Podcast: The Ride - Unlocked: Walt's Polo Injury

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

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FOREVER! DOG! 5, 4, 3, 2, 1! Yeah! uh welcome to podcast the ride the second gate which is different than the uh podcast to ride the main feed just as polo by ralph loren is different by the u the u.s polo association clothing line i'm jason shard and joined as always by mike carlson i'm gonna need hold on have you ever encountered this at a like you go go to a Marshalls and there's like, wait, there's polo shirts and then there's US polo.

I guess I know what you're saying, but this is never really a conscious thought I have. So wait, you're saying that there's like a normal polo shirt. Okay, bring Scott Gairdner in here. Yeah, Scott. Maybe you've been caught with that. He's a polo guy. But polo shirts are,

it doesn't have to be one of those brands to be a polo shirts are it doesn't have to be one of those brands to be a polo shirt does it uh i i don't know about the exact qualifications but if you if you notice a lot of store you'll you'll see this u.s polo uh brand and some of the logos will say not associated with polo by ralph lauren and because polo by ralph lauren came along later and like this was a big like issue and this is this isn't even today's topic i should look into this more i was going to definitely bring this up later just in reference to the fact that i've been wanting to do a second gate about a character named polo bear of course on the show or you

just text about it i've texted about it but i think i briefly mentioned it on one episode in the last year or two but it's not been a runner it's not been a continuing runner or anything but polo bear is a bear that has different like outfits and you can buy it on a sweater for 650 dollars uh so let's start buying them and then we can do the episode we'll each buy one a month and then we'll be able to we'll be able to talk about it. Every outfit. Every outfit. So yeah, no, we're not talking about fashion today. We're not talking about bears today.

We're talking about a man in the 30s who played a fancy sport for rich people and then he got hurt. Yes. He got hurt his vertebrae. and that sounds like not a lot right but keep in mind that that man is walt disney oh keep in mind that some of the things that spun out of this injury changed the world right yes the weaver of dreams the keeper of stories walt disney's world famous polo injury would go on to lead to the modern American theme park industry.

That's right. Yeah. This time, Walt's polo injury, I think we rushed this one into production maybe more than other topics. Yeah, yeah. As soon as we discovered it, we realized this had to happen. And, you know, look, I came from the world of uh viral videos right with my youtube and my funnier die so i know the importance of a grabby title and gentlemen i hope you're prepared to have gone super viral with the title waltz polo injury i am yeah i mean this is gonna

this is gonna be everywhere this is gonna be on the front page has kevin perger done a waltz polo injury video no right i don't he's mentioned it probably but it does come up but this does come up a lot it is like one sentence in like quick walt disney uh biographies or like yes walt's interest well it just came up uh because we were talking about the uh story living by Disney, the incredibly exciting development and that they're going to build Cotino in Rancho Mirage. And they're going to finally tribute Walt's special connection to the Palm Springs area that we've heard so much about for these many years uh you know it seems like when okay so there's there's just been like i'd say a glut lately of walt mythology yeah that has suddenly risen to the surface out of nowhere uh there's that there's walt's special lamp of course that means so much to zaddy tomorrow there's uh there's one that i didn't even get to in the toontown episode that we just did

which is that you guys might have read this, that one of the things that's going into the new Toontown is a special tree. And that is a tree that is modeled after Walt's dreaming tree, which he of course had in Missouri. We all know about the dreaming tree. I actually did not see the dreaming tree. He would stare up at the dreaming tree and imagine we could tell stories and characters

I did read that paragraph about the dreaming tree and I'm like this is like the fucking yellow cake uranium in Iraq like this is when they're like there's actually uranium coming in through back channels like you made up

out of whole like this tree in Missouri and through back channels and they're building out like you made up out of whole total like it's shreed missouri i saw somebody was upset because i compared uh uh han solo's dice which somebody has pointed out that han solo's dice are visible in a new hope they're hanging somewhere but he never mentioned he never like touches him he never gives it a little kiss so we're not talking about luke's belt so what i'm going to say it's it is all like hans dice in the sense that they pulled something from just like they saw it they saw a picture of wall with a tree and maybe he said it was dreaming tree maybe he didn't yeah and now they're sort of retconning it into being a big

