#WorldsFair64: How Walt Disney Resurrected Abraham Lincoln

Abraham Lincoln returned to mechanical life for World’s Fair audiences, thanks to one of his biggest fans.

by Rich Watson 

Walt Disney was an integral part of the creation of the 1964 New York World’s Fair. The filmmaker and animator helped design and create pavilions for a number of corporate clients. The song “It’s a Small World,” written by the Sherman Brothers for the Fair, became an iconic theme at Disney’s theme parks.

He also spearheaded a new form of technology used to bring an American president back to life, after a fashion, a century after his death.

Audio-Animatronics 

Disney’s history as the animator who built an entertainment empire is well-known.

Beginning in 1960, Disney, through his design and development arm, WED Enterprises (known today as Walt Disney Imagineering), helped develop pavilions for World’s Fair participants such as the Ford Motor Company, Pepsi-Cola and General Electric.

One of WED’s innovations was a form of robotics called “Audio-Animatronics,” mechanisms that move like humans and animals. With the aid of internal recording devices, they can even talk and sing, after a fashion.

Disney’s original plan called for an exhibit in the Federal Pavilion featuring AAs comprising a “hall of presidents.”When support for the idea fizzled, he settled for one president in particular: Abraham Lincoln.

Walt Disney’s fascination with Abraham Lincoln

Disney’s admiration for the sixteenth president stemmed from his childhood, in which he recited the Gettysburg Address for school. When the time came to develop the Lincoln AA, Disney demanded his creators take the task as seriously as he did:

…Imagination must be tempered with authenticity. Drama must be intertwined with serenity. Fantasy must be abandoned since its presence would defeat our purpose. Reserve is demanded but it must have the form of subdued excitement. And dignity must be the constantly sounded keynote.

In 1962, Fair Director Robert Moses first saw the Lincoln AA in person. He insisted the Fair open with the automaton. 

The state of Illinois, where Lincoln served as a congressman, agreed to host a pavilion at the Fair called “The Land of Lincoln.” After some financial haggling between Disney and Moses, they came to a deal. In November 1963, they came to Springfield, Illinois to announce the project.

“We can rebuild him. We have the technology.”

Sculptor Blaine Gibson worked from a life mask of Lincoln to design the AA’s face. From there WED constructed a mechanical skeleton corresponding with the proportions of the real Lincoln’s six-foot-four body. Flesh, hair and clothes followed.

The AA would recite a combination of several Lincoln speeches. Actor Royal Dano supplied Lincoln’s voice.

Getting this AA to move like a normal human presented problems. A recent Disney+ documentary about classic Disney attractions revealed the Lincoln AA was initially out of control, thrashing its limbs and breaking its chair.

Its creators discovered a beam of light from the Tower of Light, near the Illinois Pavilion, interfered with the Lincoln AA’s circuitry, causing feedback. It took another three weeks to correct the problem.

“But Daddy, I thought you said he was dead!”

“Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” opened with the rest of the Fair, at the Illinois Pavilion. The exhibit began with a short film about Illinois. It continued within an auditorium where the Lincoln AA sat in a chair.

“The Battle Hymn of the Republic” played in the background. A spotlight shone on the automaton rose and it began.

Afterward, the curtains pulled back to reveal the rotunda of the Capitol building. According to legend, the AA fooled Fair audiences so well, one five-year-old kid blurted, “But Daddy, I thought you said he was dead!”

After the Fair

The original Lincoln AA was believed lost for years. In reality, it was packed into a crate and sent to California. It’s now part of Disney’s Hollywood Studios’ Animation Courtyard, as part of the Walt Disney Presents exhibit.

As part of the tenth anniversary of Disneyland, a new “Great Moments” exhibit was created in 1965, in the theme park’s Opera House on Main Street, USA. A Hall of Presidents was finally built, in 1971.

Five updated Lincoln exhibits followed. The most recent, “The Disneyland Story presenting Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln,” was created in 2009 with a Lincoln AA of modern design and other, newer elements.

It still fools audiences.

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News: The annual giant edition of the film noir zine The Dark Pages comes out this month. This year’s theme is the 1944 mystery Laura. I contribute a piece about the popular theme song from the movie.

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Radio deejays! Beginning January 4.