Walt Disney has touched all our lives, whether we like it or not. If you stop what you are doing and even go to your corner pharmacy, you are likely to see Disney-branded candy, soap, shampoo, toys and even Band-Aids. But Walter Elias Disney was actually just a person at one point, as the latest episode of PBS’ American Experience series, Walt Disney tries to show.
Even at four hours, the film, written and directed by Sarah Colt, can feel incomplete. That either just goes to show how much Disney crammed into just 64 years of life or that Disney people still had some sway over what was included. That doesn’t mean that Colt shies away from some of the difficult facts of Disney’s life. It just means that it’s not all there.
Walt Disney is set up like a typical American Experience episode, with archival footage sitting next to interviews with historians and critics. Remarkably, there are some surviving animators who even worked on Snow White And The Seven Dwarfs in 1937 and Colt got interviews with them. There’s also comments from Beauty And The Beast producer Don Hahn and Mary Poppins songwriter Richard Sherman.
Even as a big Disney fan, there were was still plenty of material in the film that was fascinating to me. There’s his relationship with Roy Disney, who was the finance man at the studio and kept everything afloat. Colt also spends a good amount of time on the 1941 strike at the Disney studio, suggesting that there is a pre-strike Walt and a post-strike Walt, who are two different people. And the inclusion of Song of the South is intriguing, since the Disney company still refuses to release it on home video. Then again, Walt Disney also makes a good argument for why the film should never be seen publicly again.
The film does have to be praised for focusing on the man and not just trying to give a boring timeline of events in his life. Some things are skipped - we never hear about how Donald Duck became more popular than Mickey Mouse, why Peter Pan was so important to him or those rumors that Disney was an anti-Semite that never go away - and these keep the film from feeling authoritative. You get the sense that, despite not being produced by the Disney company, there were still some things that were too sensitive for PBS to cover.
Disney did not lead a life so easily whittled down to four hours. He was did just about everything a man with a dream could do and did end up changing the face of American popular culture. While American Experience: Walt Disney doesn’t feel like the ultimate authoritative biography on Disney, it’s still fascinating for people who only know Disney as a media empire, not as a man.
Walt Disney debuted on PBS last night, with part two airing tonight. It is also available on DVD.