deal that little thing str has always been on the tie smoke tree it's answer tree ranch right now we have to really up his connection to smoke tree ranch anyway this has all been on the tie smoke tree it stands for tree ranch right now we have to really up his connection to smoke tree ranch anyway this has all been fascinating to learn but i what worries me is that for the disney company uh walt mythology is a precious resource and we are we are losing it by the day they are running out of walt things and that's what powers right company it is fossil fuels to them and we're burning acres of mental real estate each year they're like more and more and more we're at this rate we're gonna lose walt's entire there's gonna be nothing left oh yeah they just have they have to be careful and they can't get greedy so if there's if walt had like a a special napkin or a special belt buckle oh yeah uh you know or a

magic plate a tea saucer uh you know they gotta like save that for 2028 yeah they have you're right they have to really ration out the waltz mythology but you know what they probably could start doing is the same thing they're doing to star wars where in a new hope there's a line about you know a lot of what uh who died for the plans spies or whatever there's a line a throw-off line in new hope about how they got the death star plans and then they made rogue one which is a movie based on one single line so maybe it's like if walt was in a special and he's talking to like a short-sleeved dress shirt imagineer and he leaves frame for a second they can start adding story to what he did there it was walt went up and he's talking to like a short-sleeved dress shirt imagineer and he leaves frame for a second they can start adding story to what he did there it was walt went up and he touched this wall

the special wall he had and when he would shoot the specials and it was his uh it was his not dreaming wall it was his uh it was a comfort wall his enchant his wall of enchantment walt's wall of enchantment and they've recreated this wall of enchantment waltz wall of enchantment and they've recreated this wall of enchantment for you to lean on yeah in a new well

it's a freestanding development like in the middle of nebraska now you have to go drive to the wall is there anything to do with the wall is there a ride or a place i can stay

no uh you touch the wall maybe you get a little enchantment and live your waltz story and that will be $250. Yeah, exactly. There you go. So, like, stuff like that.

Or Waltz Pointer, when he's pointing at the Epcot thing. He's got, like, a long stick. Oh, Waltz, wonderful stick. He loved this stick. He used to point at things all the time with it, and now... His pointing stick. His pointing stick. Yeah.

His dream... He could point the way to the future. It was more than pointing at him now. It was a dream... He's pointing to... Yeah, it was a dream he's pointing to yeah it was a dream stick walt's dream stick there is a detail in this story that they could scale pretty quickly at all of the you know deluxe resort spas and call it the five o'clock special or walt's five o'clock special That's good. You could do that tomorrow.

The closest thing, because you're talking about when he would get his polo injury worked on. Yes? Yes. I'm sure we'll go through it chronologically. Yeah, we'll talk about it in a second. But there was a time, it was a regular time when he would have it worked on.

So the closest, and then he would have a drink, I believe, at the same time. Yeah, a glass of scotch. The 5 o'clock special is the combo of getting your back rubbed it's a it's a back massage and a glass of scotch and supposedly that's what walt needed at 5 p.m every day to be able to drive home to his house geez it's the detail that i kept seeing come up and i was like oh yeah i guess that la traffic. Yeah.

The injury is way worse. I think that than I knew Walt's physical state seems a lot worse than I knew. Um, but this is what, you know, if Disney can spin off every object that Walt touched or every piece of his story into something, it's time for us to grab one that I don't think they're going to hit. And that's Walt's polo injury. And I'm excited we're doing it. Yes. Uh, it's good. I mean, they're going gonna hear this and they're gonna steal it from us i

think but but we'll at least you know they should plant the flag here as we said the the hypothesis the theory that i think jason you said in short of a couple weeks ago is that it is that it leads to the parks in a way and i'd say that's true but there's it's a little it's a little more complicated than that from what i found i'm curious what we all found as the story yeah it is a little more complicated i'd love to start by just talking about polo which i learned a little bit about did everyone learn you know i i it occurred to me that i should and i didn't and okay good listen yeah so the background is very it's like a big piece of hollywood history just kind of lost to time. Called like basically like the social networking of its day was playing polo with all these other rich guys. You'd play polo and then you'd make deals.

