Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, May 7, 1993 TAG: 9305070414
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Short
Funt, 78, was reported in stable condition at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he was admitted April 22.
"We're seeing some small improvement," hospital spokesman Ron Wise said. "However, it looks like this is going to be a very gradual process of recovery."
Walt Disney was a brooding figure who married on a whim and never got over doubts about his parentage, according to Marc Eliot's coming bio, "Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince."
In portions excerpted in May's Los Angeles magazine, Disney is portrayed as a hard-drinking, sexually impotent loner who impulsively asked animation inker Lillian Bounds to marry him right after his older brother, Roy, told him of his impending wedding. Bounds said yes and, according to the book, they had a miserable marriage.
Eliot writes that Disney was obsessed most of his life with not being able to find a birth certificate proving he was born in Chicago in December 1901, as he believed. That influenced youth-abandonment themes in "Snow White," "Pinocchio," "Bambi" and "Dumbo," the author writes. So obsessed was Disney that he cut a deal with the FBI to inform on Hollywood's Communist activities in return for J. Edgar Hoover's help in confirming his parentage, the book says.
Disney died in 1966 without the birth certificate he sought. In his last years, Eliot writes, he lived in an apartment decorated in red, pink and lavender.
by CNB