Walt disney deep biography pbs

We all know him as the man behind the mouse.

Walt Disney was a filmmaking icon and entrepreneur who pioneered animation with his Mickey Mouse cartoons and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, and started a family theme-park empire in 1955 with Disneyland.

But behind the genius was someone more complex, whose shrewd business sense and small-town boy-made-good persona masked a flawed, sometimes unlikable figure, explored in PBS' four-hour American Experience documentary Walt Disney (Monday and Tuesday, 9 p.m.

ET/PT).

"The challenge, and hopefully the success, of the film is making Disney a real person and not just a legend," says director/producer Sarah Colt. "There were different levels of who he was — he wasn't just this kind and affable old Uncle Walt.

It doesn't take away from the positive things that he did, but it's not all perfectly happy."

After charting his humble Missouri beginnings and rise from burgeoning cartoonist to movie mogu