And then and then, yeah, you would, you know, make movies or whatever. You're bringing your this is a sport on a horse. First of all. Yeah. You're basically. Mallets and horses. Yeah. It's I was trying to think because like some people were saying it's like golf on a horse but it's almost more like like action croquet on a

horse or something like you're yeah because it's mallets it's intense yeah so you're on a horse holding a mallet and there's a ball and you're trying to just like as if it's soccer or something get the ball down the field through a goal essentially and that that's the one thing i haven't looked i've never seen footage of this in my life it is a there's a goal over here goal over there kind of sport yes and i'm sure somebody i'm sure i'll get something wrong but uh there are four players on a team so it's four on four so you need four people and four horses for a team well and backup horses and backup horses yes uh there are uh like i guess you would call like there are i guess you call them like periods like uh there are they're

called chukkas and they're seven minutes long do you have chukka written down you have you have just explained something that comes up okay okay to it you've you've i had a big question about something so you can you can play a match of like between like four and eight chukkas that's what i understand yes and then it's basically who how many whoever has the most points uh and then there are four players number one the player number one on your team is like the main offense guy i was trying to figure out who I would be on a polo team. Number two is like similar, but not quite, maybe like not as good on offense, but still pretty good. Number three on the team is the tactical leader.

And they're doing a lot of hitting the ball to one and two. So they're setting up people to make, you know, shots or goals. So one is the star who drives it. Exactly. That's Michael Jordan on the team okay uh and then number four is like defense that's probably like the last line of defense so they're whacking the horses in the face with the mallet yes that well you're not supposed to do that that's a foul uh there are penalty hits you're also like it's very confusing and i can't i'm sure i won't be able to explain it that well but you're not supposed to like like kind of railroad or like t-bone a horse

on your horse you're supposed to they're supposed to be there's like a gentlemanly agreement of like yeah you kind of ride your horse next to the person and try to get the ball away versus like you can't just run in front of the horse with your horse and the horse flies oh thank god it's still crazy it's an insane crazy sport yeah it's a bunch of rich guys with blunt instruments riding horses at each other it's literally like it's like a it's a cousin of the joust in some ways like wow yes in only last century yeah it was it was one of the i feel like every sport at some point was called the sport of kings but this is how they trained like horse mounted like cavalries right oh geez so yeah i i only did a brief explainer on this because i did not know

what it is but it's there's still played in places but i it used to be very public there were so many polo fields in los angeles 25 was the number yeah i saw that i think wow and there's little remnants of it uh like the polo lounge the famous bar at the beverly hills hotel oh okay i believe takes its name from the popularity of polo. On the Story Living episode, I said, like, oh, in Coachella, they call where the music festival is held, those are the polo grounds. Because I don't know if it's still used for polo. It was used for polo. That is not where Walt's injury occurred.

I was wrong about that. Okay, yeah. But he was an avid polo enthusiast. I'm not sure I know where. I guess we'll figure out where. But there were a bunch around here and he used he used ones around here that's i think what's strange is that they would be like this is a facility that is golf and tennis and this thing with mallets and horses and horses yeah right that kind of like golf and tennis still we kept those very common although a little a

little more complicated yeah um maybe the way in is to talk about how waltz found himself playing polo sure yeah uh which was the his runaway popularity in the 1930s uh but also so much success but also so much stress uh and so much is being asked of him uh that the job is getting more and more stressful uh in addition very sadly i didn't know that there were two miscarriages in his uh oh sure uh where his wife lillian by the way i'm pulling a bunch of info from the article by wade sampson and mouse planet just if i'm so i'm not uh stealing things he's saying sure um but walt's doctor suggested that oh wait he had a nervous breakdown

don't forget oh yes well yeah i'm suffering one of his infamous infamous nervous breakdown hell of a breakdown i went to pieces is as he was quoted oh saying it oh man waltz yeah this is not what we're we're used to seeing the happy guy who tinkerbell lands on his shoulder and he tells us what the submarine ride's gonna be are they gonna have a dark chapter is there gonna be like a some sort of place in catino where it's like uh come here and like relax from having one of walt's nervous breakdowns that you have around it might be a put maybe they are subtly aiming it to people like they have to show footage of people clinking wine glasses but like you know it's it's secretly like you haven't like you're

going through a divorce are you good like uh you're having a waltz breakdown yeah yeah are you having an infamous breakdown like waltz got you covered he's been there i imagine people in these days everyone had a nervous breakdown once a week maybe that's well it was those days it was those days time i people you know it's only a decade plus back from world war one he was in world war one sure and they obviously didn't call it ptsd at the time i think they were just still called it shell shocked sure come back you know freaked out and broken from the war yeah and he was shell shocked from driving a car around a little and meeting ray crock and uh oh yeah walt was broken from all this and then all these other things have and he's so successful

he is starting to lose his mind so uh uh then this is what i was about to just read this and i forgot what was coming uh this is the copy from mouse planet walt's doctor suggested that mickey mouse's father we went through this yeah we did yeah goodness of that phrase yeah here i just run into it like mickey's daddy yeah you didn't like father is it's i still find father weird but daddy obviously but now daddy the whole weird thing with daddy and like two meanings, like that's not just this problem, you know? That's always going to be weird.

