The Truth About Walt Disney’s Frozen Head and His Quest to Live Forever (2024)

This story is a collaboration with Biography.com.

Sixty years ago this month, on April 22, 1964, the New York World’s Fair opened in Flushing Meadows–Corona Park in Queens, New York. The Fair had the theme of “Peace Through Understanding,” and was dedicated to “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking Globe in an Expanding Universe,” as symbolized by the 140-foot-tall stainless-steel globe, known as the “Unisphere,” that towered over a massive reflecting pool.

The 1964 World’s Fair wasn’t the first one held in Flushing Meadows; the Unisphere was built on the same ground once occupied by the similarly spherical “Perisphere,” which was constructed for the 1939 World’s Fair. To kick off the 1964 Fair, President Lyndon B. Johnson delivered opening remarks that evoked the ‘39 edition, which imagined the 1960s of the future:

“The last time New York had a World’s Fair, we also tried to predict the future. A daring exhibit proclaimed that in the 1960s, it would really be possible to cross the country in less than 24 hours, flying as high as 10,000 feet; that an astounding 38 million cars would cross our highways. There was no mention of outer space, or atomic power, or wonder drugs that could destroy disease.”

But Johnson’s reflections on human progress weren’t all positive. “No one prophesied that half the world would be devastated by war, or that millions of helpless would be slaughtered,” the President noted, just months after he approved the controversial National Security Action Memorandum 288 escalating the U.S.’s involvement in the Vietnam War. “No one foresaw power that was capable of destroying man, or a cold war which could bring conflict to every continent.”

Johnson’s presence at the 1964 World’s Fair underscored the somber reality facing America at the time. After all, an assassin’s bullet killed the intended speaker, his predecessor, John F. Kennedy, thrusting him—a representative of Washington D.C.’s “old guard”—into the role intended for JFK, a symbol of the “New Frontier.”

So, who could Fair attendees turn to for hopeful visions of “Peace Through Understanding,” and “Man’s Achievement on a Shrinking Globe”? Only one man: Walt Disney.

Disney, who had been a weekly presence in American homes for the last decade through his television show, Walt Disney’s Disneyland—later titled Walt Disney Presents—created four attractions for the ‘64 World’s Fair. These exhibits were a hit, drawing 135,000 visitors per day during the first season alone, according to The Walt Disney Family Museum.

Disney’s attractions included “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” at the Illinois Pavilion, an animatronic replica of another President who represented hope, and who was also assassinated; “Ford’s Magic Skyway” for the Ford Motor Company, where guests rode in Ford vehicles past animatronic dinosaurs; and the now-iconic “it’s a small world,” which Disney’s Imagineers built in collaboration with Pepsi-Cola as a tribute to UNICEF.

But it was the “Carousel of Progress,” located in General Electric’s “Progressland” pavilion, that most epitomized Walt Disney’s vision of the future. The rotating animatronic show guided audiences through the history of human innovation and provided a comforting escape with its optimistic theme song by the Sherman Brothers, promising, “There’s a great, big, beautiful tomorrow/Shining at the end of every day.”

In the aftermath of a national tragedy, Walt Disney became a beacon of optimism for fairgoers, and for Americans. His presence fostered a belief in a “great big beautiful tomorrow.”

Perhaps it’s that enduring optimism that fuels the persistent conspiracy that Disney, who died in 1966, might still be among us, secretly preserved in hopes of one day being revived.

The “Final” Years of Walt Disney

In 1964, besides contributing to the World’s Fair, Disney also released his most acclaimed live-action film yet: Mary Poppins. Just a few years earlier, during a screening of To Kill a Mockingbird, Disney had reportedly lamented, “That’s the kind of film I’d like to make, but I can’t.” Now, his tender musical adaptation of P.L. Travers’ novel had achieved the same milestone as Universal’s adaptation of Harper Lee’s seminal work: a nomination for Best Picture at the Academy Awards.

With his status finally solidified in the entertainment industry, Disney turned his sights to the future—not of his film studio, but of humanity. Intent on using his renowned imagination to forge a brighter tomorrow, Disney envisioned a utopia designed to last forever. In 1964, the future looked bright for Walt Disney.

