Description
Near Fine dust jacket with minor crease on front end flap, a mylar dust jacket has been added. The Near Fine binding is red cloth over boards with bright gilt lettering on spine, the book has thirty-two pages of black & white photos of Walt Disney. The binding is tight and pages are clean The “1” is present on the number line on copyright page which is the designation of first edition.
About the book (from the dust jacket)
Walt Disney was an American original, a man who developed the animated film into an art form and made a massive contribution to the folklore of the world. A brilliant businessman and a shrewd visionary, he also created Disneyland, which proved to be as innovative in the world of outdoor entertainment as Disney films were in the world of motion pictures. After years of research, with the full cooperation of the Disney family and access to private papers and letters, Bob Thomas, author of King Cohn and Selznick, has produced a definitive biography of the man behind the legend-the un schooled cartoonists from Kansas City who went bankrupt on his first movie venture and developed into the genius who produced unmatched works of animation.
Thomas recounts Disney’s life in vivid detail: Kansas City, where Walt and his brother Roy got up at 3:30 A.M. to deliver newspapers; Chicago, where he became a cartoonist for the McKinley High School newspaper; Laugh-O-Gram, which failed as his first business venture; Hollywood where in 1928 Steamboat Willie became the first animated cartoon and introduced a character thereafter known as Mickey Mouse. Before Disney, cartoons were slapdash. He, however, insisted on round, humanized figures; he wanted the humor to come from the character; and most of all, he added sound and color Animated feature films that followed were Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio. Bambi. Dumbo, Cinderella.,, and the ambitious Fantasia. Which flopped and was cut from two hours to 81 minutes and released on a double bill with a Western.
In addition there were poetic photographic essays (The Living Desert), live-action adventure films (Treasure Island Davy Crockett) and Mary Poppins. Finally came Disneyland itself, inspired by Walt’s many visits to Europe, where he attended every kind of outdoor entertainment-a venture that was considered foolhardy by many, but became a marvel of marketing and entrepreneurial ingenuity. Complete with many never-before published photographs, Bob Thomas biography is a fascinating and inspirational work that captures the spirit of the man whom one commentator described as someone “who knew that while there is very little grown-up in a child, there is a lot of child in every grown-up…to a child, this weary world is brand-new and gift-wrapped. Walt Disney tried to keep it that way for adults.”