Because we can call Josh tomorrow daddy or zaddy, but that's a different connotation from calling Walt Mickey's daddy. Because we're saying that in a fun way. And the other one is like a cheeky, dirty way. Context clues. I think context clues. I mean, I i understand the listeners understand that i'm finding all of it weird i you okay there's no daddy that you said in that sentence that uh well you like to me no no i didn't like one of those i didn't like the daddies that's why you insist on your child calling you Papa, Papa. That'd be fine. I'll go with Papa.

Papa is good. I like, you know what I like? I like the English or British thing of calling like Grandma Gran. I'm way into that. Gran. Gran. Yeah. It's very like.

Well, then when you say like that, it sounds formal. But like if it's Gran, you know, it's like that's less formal. Are you going to like, wait it sounds formal. But if it's Gran, that's less formal. Are you going to, like, wait. So a British accent is required. No, I think you can call it Gran. Hey, Gran. What do you think about Gran? Say it in a sentence, though.

I'm going to Gran's house. Yes, I think it'll stop any conversation cold. Unless it's regularly used. Well, it'll have to be. I feel like they call Gene Smart that in Mare of Easttown. Sure. I feel like. I ain't going to be home in time for dinner, but Grant will be there.

Grant will put something in the oven. Look at this voice. Yeah, look at that voice. That's the Philly. That's the Delaware County. I was curious about that actually recently if you if you have any remnants of language maybe the listener people have listened to you a ton might even know something that you have that you don't even know you have i have a lot i yeah wooder wooder kind

of goes in and out um for water um uh i just when i shot one of of those commercials a few years ago, they were like, really like, how is this guy saying gas? Like, and so like, it had to get to a point where I'm just doing a million takes and going, okay, say ass. Okay, now add a G, gas. And it sounds so weird to me, but it's like, got it. It sounds normal.

It's like you feel like how, like props don't look like props in movies yes goss sounds bizarre but it's gonna be perfect on screen you'll see uh yeah and i i ran into someone else who had been on and they're like oh they made me say culotta a lot of different ways and i was like well that's like a proprietary thing, I guess. But I apparently say gasoline. Very strange. Yes, I guess I hear it. Yeah, yeah.

Gasoline. They made you say ass. Say ass. And then say gas. Like doing, like everyone else has been dismissed. I am like in an empty room in a house and they're just trying to get the line so they can overlay it over the footage. Oh, geez.

An idiot. Oh, geez. Wow. When everyone's chasing the same finance positions, chartered business valuators stand out. CBVs are an elite group of trusted professionals doing everything from deal advisory to litigation support to succession planning. CBVs are a preferred hire in investment banking, private equity, consulting, and many other areas, with the potential to earn seven figures at the pinnacle of their careers. If you're starting your career in finance, check out cbvinstitute.com slash becomeacbv. Your future self will thank you for it. Well, yeah. Well, Walt also stressed from film shoots and the like.

Yeah. His doctor suggests that Mickey Mouse's father take up some form of exercise to kick it over to help relieve the stress. So Walt tried a bunch of things, and this is a little montage I'd like to see of wrestling. How is that going to relieve stress? How old is he at this

point? Yeah, it's a good question. I don't know, maybe still late 20s but wrestling's not wrestling and boxing are not gonna well i guess people box yeah it's a vent yeah uh then golf but golf drove him crazy in the way golf drives people crazy because it's a precise sport right does anyone like amateur wrestle in their 20s for fun that's not something that happens anymore and that kind of you know like we know this wasn't like fun wrestling this is like no it was not it was not going to a

