05.05.11 -
D23 catches up with Timothy Susanin, the unlikely author who
chronicled Walt Disney's early life in the new definitive biography, Walt Before Mickey.
 Young Walt Disney at an animator's desk in Kansas City. |
Before taking a trip to Walt Disney World with his wife and family in
2004, Timothy Susanin wouldn't have considered himself much of a Disney
fan let alone a candidate to write a biography about Walt Disney. "We
went there for the kids and we ended up loving it," he recalls.
Intrigued by the resort and in turn the man who dreamed up the idea for
it, Susanin picked up Bob Thomas' Walt Disney: An American Original.
"That biography is what got me hooked," he laughs. From there, he
delved into just about anything written about Walt until he had soaked
up all that was published. An investigative lawyer by trade, Susanin
noticed there were some missing details about Walt's past in the years
leading up to the first Mickey Mouse cartoon. Thus began his own search
for Walt's missing decade and the rest is history, well, a very specific
time in it. Walt Before Mickey transports you back in time, from
1919 to 1928, to meet the 17-year-old black-and-white version of Walt
Disney who was just taking his first brush strokes at creating the
wonderful world of Disney.
The idea was to come up with a timeline. "There was a whole decade there
that I felt a need to put in order for myself," Susanin explains. He
began searching through the trail of documents and details that Walt had
left behind. From newspaper articles and interviews to correspondence,
census records and obituaries, a life story began to take shape — not
only of Walt's, but of those around him. "So the timeline turned into a
chronology that turned into a draft that turned into a book," Susanin
reveals. "I saw pictures of Walt with all these young kids and you
wonder, 'Who are these people?' and 'Could they have ever imagined that
they were at the start of this whole iconic saga?' I wanted to jump in
and learn about the fun stuff in his glory years and focus on the
Hollywood years. And then, as I joked with [Disney Legend] Dave Smith
and a number of people, I got stuck in Kansas City."
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One of the things Susanin noticed was that most of what had been written about Walt's early years began with Steamboat Willie.
And if an author dared to go earlier into his past, it usually began
with Laugh-O-Gram Films in Kansas City. "Laugh-O-Gram Films is always
the headliner when they talk about his Kansas City years, or his career
there anyways," Susanin points out. "That was the second of the two
studios he had there." The first was called Kaycee Studios. And most
people incorrectly think he started doing those first fairytales — Little Red Riding Hood and The Four Musicians Bremen — at Laugh-O-Gram, but he really animated those while he was at Kaycee Studios."
As a reader you really get a sense of what it was like to be right there
with Walt and his animators during the experimental days of animation
and the birth of Hollywood. "The book starts out with a flashback, and
putting that aside, I try to stay in the moment," Susanin says. "So I'm
not referencing Winnie the Pooh or Disneyland. I'm not breaking the
image that I am creating there." From photos and interviews, Susanin
connects historical quotes with vivid descriptions. Readers learn about
Walt's trek to California through his own words and, based on newspaper
articles, ads and photos, Susanin describes the surroundings in vivid
detail. The book also provides a rare glimpse at Walt's early struggles
and his perseverance to go back to the drawing board when things didn't
work out. "I was struck at how many years went by before he did hit it
big," Susanin says. "One presumes it was an overnight thing."
