DISNEY: THE MAN BEHIND THE MOUSE.

Diane Disney Miller, daughter of Walt Disney, says that the stream of biographies variously charging that her father was a racist, a lush, a Red-baiter, even that he was a spy for the FBI, has reached critical mass.

``This film was the response,'' Miller says of ``Walt: The Man Behind the Myth,'' a heartfelt piece of hagiography airing tonight on Disney-owned ABC. In a phone interview, she explained, ``I couldn't go around correcting everything. I felt like the little boy putting his finger in the dike. The best defense is a good offense. I really felt that this was the best response instead of to go on getting mad and writing letters to newspapers that didn't publish them.''

``Walt: The Man Behind the Myth'' offers a surprisingly personal look at the guy who built an empire with a cartoon mouse. Highlights include fascinating rare footage of Disney's earliest animated efforts, including some from an ``Alice'' series that placed a little girl (one of Walt's relatives) who cavorted with animated characters, as well as some of Disney's home movies that truly put a human face on a man of whom narrator Dick Van Dyke notes, ``the enigma began to pass into myth.''

Interviewees are presented with a homey touch - their autographs accompany their image, adding to the ``regular-guy'' image of Disney the documentary attempts to paint. It charts Disney's life, from doctoring his birth certificate so he could help the Red Cross during World War I, to his first illustrating job in Kansas City, and on to his move to Los Angeles and how his wife recommended changing the name for a character he had concocted from Mortimer Mouse to Mickey.

More time is devoted to his major gamble on ``Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,'' which of course paid off big, than to the rest of his canon (perhaps because ``Snow White'' is currently receiving a splashy DVD release?). And Disney understood synergy before virtually anyone else, using his TV show to plug his other projects.

Historians and critics assess Disney's contribution to popular culture - and history's contribution to Disney's own contribution (had World War II not prevented ``Fantasia'' from being shown in Europe, and had that movie been more of a financial success, would animation have become more adventurous?). Relatives remember the private man - daughter Diane shares a Christmas home movie in which she fell out of the new playhouse built in the background. She was relieved to see that he had dropped the camera when she fell, she notes, because once she was aware of what had happened, Walt had already turned the camera on her receiving first aid.

Walt was maybe one of the first guys in the entertainment industry to exploit the idea of synergy - his early TV shows were designed to tout his upcoming film releases as well as his new amusement park. Clips show Disney as quite the impresario, entertaining children on the show with a flourish. Though he didn't enjoy taping his segments, ``He was a terrible ham,'' Miller remembers with a laugh.

Disney became less engaged by his movies and more interested in building a one-eighth scale model railroad in his back yard. And, of course, in social engineering - first, with Disneyland (inspired by Tivoli, an amusement park in Copenhagen that impressed Walt with its cleanliness) and, eventually, with EPCOT (which stood for, remember, Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow).

It's a loving portrait that soft-peddles some unpleasant facts - one man insists Walt wasn't a racist, though it was reported he didn't hire blacks for certain high-profile jobs. It does allow that Disney thought his animators would thrive on tension so he made life somewhat unpleasant for them and discusses, in mild form, the animators strike in 1941 that embittered Walt and may have led to his appearance at the anti-communist hearings held by rabid Sen. Joe McCarthy.

Walt felt betrayed by his animators - he thought he was running a big, happy family. But apparently not - look closely at the cap interviewee Bill Littlejohn, a union leader, wears: It sports what looks suspiciously like a Warner Bros. logo.

``WALT: THE MAN BEHIND THE MYTH''

What: Documentary bio of the great man.

Where: ABC (Channel 7).

When: 7 tonight.

*This program was still scheduled to air as of press time.

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3 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) Above, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences honored Disney in 1932 with a special Oscar, to mark the creation of Mickey Mouse. At right, Disney reads a bedtime story to his young daughters.

(3) On one of his last visits to his Magic Kingdom in Anaheim, Walt Disney rode around in a fire truck with a friend.