wrestling carnaval roman probably yeah but do people do that in their 20s ever do hey bill you want to go wrestling like nobody does that anymore i feel like they were playing all sorts of sports we think are like old-timey back then at the club you'd go down to the club or the ymca i'm sure you could hop in anything and the way that like in college there's like oh there's intramural leagues there's like well that's different if you're in college right i'm just saying once you get out of like in a setting like that when is the last time you would just for fun in the way you would play a pickup game of basketball or play tennis you would go and amateur wrestle with a friend yeah unclear i

just it's a lot it's like a big commitment is what i'm saying let's go like grunt and let me get my face way up in your armpit yeah let's elbow each that only happens that only happens at like a bachelor party when somebody gets like out of control or something where you end up like amateur wrestling your friend that's that's for restraint yeah you have to like put someone down essentially yeah get in the lift you're going back yeah right going back to caesar's right i mean i guess we could start it up again i kind of like the amateur wrestling in high school. Sure. Jason, were you all right at it? I tried it in middle school when there would be like,

there was a round of like intramural, like try out different sports. And I just got hosed immediately. So it was always little. Like everyone hit growth spurts. And then I'm kind of like, you know. Scott, you ever do it uh probably win one set in gym never again never again there was we had to take it in gym we had to do it no you guys i think they did like one or two class sessions of like holds and stuff in

in gym but like man there was like one padded i think a wrestling practice room above the gym and a handful of times my gym class got put in there and they're like all right we're playing Man, there was like one padded, I think, a wrestling practice room above the gym. And a handful of times, my gym class got put in there. And they're like, all right, we're playing dodgeball. And it's like, it was the size of this garage. Those dodgeballs hurt however you got hit with them. Like, oh, it's just a bunch of 14-year-old boys just wanging each other with. Wanging? Just wanging.

Just wham. Yeah. I got it. The other detail about Walt's athletic pursuits was that due to his, you know, awful childhood, he didn't play games. It was said that he was not athletic, nor was he coordinated.

His brother was worried about him because he said he was uh not physically gifted i read yes but he did have but he was aggressive he did have what wwe would call ruthless aggression that's right this is so clearly a bad recipe this is meant to be stress relief yeah but and and like he just he has to but he has to make up for a lack of talent by just like going at people wanging them wanging them he's going and wanging them and it seems like he started with horseback riding he got into the outdoors outdoorsiness of horseback riding and then polo it's just like he would say you're playing golf on a horse like he said yeah he was too he was too early because i'm sure he would have loved mixed martial arts

i'm sure kind of like ufc guy you all would have been a ufc guy true yes that's the the stress role that's how you get your aggression out now but he wasn't because there's mma to it okay i take this i guess there's an amateur wrestling but there are mma gyms popping up and there's that's true they're not too far away so i guess that's kind of it seems more fun i i would think yeah yeah so walt would stroll in to the sherman brothers who were like composing something be like well i just choked a guy out with a triangle hold just just put your arm on the carotid artery and went out like a light but we have to remember he hated carnivals right so he couldn't he likely would not have been exposed to what was called catch wrestling the the early days

of like wrestling catch can yeah yeah uh with with like carnies or like i'll wrestle whoever's in the crowd sort of and all of this the outcomes predetermined uh you know but it's like modern wrestling but a lot of hold still a lot of very unpleasant like physical holds so like you're saying he well he did probably go to carnivals though so he just may not have enjoyed it and you're saying he wouldn't have had an affection for he wouldn't have had an affection professional wrestling yeah yeah hold based and also yeah a big con to try to calm the audience yeah so you don't see walt in like a that kind of unitard that used to be the yeah the garb of right i see yeah well but if if yeah i i can imagine him though in modern mma gloves and trunks with like an endorsement on

the side i guess disney on the side yeah with one of those bottles that has the metal sphere in it, like the blender bottles, like drinking a mix of protein shake and Denison's chili. Walt with his eye just swollen up and like bleeding. Like, well, great match today. Great match today, Will Rogers.

