25 of 27 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Vindication at last for "animation's forgotten man...", July 10, 2001
This review is from: The Hand Behind the Mouse : An Intimate Biography of Ub Iwerks (Hardcover)
Walt Disney often liked to say to interviewers, waving a hand dramatically toward his vast animation studio, "Remember--this was all started by a mouse." True enough--but who created "the mouse?" If you think it was Walt, go stand in the corner--and read this book.
You'd think a man with a name like Ub Iwerks would have no difficulty being remembered, but his invaluable contribution to the Disney studio is buried in dusty archives. His cartoons as an independent now occupy the bottom of the discount video bin at Wal-Mart. Animation historians who do mention him portray him as a humorless glorified garage mechanic more interested in tinkering than the art of animation. Except, that is, for John Kenworthy.
Thanks to Kenworthy (with the aid of Leslie Iwerks, Ub's granddaughter) for the first time we get a much clearer, fairer picture of the man who is an unquestioned film-making genius. Without Ub Iwerks, we discover, not only would there have been no Mickey Mouse, there might have been no Disney studio. Walt, only a fair animator himself, needed Iwerks' incredible animation talents during the studio's formative years. (Iwerks animated the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, PLANE CRAZY, by himself in two weeks--a rate of 700 animation drawings per day!) Without Ub, Dick Van Dyke and Julie Andrews could not have cavorted with animated penguins, Donald Duck could not have ogled a sexy Latin senorita, and Tippi Hedren could not have been attacked by a flock of manic birds. (Didn't know he'd worked for Hitchcock as well as Disney, did you?) Iwerks' patented "travelling matte" process made those things possible.
So why is Disney lauded while Iwerks is nearly forgotten? Two reasons, according to Kenworthy. First, the fundamental nature of the two men. Walt was a ruthless self-promoter with an innate sense of what the public wanted--Iwerks, a painfully shy, modest loner who found solace in esoteric pursuits. Second, their approach to film-making. Disney sought to attain the illusion of reality through the personalities of his characters, while Iwerks chose to do so through technical advances. Therefore, everyone remembers Goofy, Donald Duck et. al. while Iwerks' independent creations, Willie Whopper and Flip the Frog, are footnotes in animation history.
These differences drove a wedge between the two men, causing Iwerks to split from Disney and form his own studio, which he struggled to maintain for ten very frustrating years. He failed, but not from lack of effort or imagination. He was a true "renaissance man", mastering everything from animation to sailing to archery and even bowling, moving on to the next challenge after conquering the one before. Animation was just one of those challenges, Kenworthy says, and far from the last. He would continue to find new areas to conquer to the end of his life, earning two Academy Awards for his technical work along the way. (Most of his greatest achievments were for his old friend Disney, to whom he returned in 1940).
If the book has one flaw, it is that it tends to fast-forward through some parts of Iwerks' life, but that is not Kenworthy's fault. Iwerks rarely discussed his traumatic early life (and personal problems) with members of his own family, let alone anyone else. But with this book, we nonetheless know far more about the man than other books bothered to tell us. And it's about time.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A wonderful book about an extremely talented guy., August 12, 2001
This review is from: The Hand Behind the Mouse : An Intimate Biography of Ub Iwerks (Hardcover)
This was a wonderful book for me to read. In fact, I read it cover to cover the first evening that I had it. It is very informative, and answers alot of questions that I had about Ub Iwerks. I had heard and read alot of stories about him, many filled with alot of contradictions. This book put those contradictions to rest. Ub's relationship with the Disneys was not a strained one, after he returned to the Disney Studio. In fact, he was a lifelong friend of both Walt and Roy. I knew of his work with optical printers and matte photography, but was not aware of all the technical work that he did for Disneyland and Walt Disney World. All in all, a great book. A must for any classic Disney animation fan.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Great Book, but Where are the Pictures?, July 10, 2001
This review is from: The Hand Behind the Mouse : An Intimate Biography of Ub Iwerks (Hardcover)
"The Hand Behind the Mouse" is an excellent book, and one that you'll find hard to put down once you start reading it, but it does have one critical failing - not enough pictures.
To be sure, there are plenty of photos of Ub in his early days with Walt and pictures of Ub later on with his family, but it seems that a book about a man whom Walt Disney himself called "the greatest animator in the world" should have more than a few pages of family photos. It should have illustrations of some of the characters it talks about Ub having a hand in - characters that may well be unknown to and never before seen by the first-time reader.
The book would've done well to have had some illustrations of Julius the cat from the "Alice" shorts, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (who later morphed into Mickey Mouse), or the star of his own studio, Flip the Frog. In sections where the author mentions not-so-coincidental similarities between females drawn by his studio and the better known Betty Boop, it would've been helpful to see what these characters looked like, so that we could judge for ourselves, rather than leaving it up to our imaginations.
If a picture's worth 1000 words, then this book is about 20,000 words short.
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