That’s Mr. Mouse to You : THE DISNEY TOUCH, <i> By Ron Grover (Business One-Irwin: $22.95; 315 pp.)</i>

“The Disney Touch” is the first full-length biography of the Walt Disney Co., a book one would have hoped could take its place beside “Storming the Magic Kingdom,” John Taylor’s fine account of the last days of the old company during which the heirs of the Great Walt did little more than fend off corporate raiders who recognized, as they apparently did not, that Mickey, Donald, Goofy et al comprised the proverbial cash cow. Taylor’s book ended when Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg began their successful, almost legendary resuscitation of the company, and while their efforts have been endlessly celebrated in the press, no one has given this subject the book-length attention it deserves.

Ron Grover, the Los Angeles bureau chief of Business Week, would seem to be eminently suited for this job, and indeed, he is an excellent reporter. With an implicit nod at the ink already spilled on Disney, Grover doesn’t spend an undue amount of time telling us what we already know about Katzenberg and his remarkable success with the studio, but rather tells us what we don’t know about Eisner, Frank Wells and aspects of the company that have remained in the studio’s shadow, namely, the theme parks, the home-video division, the television division and the new retail stores, with details only a business reporter could love, such as how Disney, through Silver Screen Partners, cleverly got others to shoulder some of the risk attendant on financing its movies.

If some of the by-now-familiar story is told again here--how the new Disney group cleaned house (firing 1,000 employees), broke a strike at the parks, raised ticket prices, refused to wear anything with “the Mouse” on it, revived the flagging careers of Bette Midler and Richard Dreyfuss--Grover fleshes it out. For example, we learn that the old Disney management let “Raiders of the Lost Ark” slip through its fingers because the company was too cheap to give points to George Lucas and Steven Spielberg; and then they passed on “E.T.” (One of the first things Eisner did was to hire Lucas to develop rides for the parks.) We learn that “Captain EO” may have been the most expensive film of all time ($1 million a minute), and that Warners allowed Bugs Bunny to appear in “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” only if he had the same number of lines as Mickey Mouse.

More revealing, Grover attributes Disney’s success in part to the fact that it stayed clear of acquisitions during the takeover frenzy of the ‘80s, preferring to follow a do-it-yourself policy. Disney negotiated a deal with Marriott to build and run hotels near the parks, but then refused to sign, plunging aggressively (and successfully) into the hotel business. In the same vein, it started its own publishing company and music division instead of gobbling up existing properties.

The main problem with this book is that it is so intoxicated with the Disney success story that it gives short shrift to the problems Disney faces. Let’s start with the title: The Disney touch it’s not. Disney’s hand is well known to be considerably heavier than “touch” would suggest. But light or heavy aside, this book actually should be entitled “The Disney Version,” since the author apparently talked to very few people outside the company.

Grove is too dazzled by his subjects, whom he insists on referring to as “Team Disney.” He opens the acknowledgments with effusive praise for the principals of the book, praise like this, that says it all: “I owe my greatest debt of gratitude to Hollywood’s best public-relations executive, Erwin Okun. A man of grace and understanding, he provided wise counsel and opened many locked doors for me.” No offense to Okun, who probably is a good guy and as charming as Grover says, but he is a publicist, and this is supposed to be a hard look at the company he works for.

Although Disney’s tiff with the Jim Henson estate is mentioned, reading this book would never have prepared us for the violence of the feud that erupted last April. In fact, the author never fully explores the extent and depth of the ill will toward Disney rampant in the creative community, nor its implications for the future.

The studio has been plagued with repeated defections by talent it nurtured and then would not pay to keep. In two cases Grover does mention, after doing “Good Morning Vietnam” (it grossed $123 million for Disney), director Barry Levinson wanted to triple his $1.5-million salary; Disney refused, and Levinson went on to make “Rain Man,” his next film and a huge hit, for another studio. Zucker, Zucker and Abrahams, who had made “Airplane” for Katzenberg at Paramount and “Ruthless People” at Touchstone, returned to Paramount (where they made “Naked Gun” and “Ghosts”) when Disney wouldn’t meet their demands--$1 million each, up from the $1 million for all three they got for “Ruthless People.”

With profits down 29% in the last quarter, Disney currently is experiencing a lengthy dry spell unprecedented since Eisner and Katzenberg took over in 1984. The populist, anti-business formula that paradoxically (remember, it was the Reagan decade) fueled its biggest hits has worn thin, and no sure-fire replacement has yet appeared. Whereas three years ago, every creative decision the studio made seemed blessed by genius; now they all seem equally misguided. Whereas Disney’s frugal ways might seem ideally suited to a period of economic hardship, it still has to compete in an arena where other studios are spending money like water, as Katzenberg acknowledged in his notorious memo.

Much of the talent appears to have felt that with success came a certain arrogance, a sense that the studio could do it better, and it didn’t hesitate to try. While Disney was riding high, it seemed as though Katzenberg and Co. could do it better, but now, after a string of flops, the stinginess and hard-nosed, hands-on attitude that worked for it in the past has made it the place of last resort for any actors, writers and directors.

Instructive in this regard is Grover’s discussion of one of the few areas in which Disney has not had unqualified success: network television. Initially, Disney pursued in television the same strategy it adopted in features. It turned its back on expensive deals with hot producers in favor of economy deals with younger, less successful or otherwise cheaper talent. But with few exceptions, the shows flopped. Television is producer-driven, and Disney discovered that if it wanted to compete, it not only had to pay the going rate for top talent but also grant that talent a degree of autonomy. In other words, it was forced to participate in the kinds of bidding wars it had so successfully avoided in the feature-film division.

Now the lessons of the television division would seem to apply to motion pictures as well, and Disney has begun to spend the kind of money it wouldn’t have dreamed of spending three years ago: $1 million for scripts like “Ultimatum” and “Hell Bent--and Back.”

On the basis of its recent setbacks, it would be foolish to conclude that Disney has lost the magic. As Grover shows in great detail, Eisner and Katzenberg brilliantly exploited the assets they found when they took over the company, and equally brilliantly created new ones, like the Disney retail outlets. Its summer movie, Rocketeer, looks like it will put the studio back in the winning column, and it also appears that Disney’s investment in TV talent may finally pay off next year, when the networks will air an unprecedented number of Disney shows.

As it enters the ‘90s, the company is vigorously expanding on the theme-park front, with Euro Disneyland scheduled to open shortly. In 1990, Disney had more than 100 films in various stages of development, at a cost of $140 million, as against $65 million in 1988. But what does seem to be true is that the golden age of Disney’s double-digit expansion may be over, and that the company will increasingly appear merely mortal, subject to the same kinds of slings and arrows that afflict other entertainment companies. Grover gives a serviceable account of these changes, but the definitive book on Disney remains to be written.