Somebody could. Yeah, so he starts horseback riding and then that leads into polo uh where you can get this this aggression out uh he started like bringing animators into this there were other people the studio interested in it but as you said mike the there was the big social and the networking component of it so he starts doing it i i think largely at riviera which is the the big fancy country club that's in pacific palisades that that is primarily golf some tennis and i guess had polo at this time and yeah uh will rogers is around i saw jackie gleason uh-huh saw spencer tracy that that might be a modern riviera club because

i saw riviera is where paul revere uh i forget where the middle school or high school in la like on the border of like we ho beverly hills oh is that not the same riviera i think yeah i think there were there there might have there's a riviera now and i think there was a riviera then gotcha but it's like yeah because la proper used to just be filled with polo fields yeah one of the main ones he practiced that was really near the studio which if you're in la is where the gelson's on hyperion is and then you keep going hyperion and riverside which i think is now just griffith like of some field or something but that was where he would go right uh practice polo with with animators that's fine so that's where you would go i guess to see the

stars really in the old days because they all seem to be out there see them like uh whacking each other weighing each other and endangering horses that is such a crazy thing to do like i just i'm putting myself in the mindset of getting on a horse and then playing where I have to, like, navigate the horse on a field with seven other horses while I'm hitting a ball. I don't know how I ever get into the headspace to be able to do that. Yeah. And also make sure you don't clobber Spencer Tracy. Spencer Tracy, I read, an avid polo enthusiast the studios would beg him please stop playing this hyper physical violent sport and so he would schedule games under aliases oh he had to lie

man had a lot going on as we've learned in the past jeez um wait what was his thing what's spencer tracy's issue uh he showed up in that guy's biography the uh oh oh oh um full service he was gnawing oh he was oh he was gnawing oh he was gnawing i forgot who the gnar was yeah he was a gnar and a winger but he was a devout catholic so he never divorced his wife so he was never technically married to katherine at burn but wow also yeah like imagine you've had like a huge meat lunch you're drunk off your ass and now you're getting on the horse get on a horse with a weapon with like a looney tunes weapon yeah yeah and this is what these guys are doing all the time next to a mountain like because i'm sure

the equestrian neighborhood which is part of burbank with stables and horse trails like yeah i'm sure that that came into play and the disney studio is right there yeah yeah um i did anybody find uh waltz horses name i found a list i don't think I did. Oh, please. Dave Smith, Disney archivist. Oh, sure. And Jason Lookalike, apparently. Soon. Playing him in a movie soon. He has seven names, just like the dwarves. There were seven.

Okay, let's go through them. June, Slim, Nava, Arrow, Pardner, Tacky, tommy we got a favorite tacky partner is pretty good um tacky partner is second but like these aren't the best names in the world but also i read other places said he had a dozen horses wow and those so there might be five whose names are lost at time his illegitimate horses yeah because he did go on to sell he sold everything eventually right yeah do we know what

age he stopped doing this i guess after the injury is that immediately i guess yeah it would have to be then the late 30s when it seems to happen because that is what the article sort of implied but i wonder if you ever like snuck back up on there and maybe you never know you saw his girls again let's get that girls tommy's boy i think um so where where does this go he's uh he's waltz is pony crazy uh he's he's uh winging at spencer tr Tracy and Jackie Gleason. It seems like Robert Stack was around. Yes, I saw that. Isn't that weird?

I'm not sure how. Yeah, a host of Unsolved Mysteries. I'm like, does that add up age-wise? He would have been around. He was old when it was on, when Unsolved Mysteries was on. He's passed away a while ago at this point, I think. Yeah, I think so um um but anyway uh well how do how do we get into this well he got yeah he got roy into it and roy you know out ahead of what happens is like maybe you should not do this yeah maybe you

should the common thing roy would say to him yeah about everything yeah sometimes that where that stood in the way of you know walt disney world but sure in other cases yeah maybe he was this is feels very analog to motorcycles and people when you got a bad feeling about your friend motorcycling and it's oh confirmed you know yeah yeah um but like he well walt really went all in in addition to buying the horse that he had like a practice cage at the studio he had a practice cage in his backyard practice cage like a cage with a fake wooden horse and a goal that you would like sit on the fake wooden horse and go and and eventually i read his home one abandoned and his children don't have much memories of his polo time they just know like don't go near the polo k the abandoned cage

is filled with black widow spiders is the detail i saw wow polo cage we're gonna talk about waltz cage is gonna be a thing too yeah i put toilet on the short list you're gonna collect all the info but the toilet if you've never lived in southern california um yeah black widow spider is much more common than you would think like if you have a garage or a shed or something like watch out everyone oh yeah keep an eye out um so roy has sounded the alarm there is uh potential trouble um and then stop me if you want to tell us in a different way but here's where's how i found it uh that okay uh here's the prime example of what scared roy o disney always pushing himself waltz eventually

wanted to play with the better players because these actors, I think even among them, he's not the best. But he's kind of, he was trying to like match skill levels. But Walt, you know, with his incredible gumption, he wants to play with the best of the best. And there was a South American team, the Argentines. And Walt wanted to practice with the Argentines. Yes. And Walt wanted to practice with the Argentines. Actor Robert Stack, remember, and I guess you got to do it, it's like, anytime the Argentines would come in, they would bring their horses with them. The reason they came, most of these great polo players, was to sell the horses and make a lot of money, which they did.

