The Tragic Kingdom

By James Poniewozik

At the annual disney shareholders' meeting last week in Minneapolis, Minn., the hefty document that attendees were most eager to get their hands on was not an annual report. It was James B. Stewart's DisneyWar (Simon & Schuster; 572 pages), which chronicles how CEO Michael Eisner--who announced last year that he would step down in 2006--turned their pop-culture institution into a Tragic Kingdom.

Bookstores around Minneapolis' Convention Center reportedly did not have it in stock, which was one scrap of good news for Disney president and COO Robert Iger. A leading candidate to replace Eisner, Iger cannot be helped in his bid by his portrayal in DisneyWar as Eisner's beaten cur--a disrespected, whiny No. 2 with poor judgment, serving a CEO who wanted a nonthreatening deputy to "take all the s___" of running a company. And Eisner says more than once that Iger is unfit to take his job. Iger, he says, "can never succeed me."

But say this for Iger: at least he is not Eisner, who is to DisneyWar what Cruella De Vil was to 101 Dalmatians. Amazingly, Stewart--Pulitzer-prizewinning author of the insider-trading expose Den of Thieves--had the cooperation of Eisner and Disney, having approached them in early 2003 to do a book on how Disney was adapting to the changing media world. Eisner granted him interviews; Stewart even wore a Goofy costume at Walt Disney World. But within a few months he had ringside seats as Roy Disney, nephew of founder Walt Disney, launched a shareholder revolt against the man he blamed for hobbling a thriving entertainment giant.

That there was a thriving giant to hobble owes much to Eisner. Hired in 1984, he brought back the company--moribund and churning out flops like Tron--by turning out hit movies like Pretty Woman and Beauty and the Beast. The story gets good when things go bad, beginning in the early 1990s, as Disney falls to intracorporate civil war and Eisner's golden gut turns to lead. (Treasure Planet, anyone?)

The major events in DisneyWar are familiar: Eisner's fallings-out with lieutenants Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Ovitz, the turbulence at the acquired ABC network. But Stewart gleans fantastic fly-on-the-wall reportage from his inside access, interviews and Eisner's revealing notes and e-mails. Some of these incidents put Iger in a bad light just as the Disney board is considering CEO candidates. At the end of an argument between him and ABC chairman Lloyd Braun, Iger gets so agitated that he accidentally hits a waiter, who spills coffee down Iger's shirt. Not that Iger's own treatment was better. During a rough patch, Ovitz suggests that Eisner give Iger a gift to shore up his confidence. Eisner balks. "Don't you want him to be comfortable, happy in his job?" Ovitz asks. A beat passes. "Not really," Eisner says.

So it goes for hundreds of blistering pages. How do you know that somebody is about to be fired or forced out at Disney? When Eisner professes loyalty to him. How do you know when someone at Disney is about to have a great success? When she gets fired or forced out. Braun, for instance, is booted just before his brainchild Lost--derided by Eisner and Iger--becomes a Top 10 hit.

Stewart's take is that while a successful jerk may be forgiven all, Eisner indulged his vanity and vindictiveness to his company's harm. He cost Disney millions of dollars and vast embarrassment by letting Katzenberg's departure deteriorate into a lawsuit. He even badmouths Lost--his own network's hit--to Stewart, to rationalize having opposed it. ("Lost is terrible," he says. "Who cares about these people on a desert island?")

Last week's shareholder meeting ended quietly, but the nasty succession drama is far from over. Eisner calls the intrigue at Disney "Shakespearean," and Stewart likens the CEO to Lear and Richard III--though the literary comparison undeservedly puffs up DisneyWar and Eisner. A media leader squandering his company's worth, a tyrannical boss, a failure clinging to power--these are dog-bites-man stories that Stewart simply bundles up in a deliciously toxic, if underanalyzed, package. It's not a tragedy worthy of the Bard, but it is a lusty roll in greed and spite. In other words, a good old-fashioned Hollywood production.