Michael Dirda

To bring in cash for its construction and to help advertise this so-called Disneyland, Roy and Walt cut a deal with ABC to produce a weekly television series, a mix of old cartoons, occasional "True-Life Adventures" (i.e., nature documentaries such as "The Living Desert," 1953), and special TV movies. "Walt Disney Presents" proved a huge and immediate success, with "Uncle Walt" himself as its genial avuncular host. And after the show featured a series about a grinning frontier scout who was "born on a mountaintop in Tennessee," it was more than successful, it was the home of a phenomenon. The nation's children went crazy for Fess Parker's Davy Crockett. (There can be few men in their late 50s or 60s who didn't once own a coonskin cap, with a long, furry tail hanging from it.) Soon thereafter, the network wanted an after-school kiddie program, and so was born "The Mickey Mouse Club." (Sing it everyone: M-I-C, K-E-Y, M-O-U-S-E.) The show was thrown together in an almost improvisatory manner, but kids adored it. Half the pre-pubescent boys in America fell in love with dark-haired Mouseketeer Annette Funicello (none more than a certain future book reviewer, author of Annette-inspired poems in praise of her charm, her grace, her eyes, her lips, her everything).

Once Disneyland finally opened in 1955, its creator often stayed there in his own special apartment, preferring his earthly paradise to his film studio or his actual home. Within a couple of years, Walt's grandest folly was the most popular tourist attraction in the West.

But overreachers seldom just settle back and retire. Before his death from lung cancer at 65, Walt began to acquire, surreptitiously, huge chunks of property in central Florida for an even greater project: Near Orlando, he would build a second and even bigger amusement park but, more important, attached to it would be a model city, an all-American utopia that he himself would design. When he died, the model city died with him (at least until his successors, decades later, unveiled the spanking fresh town of Celebration, Fla.).

As for that second park, now called Walt Disney World, it continues to grow and evolve and, some say, spread out tentacles. According to cultural critics, America has become a true Disney world -- increasingly obsessed with order and wholesomeness, eager for the cozily reassuring and the schmaltzy, safe in its art, conservative in its values and blithely unconcerned with global realities, human suffering and social inequities.

Periodically, Gabler re-emphasizes that Walt's achievements in animation, films and magic kingdoms are all fundamentally triumphs of relentless control. In his youth Walt might have been compared to the revolutionary genius of Charlie Chaplin, but as he aged he was more often likened to that uplifting painter of old-timey scenes of mom, the flag and apple pie, Norman Rockwell.

About this superb biography, one can hardly be temperate. Gabler's only obvious flaw is also his great strength -- the sheer amount of detail and material he presents to the reader. But his engaging, unobtrusive prose, his passion for his workaholic subject (whom he regards as both genius and monster), and his steady march through an amazing career all inspire trust and gratitude. Here, then, is the definitive portrait of Walt Disney, the Dream-King. ·

Michael Dirda is a critic for Book World. His e-mail address is mdirda@gmail.com, and his online discussion of books takes place each Wednesday at 2 p.m. on washingtonpost.com.