You could see some of them red hots in our movie profession, and I think Walt was among them, bidding these fantastic sums for these magnificent horses um so the argentines are i mean what does that mean they're they're like they're they're trying to sell the horses they're they're like hustling horses yeah hollywood guys right who are impressed with their skills but walt's no walt can't play with the argentines he's no argentine he's not good enough to play against the argentines that's's what Roy told him. Yeah, Roy knew. Roy knew. Stay away from the Argentines. Uh-huh. Now, I'm missing

some info here. Is the injury against the Argentines? That's what I read. Okay. Yeah, that's what I read as well at the Riviera Club. He played with them. He played, or it says with them, but I'm not sure if it means against. But a ball was struck by

one of the players it smashed into walt and knocked him from the mount and then yeah that's when he i guess it crushed his four cervical vertebrae god yeah he was nailed by one of these guys this is like the um beginning which always scared me the beginning of d2 the mighty ducks oh yeah you relive gordon bombay's terrible injury he like because he goes pro and maybe can't uh make it in the big leagues i was always terrified by this depiction of uh bombay getting beat up yeah you could film this in the same way with like quick little glimpses uh between titles. They should make this. Yeah.

If this had been in Saving Mr. Banks. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, they got to do more with Hanks, right? You got to do more. Well, at this point, this is a young Walt. I mean, I guess Hanks, we can de-age him with the technology. Yeah. So Chris Evans is doing it.

Chris Evans could do it. All right, say Hanks. Let a 68-year-old Tom hanks get the de-aging that sam jackson captain marvel tech or the you know what deep fake walt disney may be coming soon because of what they've done spoiler alert on boba fett with mark hamill just deep fake different actor and then an ai does the voice so we got the waltz voice much more of this let's do as much of this i think so well yeah let's let's it's so effective it's so settling it's not you see other things that are unsettling i'm settled by the my camel you know what i'll say this about the deep fake i the technology with the face doesn't bother me so much but the voice is the thing that really is odd that they they had to

they got a bunch of mark hamill clips and created a database to make so that it is not him yes that's because we were like you know what this face is like much better than when it was on the mandalorian like the face looks pretty good in a lot of not every shot but a lot of these shots but what's wrong with that voice yeah that. That's a computer talking. Well, I think, I mean, that was weird because Mark Hamill was still very much alive. Yeah.

But in Rogue One, I didn't mind it for Peter Cushing because he is long dead. But then for... So you won't mind it for Walt Disney when we have the movie. Well, I was going to say proximity, I think, is on there.

Carrie Fisher had just passed and then they were doing it in Rogue One. And then that documentary about Anthony Bourdain got in a lot of trouble because they had him. Was he deep faked? They used AI to construct his voice to have him read some of their narration. Oh, I didn't know that. Like stuff he did not say.

No. And then they had him read Squarespace ads for the promotional podcast. Oh, no. Are you having problems in your life? Wait a minute. did not say and then they had him read squarespace ads for the promotional podcast oh no and then are you having problems in your life wait a minute and then he took baby grogu to like a local taco stand yeah oh no well walt will be serve bantha meat here yeah deep fake walt movie about the polo injury about maybe a big game maybe a big polo game that's sort of the yeah it's the main that's the main argentine i want to see in super slow-mo 300 level of detail those vertebrae getting yeah rushed well i'm trying to think like the ball hit him so it would

have been hit from like farther away and like at enough speed and it got some air time to like knock him what like it hit him in the chest or the head or the yeah i didn't see where it hit him i think he falls out of the saddle i think that yeah the injury happens from wherever he lands i don't know if he landed on his head if he landed on his back um i don't know that the ball did the damage and the ball just threw him this is what are what are we, Christopher Reeve had his injury, his horrible injury, didn't even involve games and a mallet. A ball, yeah, yeah.