In less than three years, he would be dead.

On December 15, 1966, Walt Disney died as a result of complications from lung cancer. As Biography notes, “a private funeral was held the next day, and on December 17, his body was cremated and interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.”

Some conspiracy theorists, however, believe that Disney’s remains aren’t actually at Forest Lawn. They’ll tell you, according to Biography, that Disney’s body is instead “suspended in a frozen state and buried deep beneath the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland in Anaheim, California, awaiting the day when medical technology would be advanced enough to reanimate the animator.”

Why Do People Believe Walt Disney Is Frozen?

The rumored cryonic freezing of Walt Disney has no clear origin point that Biography could confirm. But its first documented mention is in a 1969 Ici Paris article, reportedly as a prank concocted by “disgruntled animators” who once worked for Disney “seeking to have a laugh at their late taskmasker employer’s expense.” Their motive was seemingly revenge for Disney’s strict oversight, an aftermath of a labor uprising in the late 1930s that is chronicled in depth in The Disney Revolt: The Great Labor War of Animation’s Golden Age.

Initially, whispers suggested Disney’s entire body was preserved in a secret facility, but soon the tale focused on the animator’s head alone, frozen beneath iconic Disneyland attractions like Pirates of the Caribbean, the Matterhorn, the Partners statue at the center of the park, and even the Magic Kingdom castle. Over time, it seems every corner of Disneyland has been rumored to shelter its founder’s frozen head.

The notion of Walt Disney’s icy remains hiding within park attractions might stem from the actual secrets of Disneyland. There is indeed a hidden space at the top of the Matterhorn, but it’s home to a basketball court for bored Disney staff, not a frozen former CEO. And while early versions of Pirates of the Caribbean did feature real skeletons from UCLA’s medical school, according to SFGate, none belonged to Disney himself.

The grim idea that only Walt Disney’s head was placed in cryostasis might have caught on due to its eerie, sci-fi feel, with modern cryonics offering both full-body and head-only preservation options. That singular detail adds a creepy wrinkle to the conspiracy, evoking images more akin to the 1962 horror flick The Brain That Wouldn’t Die than the reality of a Hollywood mogul’s legacy.

Nevertheless, the tale of Walt Disney’s “frozen head” persisted, specifically resurfacing in two biographies released years after his death: Leonard Mosely’s 1986 Disney’s World and Marc Eliot’s 1993 Walt Disney: Hollywood’s Dark Prince, which further embedded the legend into popular culture.

Eliot’s controversial biography, which was criticized by Disney’s family and historians alike for its speculative content, included unfounded allegations against Disney, including claims that he was an FBI informant (which evidence suggests he was not), and that he refused to have flags at half mast at Disneyland when JFK died (which photographic evidence disproves). Nevertheless, Hollywood’s Dark Prince fed into a desire to find the dark side of a man often propped up as the symbol of Americana, pushing both the cryonics rumor and the assertions of Disney’s rampant antisemitism (also notably debunked) into the mainstream.

Disney’s family has firmly denied the rumor that he was cryogenically frozen, and as Biography points out, it has been “further discredited by those pointing to the existence of signed legal documents that indicate Disney was in fact cremated and that his remains are interred in a marked plot (for which his estate paid $40,000) at Forest Lawn, the exact location of which is a matter of public record.” Plus, the first instance of a person being cryopreserved after his death, James Bedford, didn’t occur until nearly a month after Disney’s cremation, debunking the timeline of the rumor that Disney was frozen.

Diane Disney, Walt’s daughter, wrote in a 1972 biography about her famous father that she “doubted her father had even heard of cryonics.”

Nonetheless, even skeptics who reject the frozen head story might concede that Walt Disney, a famously forward-thinking futurist, could have been aware of cryonics. The concept gained attention in 1964, the same year Disney shifted his focus from film to envisioning his utopian future.

The Futurist Who Inspired Walt Disney

If you were browsing the “New Releases” shelf at a bookstore in 1964, you might stumble upon an intriguing non-fiction book in between copies of Ernest Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast and the Warren Commission’s The Warren Report: Robert Ettinger’s The Prospect of Immortality.

