Before I get to today’s No He Didn’t, I’ve got a quick update on my last article about Walt Disney Serving time in jail. If you take a look at the last post, which involved the quote directly below, you’ll find that I went in and made a couple of changes. This was due to errors in the original post on Answers.com, as you’ll see in their explanation below.
Due to a glitch on answers.com, the page credited probably the stupidest (is that a word?) answer in the entire Internet to the Disney Supervisor over there. I heard from Gregg Anderton, Senior Community Supervisor at answers.com:
“In your article Serving Time in “Walt Disney Castle” you call out one of the volunteer Supervisors on Answers.com about incorrect answers. She is the Disney Super, but did not write those answers. Please look here, even though the question page shows it , the question history shows the real story. Due to a bug in our system she is incorrectly being shown as the person who answered when she is only the category Super.I wouldn’t want her to be incorrectly defamed, the answer there was written by an anonymous (non logged in) user, the system looks for an available image to display, having none to show for the answer it reverts to the category Super, but SHOULD read “Category Supervisor” not “Answered By”I hope you will make the corrections to clear her name, she is a sweet person who is an advocate for Disney, you only need to look at her actual contributions to see that.“
Although this was an honest mistake on my part, because it stated clearly that the Super was the respondent, I deeply regret the error and retract all of the curse words I muttered at her page. 😉
Now, let’s get on with the show and the next stupid assault on Walt’s character. Was Walt Disney on Acid?
Oh HAYALL no. Ward Kimball, maybe…no, no, I’m joking.
Don’t feel bad if you believe this. Even Steve Jobs fell for this particular chunk of idiocy:
“You know. Walt Disney took LSD, do you know that? He did it once, and that’s where the idea for Fantasia came from. It’s true, and you can go hear stories about all these people, and the key thing that comes through is that they had a variety of experiences which they could draw upon in order to try to solve a problem or attack a particular dilemma in a kind of unique way.”
OH NO HE DIDN’T!
Let’s check Snopes.com – in addition to having the funniest sig lines in rec.arts.disney, David Mikkelson (along with his wife Barbara) has been debunking Internet rumors longer than many MiceChat.com readers have been alive. Here’s what they have to say about it:
On a literal level, not much can be said to address these rumors other than to cite a litany of negative evidence. Walt Disney and his principal animators are well-known figures about whom much has been written, and no one who knew or worked with them claimed (or even suggested) that they partook of recreational drugs. And although drug abuse was enough of a social concern to prompt didactic scare films such as Reefer Madness and The Cocaine Fiends back in the 1930s, the “drug” of choice in Walt Disney’s era was far more likely to have been alcohol than anything else. (Recall that the hallucinatory “Pink Elephants on Parade” sequence in 1941’s Dumbo is triggered when the diminutive pachyderm inadvertently imbibes a tubful of champagne.)
As for LSD, it wasn’t even brought to the USA until 1949, too late to have been the driving force behind Disney’s classic animated films (although alternative hallucinogens such as mescaline were certainly obtainable.) Of the notion that the imagination displayed in Disney’s animated films was drug-induced, animator Art Babbitt, who drew the dancing mushrooms in “The Nutcracker Suite” portion of Fantasia, said: “Yes, it is true. I myself was addicted to Ex-lax and Feenamint.”
So, where did this doozy come from? Probably wishful thinking from later drug users watching Fantasia and Alice in Wonderland during their more successful releases in the psychedelic era of the 60s. Only a kindred spirit, they may have reasoned in their LSD-fueled imaginations, could have come up with the groovy visuals they were watching.
One thing the above commenter says is correct: Fantasia was, indeed, inspired psychedelia – years ahead of its time.
If you have any raging Internet misconceptions to share, send a link or a screen grab (I’ll edit out all identifying characteristics) to me here.
Not at all surprised about Orson Bean,
– (Fab)Shelly
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