AMERICAN EXPERIENCE | SEPTEMBER 2015

Walt Disney, directed by Sarah Colt and co-produced by Helen Dobrowski, explores the life of a visionary animator, storyteller and entrepreneur whose influence on American culture was – and continues to be – more profound than most presidents. In 1966, the year he died from lung cancer, Walt Disney was everywhere: 240 million people saw a Disney movie, 150 million read a Disney comic strip, 100 million tuned in weekly to a Disney television program, 80 million watched a Disney educational film, 80 million read a Disney book, 80 million bought Disney merchandise, 50 million listened to a Disney record, and close to 7 million visited Disneyland. No one before or since has held such a commanding place in American life. Yet as familiar as his work remains to young and old alike, Disney himself is something of an enigma. Even before his death, he had become more myth than man. In this four-hour, two-part biography funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, we tell his dramatic personal story of struggle and triumph by exploring both the man and his abiding influence on American life.

Funded in part by: