Experts: Walt Disney was a lot of things, but he wasn't an anti-Semite

One thing that viewers won't be seeing on the upcoming American Experience documentary on Walt Disney is any discussion about the animation legend being anti-Semitic.

Panelists at the Television Critics Association press tour for Walt Disney — including documentarians, authors, and people who actually worked with Disney — all agreed on Sunday that he did not harbor any Nazi sympathies, despite rumors to the contrary that have been swirling since the 1940s. Director and producer Sarah Colt said she looked for evidence while working on the series, but couldn't find any (that wasn't the case for another man she made a documentary about, Henry Ford, "who was a virulent anti-Semite"). "It's not based on any truth, so we saw no reason to bring it up in the film," she said. "It wasn't relevant to who he was, so it's not part of the film."

Neal Gabler, author of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, said while conducting research for his book he found only "casual anti-Semitism," which he said was common during that era. Gabler said the rumors that he was anti-Semitic were "primarily made by enemies of Walt Disney who had a political beef with him," and not worthy of documenting. Richard Sherman, the son of Jewish immigrants who wrote the scores for Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book with his brother Robert, called the allegations "preposterous," and said Disney treated him like a son. It wasn't all flattering, though — the panelists were of mixed opinions on other aspects of Disney, with some saying he was cold and would cough before entering a room to make his staff nervous, while others said he was kind-hearted and always asked about people's children.

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