Was Walt Disney really frozen after all?

Beginning his career as a commercial illustrator, Walter Elias Disney took a turn in its history — and in the trajectory of cinema — when, in the early 1920s, it founded alongside its brother, roy disneythe media company that today is known as The Walt Disney Company, one of the main responsible for revolutionizing the way of making animations on the big screens.

Whether it’s creating the world’s first animated feature film (Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) or helping to develop a first-of-its-kind audio playback system that would change the way audio would be heard by those who secured a seat in theaters, walt disney became an unforgettable name at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which awarded him 22 Oscars from 59 nominations for the most important awards of the genre, as well as two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy.

But, in addition to being a highlight among specialists in the area, waltz he also became beloved by the public, after all, he was behind the creation of characters and narratives that were part of the growth and development of several generations over the last century. Thus, when the death of the illustrator, producer and philanthropist was publicized in the newspapers in December 1966 due to lung cancer, many did not want to believe that the idol had left, never to return, causing theories to be created shortly after the death. revelation.

One of these theses says that the father of Mickey Mouse would have chosen to be cryogenically frozen after he died, thus betting that medical science would evolve over the years and that when a cure for cancer was found, he could be thawed, resuscitated and cured of the illness that led to his death in the 1960s.

How did the theory come about?

It must be remembered that, disney was diagnosed at age 65 with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and emphysema, which was compounded by the nasty habit he developed after World War I: smoking.

Furthermore, on November 6, 1966, he underwent surgery to remove one of his lungs affected by the malignant tumor, but it was not possible to save him. Thus, his death was dated December 15 of that same year at St. Joseph in Burbank, California, as The Sun explains.

Despite everything, the public was not aware of the real state of health of the animator for a long time, since, according to the Snops portal (via Aventuras na História), the period that waltz he was hospitalized had been justified with the excuse that he would be undergoing “treatment of an old neck injury suffered while playing polo”, as well as being told that he would only undergo a “routine post-operative” check-up.

With that in mind, weeks after the death of waltz rumors began to circulate stating that he had remained frozen and his body was being stored in a chamber located below the Pirates of the Caribbean attraction at Disneyland in California. There are still those who believe that only the producer’s brain had gone through this freezing process, so that, in the future, it would be placed in another body – something very Frankenstein!

According to the newspaper El País, the idea arose because, despite the worldwide importance of the animator, the wake of waltz it was private, with few people to watch over the body. It was also requested that no flowers or wreaths be sent to the cemetery, suggesting, in fact, that the money that would be used to buy these arrangements, be converted into donations to the California Institute of the Arts, founded by Disney himself, which raised the suspicion that the value would be used to finance the businessman’s cryogenic process.

The theory gained even more traction in 1967 after a reporter for The National Spotlite tabloid claimed that journalists entered St. Joseph after Disney’s death and found him in a cryogenic cylinder, as reported by PBS (via Story Adventures). Another point that made many believe in the idea came two years later, when the French magazine Ici Paris and the North American newspaper The National Tattler stated that walt disney would be thawed in 1975.

The Adventures in History portal also tells that some time before his death, waltz would have recorded a video and sent it to his department heads, where he reveals what he wants for the future of the company, in addition to ending with the following sentence: “I hope to see you soon”, which could suggest that he was already planning to pass by the cryogenic process.

But anyone who thinks that the information that supports the idea ends there is wrong! With the launch of the biographies “Disney’s World” (1986), by Leonard Mosley; and “Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince” (1993), by Marc Eliotthe thesis gained more depth, since, although the two works have factual errors, undocumented data and statements by alleged former Disney employees who were not identified, both claim that waltz he would be fascinated by science and technology, and he particularly liked the possibility of prolonging his life through studying these areas.

Was Walt Disney really frozen after all?

The truth is that everything is just speculation! That’s because, there were no people at the funeral of disneyas he himself had stated that he did not want this type of ceremony to be performed at his death, since he wanted people to remember him alive.

Finally, waltz he was cremated two days after his death, as evidenced by the producer’s death certificate. Another $40,000 was paid to Forest Lawn Memorial Park, in Glendale, so that his tomb could be kept in place next to the pantheon that the family owned, according to the declaration of estate issued, as found by the magazine Aventuras na História.