Walt Disney was an FBI informant for nearly three decades, reporting on alleged subversives in Hollywood, a forthcoming book says.
Disney also allowed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover access to some scripts and made slight changes in his studio's lesser-known movies when Hoover complained they might portray the FBI in a bad light, according to "Walt Disney: Hollywood's Dark Prince," an unauthorized biography by Marc Eliot.FBI agents also had access to Disneyland for business and recreational purposes.
In exchange, Hoover let Disney film at FBI headquarters in Washington.
The New York Times reported Thurday on the author's findings. The book is to be published in July.
According to the book, Disney, whose right-wing leanings were well known, was an informant from 1940 until his death in 1966. He reported on activities among actors, writers, producers, directors and union activists in Hollywood.
The author provided the Times with copies of the FBI documents he obtained under the Freedom of Information Act. Many of the documents were heavily censored, so it cannot be determined what names Disney passed on to the bureau.
The Times, however, made no mention of Eliot's other charges that Disney flirted with Nazism in the 1930s, was commited to the America First movement and was "one of Hollywood's most active prewar isolationists."
Richard and Katherine Greene, authors of "The Man Behind the Magic," and Bob Thomas, Disney's official biographer, all told Reuters that there was absolutely no evidence that Disney flirted with Nazism, belonged to the America First movement or was an isolationist.