After Disney: Toil, Trouble, and the Transformation of America's Favorite Media Company
Author: Neil O'Brien
Publisher: Post Hill Press (2025)
Dream Chasing: My Four Decades of Success and Failure with Walt Disney Imagineering
Author: Bob Weis
Publisher: Disney Editions (2024)
When in the course of human events it becomes fortuitous that two incredibly insightful books on the same period of Disney history cross my desk, I must read both and let you know how they stack up. I'm no Disney historian myself, although I own over 60 books on Disney art, history, design, philosophy, and many many books detailing all aspects of the theme parks. I'd make one hell of a tour guide of Disneyland, I'll tell you that much.
In a previous article, I'd flagged Neil O'Brien's upcoming book After Disney: Toil, Trouble, and the Transformation of America's Favorite Media Company about the two decades after the death of Walt Disney as being one of the few opportunities to gather any information on this period at all. O'Brien, being a good dude, reached out and offered a review copy at just the right time; I had just the day before finished another Disney tome that gave some insight on the same decades, Dream Chasing: My Four Decades of Success and Failure with Walt Disney Imagineering, by former Imagineer Bob Weis. What O'Brien chose to avoid talking about (the massive park expansion during the 70s and 80s), Weis fills in from a design and construction point of view. The two books complement each other remarkably.
To be clear, there are a lot of books and other media about Walt Disney's time on Earth. Just last year The History Channel dropped a six-episode series about his life and times, the so-so How Disney Built America. At the time of his death, he was the most photographed man in the world, with a life full of animated films and shorts, live-action dramas and comedies, comic strips and books, music that has stood the test of time, theme parks that are some of the biggest tourist draws every year, and television shows that he both led and starred in. Walt casts a big shadow over any and all Disney history.
So when he died in December of 1966, the question around the Disney Studios and the Disney Company was, "What the hell do we do now?" Their leader, chief arbiter of taste, and spearhead of new ideas was taken off the table with no clear line of succession. That's where O'Brien's tale begins, with the organizational chaos following Walt's death: who's in charge, what are we working on, and — the question most detrimental to any progress — what would Walt do?
O'Brien chooses to follow the juiciest of stories: what's happening with the Disney Studios, now that we've run out of projects Walt himself promoted? These are animated films like The Aristocats, The Rescuers, The Fox and the Hound, and, most importantly, The Black Cauldron, a film that was meant to both reinvigorate Disney animation and show off the talents of the new wave of young animators.
After Disney begins by slowly severing the connections to Walt and his old ways before slowly building connections to the eventual leadership of the company by Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. As the book progresses you see references to Walt become fewer and fewer, while brief mentions of Eisner and Wells get increasingly peppered in before the full company takeover in 1984. It's a good way to emphasize that these were middling years between two giant administrations.
And life, well, wasn't easy during those years. I learned from O'Brien's book that, despite any number of books about the company making it sound like the studio was churning out film after film, Disney in reality was viewed as a boutique studio, releasing far less product per year than its competitors.
At first, these films were heavily templated and repetitive, leaving them relegated to the "made for anyone, but mostly little kids" bucket. Less ambitious films like The Apple Dumpling Gang and The Littlest Horse Thieves were cheap to make and brought in very little. It would take a creative shot in the arm from a new breed of art student from the newly founded CalArts to bring the company out of the doldrums and into the late 80s.
O'Brien also knows where readers with a background in Disney history are going to want to see deep dives. The beginning of the book goes into detail about the foundation of CalArts and how its students would go on to supplant Walt's "Nine Old Men" of animation, a murderer's row of exceptionally talented veterans. One of those new faces was animator Don Bluth, whose exit from the studio gets many pages as it was a huge shake-up for the company (Bluth took multiple animators with him, dealing a blow to films in production). And Tim Burton gets a good amount of ink because not only was he an animator on The Fox and the Hound and a concept designer for The Black Cauldron, he was also a funny, kooky kid, the star of dozens of enjoyable stories — including how he battled studio head Ron Miller in a volleyball game for control of the company!
I have no objections to how O'Brien structured this book by avoiding talking about the incredible expansion of the Disney parks during this time; there are, in fact, any number of books that detail the history and challenges of building EPCOT Center in Florida. Those middling years are brought into first-person perspective by Bob Weis, whose book Dream Chasing: My Four Decades of Success and Failure with Walt Disney Imagineering had been on my wishlist for a while, but was only purchased after finding an autographed copy online (I was careful not to scratch the dust jacket as I read it).
Bob started working with Imagineering, the theme park design arm of the Disney company, in 1980, which gave him experience designing and building Tokyo Disneyland, Disney's Hollywood Studios (once Disney MGM Studios), Disneyland Paris (once Euro Disney), Tokyo DisneySea, and Shanghai Disney Resort. He was elevated to the position of president of Imagineering in 2016, but stepped down in 2023. His book is one of the few places to get any detailed information about the planning and construction of Tokyo Disneyland at all, making it remarkably valuable for anyone interested in that era of the company.
He begins with a little about his life and schooling before diving in earnest into story after story of his process, his memories of traveling around the world, and the challenges he was facing as an Imagineer. Each chapter in his nearly 450-page book is neat and tidy at only 2-5 pages a pop, making it a perfect book for any teacher to photocopy for students to give a lesson about perseverance, agility, or bringing in help to solve problems. I found that Weis was enormously complimentary when talking about his colleagues both within Disney (Eisner and Wells are in this a lot) and within the different geographical locations where he spent so much of his time.
In reading his book, I got the sense that Weis's life of traveling the globe was great for his creative ambitions, but weighed heavily on him and his life outside Disney. For every story he tells about exploring bookstores in China or trying different food in Japan, he comes back to his home a little more detached from his family and life outside Disney. You get a good sense of how the different forces pushed and pulled him throughout his life, but in almost every instance he chose to pursue the Disney projects — sometimes at great cost to himself.
We also get probably the only detailed account of the failed "Disney's America" project that was meant to be built in rural Virginia. The park was meant to capitalize on the proximity to Civil War battlefields to introduce a new way of teaching American history: through attractions, rides, films, and museum pieces. Weis talks of his experiences being inspired by visits to the proposed locations, crafting set pieces, working with experts in American history, and presenting (and defending) the team's ideas to different audiences. In the end, a concerted effort from local Virginians killed the project, less because of the content being presented and more because of how the changes to traffic and tourism patterns would impact their horse ranches.
I have to say, both books are great reads for anyone interested in the history of animation, theme park design, or just how your favorite things got made. Weis leans more towards a bit of positive spin on his work, as a point of pride and instruction for others, whereas O'Brien isn't afraid to point out when and where things went off the rails as a sobering dose of historic fact. There are no villains in either book, only people with ideas that they fought for and are respected by the authors for doing so. Challenges like construction hassles at a park or potential corporate takeovers by greenmailers that could come off as too much "inside baseball" are explained in ways that lay people can understand and identify with.
Overall, both books add enormously to the Disney canon, with Weis's book being an official Disney publication and O'Brien's published by an independent label. For Disney fans like myself, any opportunity to encounter new stories, new interviews, and new insights about the things we enjoy is something to be savored. I don't think you could go wrong with either book. High praise indeed.
