The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney, by Michael Barrier, is the most welcome addition to the study of both the king and the Kingdom to come along in over two decades. It is as intelligently organized and dispassionately drafted an examination of the man Walt Disney that anyone has written thus far, and I believe the best of the Disney biographies.

It is also the most critical, cold, un-romanticized (and sometimes most opinionated) Disney biography since the prickly and prissy Richard Schickel tome, and unquestionably superior to the Neil Gabler book that cut a swath across the timber lands that can be seen from outer-space. The difference is that Barrier’s is a no-nonsense book that is both Nixon-era and Eisner-era immune. Barrier had the good sense to focus this work and state from the outset that he has made no attempt to re-write what was already well written, or to write a definitive biography of Walt Disney. Instead, he has the courage and the acumen to state his premise clearly – a book focusing on Disney the animated filmmaker, and not the founder of the American phenomenon. Here is a clear-cut case for seeing Disney in a harsh white light that shows him first and foremost as a cartoon innovator and character animation avatar. Barrier has written, if you will, a scholar’s cook book for anyone wanting to throw Walt into the mix – whether writing about the Parks or animation or television or popular culture - and essentially reminds us that no matter how many ways you dress and spice and cook a dish, you must always remember and respect the immutable, and sometimes very basic core ingredient. This is the essential Walt, examined and admired for just what he is, and not over-cooked or over-sauced. Barrier’s voice, though obdurate at times, is the perfect narrator for this approach, and it makes for a fascinating and satisfying read.

The Animated Man makes it easier to see where other biographers have failed. The Animated Man is superior to the Bob Thomas biography in that the author never tries to smooth over the bumps in the road, and allows both his sources and himself to reflect on the imperfections of Disney and his background without panicking that they might overwhelm the more sympathetic Uncle Walt. Barrier lets Walt be simply as complex a man as any man could be in less complicated times, and doesn’t blow it out of proportion. Thus, unlike the entirely humorless Neil Gabler bio-epic, Barrier’s sources speak in a human voice and of a humane Disney, and Barrier never once applies the tedious and self-absorbed logic of present-day corporate Hollywood to tear apart his subject, as if he were the choice for a far too facile MBA thesis. It is now more obvious than ever that Gabler’s book is severely polluted by a misanthropic cynicism, resulting in a biography that evaluates the net-present-value of the human heart and assigns absurd ambitions to a man born in an entirely different time and place than the Los Angeles of today. Barrier’s Disney is unapologetically a man of Disney’s times and not Barrier’s. This Walt is much more human, and Barrier gives a sober account of the facts. There are no demon prairie people from whom young Walt wishes to escape, haunting him to the grave. Instead, there is just Walt. What a refreshing concept.

Barrier also uses his sources much more adroitly. The much over-rated claim of Neil Gabler and his publishers that he had “unprecedented access�? to the Disney archives is put to bed by the simple fact that Barrier also had this privilege, only it was throughout the last half of the last century. Although the door closed to Barrier and subsequent biographers of note, (other than Gabler, who got what Knopf would have us believe was nothing short of Papal dispensation to the vaults), the work Barrier did is equal to Gabler’s, who for all his efforts never really found some smoking gun among the stacks. Barrier also points to the archive papers that no one, including Gabler, have seen or are ever likely to see, at least not for some time, and very wisely notes that “if such a thing as ‘the definitive’ biography of Walt Disney is even possible, it will be decades before it can be written�?. No matter, as Barrier had done his research, and done it well, long before the door closed, and his meticulously footnoted stockpile of personal interviews with some of the most important and now, sadly, long dead colleagues who worked as closely with Walt as any artists ever did are integral to this genuinely scholarly work. Barrier carefully balances his commentary with facts and frank observations from his sources throughout the book. The difference is that Michael Barrier never uses his sources to judge Disney as if he were alive today. He lets both the speaker and the man of whom they speak to remain in the context of their time, place and culture. This may be the key to why and how the book rises above other biographies. It’s a solid biography with solid sources commenting on the subject alongside the biographer, and not Walt Disney’s “My Space�? account.

Barrier is a far from a sycophant, however. His comment that Disneyland’s “impact on American culture, for good or ill, has been exaggerated�? will doubtless raise the hackles on many annual pass holders, but it’s a tempered observation when one considers, first, that it is the films that influence and shape the vast majority of the global public’s perspective when it comes to the Disney brand, and secondly, the majority of the world still doesn’t visit sites like LaughingPlace.com with the same regularity that they visit the grocery store, many without ever giving Disney a single moment’s thought in either their home building or their vacation planning. Barrier is never afraid to state his opinion, and he makes it difficult to fault him for putting things into perspective, aggravatingly pompous though he may be at times. For the readers of Barrier’s web-site or his ground breaking publication Funny World, this is Barrier light. Whether that’s a factor of having an editor or growing less pedantic and condescending in his middle age, I can’t be certain. But I am certain that I’ve always admired, though frequently disagreed with him. I often find him too opinionated for his own good – though, Lord knows, of all people I should duck and cover to avoid flying shards of glass when saying so, and I’ll own up here and now to having a death grip on endless verbs and adjectives that Barrier has never hobbled around on.