Disney Urban Legends Rumor

September 13th, 2010 · No Comments

Is there any truth to the urban legend that Walt Disney took cocaine and employed a one-time…?

…mescaline user?
Rumor has it that he hired a person who was a subject of mescaline experiments in Europe in the 1920s. A book called “Altered States” asserts that Disney was a “known cocaine user.”

Snopes.com provides a very thorough discussion of the assorted rumors that link Disney and drugs. Here’s part of it:

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A common motif among Disney legends is the claim that various Disney animated films were drug-inspired; that Disney and his band of animators were users of hallucinogens such as LSD, and their experiences with drugs formed the basis for such fare as the fantasy world of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the colorful visual interpretation of musical themes in Fantasia, and the surreal psychedelia of Alice in Wonderland.
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.”

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The “Altered States” book can make any assertion, but unless it has direct quotes or evidence, it sounds like its statement is also based on rumor.

People also say that Walt’s body is cryogenically frozen…