Disney. That word conjures up thoughts of mice with oversized teeth, an upright-walking duck, a raccoon-fur-wearing adventurer, theme parks and repeatedly happy endings. But Walt Disney, the man who started this iconic, global entertainment juggernaut, had quite a complex, divisive and chequered history. The remarkable four-part 2015 documentary mini-series Walt Disney: His Life and Legacy makes a very daring effort to tell his tale with brutal honesty and balance.
Naturally it unfolds chronologically, from Disney's childhood in Chicago and Missouri to when he arrived in Hollywood in 1920 after serving in World War I. Then it documents how he and financier brother Roy gradually established themselves in America's burgeoning animation industry which they transformed forever in 1937 with the seminal feature-length Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, before establishing the Walt Disney Company and everything which came with that, until Walt's death from lung cancer in 1966.
Director Sarah Colt and writer Mark Zwonitzer have come closer than maybe anybody else will to capturing the essence of Disney's achievement and that's precisely because of their conscious effort to show him warts and all. Underneath his wholesome public image, Disney was an active anti-communist who testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee and openly hated unions, to the point where he fired employees who supported them. His manner of running his company even prompted all his animators to strike in 1941 for better pay and working conditions. To their huge credit, Colt and Zwonitzer explore these scandals very objectively for a nonetheless infuriating and moving effect; it's the series' zenith for me.
But even so, their affection and respect for Disney's work shine through, and they invoke very engaging and lucid contemporary interviews with iconic Disney staff like the composers the Sherman brothers and Disney biographer Neal Gabler. Colt and Zwonitzer, with narrator Oliver Platt, also manage perhaps inadvertently to provide a broad tapestry of filmmaking and Hollywood history, and one which hints at how Hollywood became the commercial and escapist behemoth it is now. Walt Disney: His Life and Legacy therefore succeeds not just at covering and examining his story from a contemporary angle, but also at proving that indeed it all really did start with a Mouse.
But even so, their affection and respect for Disney's work shine through, and they invoke very engaging and lucid contemporary interviews with iconic Disney staff like the composers the Sherman brothers and Disney biographer Neal Gabler. Colt and Zwonitzer, with narrator Oliver Platt, also manage perhaps inadvertently to provide a broad tapestry of filmmaking and Hollywood history, and one which hints at how Hollywood became the commercial and escapist behemoth it is now. Walt Disney: His Life and Legacy therefore succeeds not just at covering and examining his story from a contemporary angle, but also at proving that indeed it all really did start with a Mouse.
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