Monday, March 22, 2010

Debunking Eliot: Snopes on Disney's illegitimaticy

I just thought it would be good to post this while fresh.

Here is a link to an article at Snopes.com where they debunk the flimsy Eliot assertion that Walt was possibly born either in Spain, or that his mother was a recently emigrated Spanish woman. Eliot jumps through a bunch of hoops on this one, but my initial impression that the allegation was fanciful seems to be born out by this article.

Read it over if you are interested...

To summarize: Walt Disney was almost certainly born in Chicago on December 5, 1901, just as was always suggested by the official record, to Elias Disney and Flora Call Disney. There was some confusion about the birth certificate, since there doesn't appear to be one, and some confusion about the record of birth, which shows that "Walter Disney" was born on December 30, 1891. It seems likely that this record refers to Walt's older brother Ray who WAS born on that day. Probably the Disneys had decided on one name and changed their mind, christening the baby "Raymond" instead.

The stuff about the illegitimate birth is just too convoluted to get into...but the article does a good job of summing up the allegation and the refutation...

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