warrant the reader's time. Yet, here we are.

Barrier's book promises both a host of new facts (author's own interviews with 150 subjects) and a set of credible judgments from an expert (the author has written about comics and animation since 1970).

What is delivered instead is a book that for the first two-thirds reads exactly like a selection of excerpts from other Disney biographies. Nothing new. At the point where the author gets to the telling of Disneyland, one gets the distinct feeling that the editor or publisher or some 3rd party with an interest in the book begins leaning on the biographer to deliver something new, anything at all.

And so in a jarring and sudden shift in tone, the author begins a dreary and monotonous outpouring of critical judgments. Some of these are just thrown out for the reader to assume as true, like the out of place and strange attack on the legitimacy of the California Institute of the Arts. A broadside claim not supported by the fact pattern set out in the biography or in notes.

The thumbnail sketch of the labor dispute internal to Walt Disney Productions is an inexplicable choice for the subject of the introduction, unless one accepts at the outset that the biography is not neutral, but will eventually deliver on the thesis that "What you've heard Walt Disney was, he wasn't. What you've been told he could do, he couldn't". A fascinating potential, but outside of unsupported opinions on the part of the author alone, this never arrives.

As if the author felt embarrassed by the sudden spillage of complaints, he closes the book by providing even more ridiculous claims that others have made. So it is, we are left with Barrier's opinion that "Walt really wasn't all he was cracked up to be, but I never said he was an antisemite!"

What a strange book. As for the performance, a solid meh. Only a couple mispronunciations, but the use of a whiny nasal affect for all quotations gets tiresome after a while.

8th Book

Out of 8 books I’ve listened to about Walt Disney, this is among the top 2. Fantastic research on the man as a human and not just his work. A must read for any fan of Disney!