Walt Disney comes alive in a new book. But is he animated?

Despite the dozen or so books written about him there have always been a lot of questions surrounding the personage of Walt Disney. Was he a misunderstood artist, a visionary entrepreneur, or both? Was he a fatherly figurehead to his Disney employees or a self-serving egomaniac? Was he cremated or cryogenically frozen when he died?

Michael Barrier sought to answer these queries and more about the man behind Mickey Mouse in the biographical The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney (2007, University of California Press, 393 pages, U.S., $29.95). Barrier, an animation historian who founded and edited Funnyworld--the first serious publication dedicated to comics and cartoons--as well as the author of "Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age," delved deep into Disney's background to give readers a full-bodied understanding of how a Missouri farm boy with a paper route was transformed into the unlikely head of an empire. And while Barrier's work occasionally refers to Disney in less than glowing terms, The Walt Disney Company has--as it seems to always do with new books about its polarizing founder--opted to ignore the new tome.

In 1969, three years after Disney's death, Barrier, who had long been spellbound by a man he considered a "stunted but fascinating artist," began recording interviews with dozens of people who had worked with Disney throughout his storied career. Barrier combined these discussions with Disney's own recollections, as well as research from the Disney studio's archives to create a work with such attention to detail that it would have made the exacting Disney proud.

Even though the story of his humble beginnings has been retold many times, it is helpful here to briefly recount it. Born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, Disney always loved to draw. But his father, a perennially failed entrepreneur who had lost money on a number of ill-fated ventures, including a jelly company, tried to convince his child that doodling was a waste a time, and that only hard labor would win monetary rewards. A good son, Disney took in all that his dad spoon-fed him for a time, but soon the entrepreneurial spirit that led to his father's financial undoing took hold of him too.

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After brief stints at a number of commercial art studios, Walt and his older brother Roy decided to go into business for themselves, making their very own films, then a mixture of live-action and animation. Animated Man deftly documents the birth of this once-tiny operation, including the brothers' seemingly endless search for financing, as well as their occasional need to lay off huge numbers of employees in order to stay in the black. Roy was the consummate businessman, Walt the dreamer. While the duo faltered at first, losing money on pictures more often than not, Walt quickly established himself as a creative thinker who was uncommonly in touch with the common man. "'He had a very earthy sense of humor,' said Jack Cutting who joined the Disney staff in 1929. 'His humor was what I would call rural, or rustic ... It was an unsophisticated sense of humor, and because he had that, he instinctively sensed what might go over well with the average audience,'" wrote Barrier.

That Disney had his finger on the pulse of America's tastes is undeniable even to his most outspoken detractors. From Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck to Snow White and the Seven Dwarves to Mary Poppins, Disney proved he knew exactly what would appeal to consumers' hearts in order to make them open their wallets.

When the studio was still small, Disney could easily exert his control over each picture, making decisions as seemingly insignificant as a change in a character's color or the addition of shading to a sketch. But as his business grew, Disney never could quite figure out how to remain as intrinsic a part of his films as he felt he needed to be. Production would be forced to halt on several films whenever Walt took a holiday or when he simply would not or could not keep up with the sheer number of films being produced at his eponymous firm. Contrary to the avuncular "Uncle Walt" persona he'd cultivated as host of Disney's successful ABC Disneyland television show, he was downright dictatorial when it came to his studio. "If Disney would not make decisions and let stories move forward into animation, the people making his short cartoons would be left without work or would spend their time redoing what they had already done," wrote Barrier.

While Disney was indubitably a hands-on if at times overbearing boss, it was only because he absolutely adored what he did for a living. His compulsive attention to detail extended to his personal life, as well. He was a model train enthusiast who built full-size reproductions that actually worked in his own backyard. He also so loved miniatures that he wanted to take his collection of them out on tour.

But it wasn't until plans were under-way for the building of Disneyland that Disney truly found his new obsession. And when the park was finally complete, it really was his happiest place on earth. Barrier described Disney's fervor for the park as a "lover's fierce passion." Disney himself told an interviewer in 1964: "This place is my baby, and I would prostitute myself for it."

Yet while Disney's love of Disneyland was explained at length, it is that Barrier only briefly addressed widespread rumors of Disney's purported anti-Semitism--which he discounts just as quickly--that is the only serious flaw in an otherwise unparalleled memoir. While there's no way to know for sure where Disney's prejudices lay, surely Barrier could have delved deeper in the years he researched the man.

Walt Disney continued to make pictures up until the very end of his life --when the cigarettes he'd smoked for decades finally destroyed his lungs in 1966. But his name will not be soon forgotten. He left behind an empire that churns out a wide range of films and TV series each year, and encompasses Disney-ABC Television, as well as kid-aimed channels, general interest networks and a slew of theme parks that bear his name. In 2001, then-Disney CEO Michael Eisner said: "You ask what is the soul of the company and what is our direction?" Almost 40 years after his death, Eisner knew the answer was still Walt himself.

Walt Disney remains both the heart and soul of the company he built with nothing but ambition and the desire to make people smile. The Disney moniker, once just the last name of a Missouri-bred boy, has become so much more than he'd ever dreamed. It screams of money and power and a realm so vast that it seems impossible that anyone, anywhere has never heard the name. Walt Disney the determined businessman would've loved that. But his other self, Walt Disney the passionate artist, might've cringed at how far-reaching his company has become. Cringed and then counted his money, that is. Such was the duality of The Animated Man.