WHY THIS BOOK?

If you were asked to name the director of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, could you? How about Bambi, Pinocchio, or Cinderella? We know and love directors like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Frank Capra, and Alfred Hitchcock, but even Disney fans know very little about the directors of their favorite classic animated films.

The job itself is mysterious. What does a director actually do? The term evokes images of someone wearing a baseball cap, leaning back from the camera yelling, "Cut!" to the cast and crew. How do you do that in animation? Can you tell an animated character, "Once more, with feeling"?

In fact, when the very first animated films appeared, there were no directors. With no actors, sets, costumes, or sound, what appeared on-screen was simply decided and drawn by one or two artists, with little need for planning.

But as Walt Disney refined and improved the quality of the films he made, his staff grew to include hundreds of specialized artists, all of whom needed to know what they were making and how their part contributed to the overall production. While Walt himself did this in his early films, the need to track the hundreds of details and creative decisions soon mandated a separate and distinct role. And as Walt's interests grew to include live-action, television, and theme parks, he relied more and more on these lieutenants to shape and guide his animated films.

Beyond the job and people who filled the role, their development reflects Walt Disney’s own growth as a creative producer, from tracing mice one frame at a time to overseeing dozens of film, television, and theme park projects all at once.