“Most of us now living have a chance for personal, physical immortality,” Ettinger claims in the very first sentence. All you need to do, Ettinger says, is join one “established fact” with one “reasonable assumption.”

The fact: “At very low temperatures it is possible, right now, to preserve dead people with essentially no deterioration, indefinitely.”

The assumption: “If civilization endures, medical science should eventually be able to repair almost any damage to the human body, including freezing damage and senile debility or other cause of death.”

Six decades later, while we haven’t mastered the art of repairing all human body damage, our cryopreservation methods have advanced significantly, particularly with the introduction of vitrification by Greg Fahy and William F. Rall in the 1980s. And recent scientific advancements suggest that what we currently understand as death might be more reversible than previously thought.

Some excerpts from Ettinger’s book resonate with the futuristic optimism of Walt Disney’s Tomorrowland. For example, Ettinger writes,“If civilization endures ... if the Golden Age materializes, the future will reveal a wonderful world indeed, a vista to excite the mind and thrill the heart.” However, even if Disney had encountered Ettinger’s work, his imagination had already been sparked by another piece of literature before he died.

In May 1960, Horizon magazine published “Out of a Fair, a City,” an article in which architect Victor Gruen envisioned transforming the 1964 World’s Fair site into a domed city to test solutions for societal challenges. According to Imagineer Marty Sklar’s 1999 book, Remembering Walt, Gruen’s philosophy (further elaborated in Gruen’s 1964 work, “The Heart of our Cities: The Urban Crisis, Diagnosis and Cure,”) was a significant influence on Disney during his final years—so much that he began an ambitious plan to build a community in Florida that would “never cease to be a living blueprint of the future.”

Disney, utilizing land his corporation discreetly bought in Florida, set out to build an “Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow” adjacent to his planned East Coast theme park. The community aimed to eliminate traffic jams, offer abundant green spaces, and showcase efficient public transportation with the use of a monorail system.

After Walt Disney’s death, the Florida land earmarked for his future city was transformed into EPCOT, the second theme park at Walt Disney World Resort. EPCOT features a “Future World” section with educational attractions and a World Showcase with international pavilions, operating as a “perpetual World’s Fair.”

Why People Want To Believe Walt Disney Is Frozen

In his last years, Walt Disney was introspective, focusing not on the “prospect of immortality,” but on a different sentiment. While the 1964 song “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” planted the seed in millions of young minds, it was another tune by the Sherman Brothers from the same year that resonated deeply with Disney as he reflected on his life. Richard Sherman recalls:

“On Fridays, after work, Walt Disney would often invite us into his office and we’d talk about things that were going on at the Studio. After a while, he’d wander to the north window, look out into the distance and just say, 'Play it.' And Dick would wander over to the piano and play 'Feed the Birds' for him. One time just as Dick was almost finished, under his breath, I heard Walt say, 'Yep. That’s what it’s all about.'”

There is little left of the 1964 New York World’s Fair in Flushing Meadows—Corona Park. The spot where the “Carousel of Progress” once played in GE’s Progressland is now an athletic field. The Vatican pavilion has been replaced by a stone bench. The Unisphere, however, still remains, towering over a park whose occupants have little memory, or even awareness, of the “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow” promised at the park 60 years ago.

For the Baby Boomers who experienced Disney’s contributions to the 1964 World’s Fair, the event offered hope and a last optimistic vision of the future from “Uncle Walt.” And while today, these visitors can encounter preserved pieces of the Fair at the Queens Museum and experience “it’s a small world” at Disney parks worldwide, they can’t turn that athletic field back into Progressland. And they can’t bring back the man who made it possible.

Walt Disney’s legacy extends far beyond his films and theme parks. He symbolizes something greater than a sprawling entertainment empire. As biographer Neal Gabler put it in the final pages of Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, “he demonstrated how one could assert one’s will on the world at the very time when everything seemed to be growing beyond control and beyond comprehension.”

For conspiracy theorists who want to believe Walt Disney is a frozen head, waiting for revival, perhaps it’s because they want to believe he asserted his will over the one thing no one has been able to do before. That maybe, “if the Golden Age materializes,” Walt Disney could even come back to life. And with him would come, once again, the promise of a “Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.” A promise he made in Queens 60 years ago.