That's just falling off a horse. Boy, Walt is lucky it was not worse. The other thing I came across, and this was kind of a weird message board or publicly updated wiki of did walt disney to kill some guys in a oh yeah yeah yeah okay never mind all right if everyone else found it too well no no that's exactly because i was when i was wondering if that's where this should go well we still yeah we still talk about hazel jordan and stuff but yeah yeah yeah well

yeah and we'll get to hazel we'll we will pay off why the polo injury is important. But yes, this is what happened to me. I Google Walt's polo injury. I'm expecting to find some kind of mundane information. And then I find this question. Did Walt Disney accidentally kill someone during a game of polo? Yes. Oh, my God.

So this is what I was, because I texted you guys. Yes. This is a little more interesting maybe than we thought. Yeah. So, all right, we've told you all that story walt hurt himself and he's laid up and he dreams up some stuff we'll get to that but yeah this this threw me bad this threw me off my horse walt he might have killed somebody what are you talking about did you keep pursuing this been for this information yeah um so yeah there's kind of an answer yeah and then there's another bit of la

notable la landmarks come into play yes that's yeah yeah that's wild okay okay uh so why did this come why why is this question in the air and this is almost the weirdest thing to me of why this has been as is that this was on this this was in an edition. This was a card on trivial pursuit. Yes. Somebody posted this on their blog at some point and this, and not just a trivial pursuit game, but a Disney produced trivial pursuit game. Yeah.

That's from 1985 where they control it and only ask Disney affiliated questions. And they put on a card, how many people died from injuries incurred playing polo with Walt Disney. Yes, that is wild. Like, obviously, that has been retconned from Walt's history at this point in the Disney company.

100%. Never ever have I come across this. No, I've never seen this before. I think one of the websites I was looking, I can't remember what it was, one of the the websites it was like somebody remembered the card saying like how many people did walt disney kill or something yeah and they're like oh that's not really severe yeah that's not what the card said the card he didn't kill but he might have been in the games yo he definitely was he was in this game yeah yeah yeah all right and you guys all know the

let's play trio pursuit do you know the answer to that question how many people died from injuries incurred playing polo with walt disney was it two two yeah i only have one of the names in like and that's just like we don't we don't know like details are fuzzy there but for sure he played two polo games where somebody died if i was playing a game where someone died i'm not gonna be playing the game anymore well didn't also if you know the timeline tell me but i think okay roy is saying this game is dangerous don't play it then two people die in games with him and then his injury happens right because he wouldn't be able to play after the injury right He keeps going.

He's still playing and asking for it after two people died. These were two separate games. Yes, yes. Not the same. Yeah, yeah. So, right. And obviously, there's plenty of stuff we all do that's like, oh, I really got to stop drinking that diet soda, you know?

But still, if I was on the polo court and I'd be like you know hey did you hear about uh hear about jerry he died i'd be like oh okay maybe maybe that's enough even your beloved tennis somebody died on that court yeah that well yeah if it was like because of the normal rules of tennis then yes but like if like a i don't, like a bison stampede happened or something, then I go, well, that was a fluke. Another condition was aggravated. Oh, the guy, he was a deep Omicron. Right. Nothing to do with the balls and the rackets.

I mean, you likely were scared if you watched Looney Tunes cartoons that there was the potential for like the racket to be put over your head. And then you see the rib netting and a big bump grows out. Maybe some birds fly around the bump. You knew that was a possibility. I sure did. You could be stuck with those birds for a while. You might have to feed them.

Yeah. I mean, my mom tried to scare me away from every sport other than tennis because there was a contact element to most sports. And she made me afraid of all the balls until I started playing tennis. Mom made you afraid of all the balls. Yeah, she sat me down and she just pulled each ball out and was like, be afraid of this. No, no, no. Be afraid of this. No, no, no.

Be afraid of this. And I was. Yes, mother. That's right. So who are these deaths who died october 1935 death number one gordon westcott gordon westcott a fairly prominent actor yeah uh nothing i i haven't seen this person in anything but he was a warner brothers contract player was in dozens and dozens of movies. He was in movies opposite Betty Davis and James Cagney.

He was in a Bubsby, Bubsby, Bubsby, Bubsby, Bubsby, yeah. Musical. Pretty prominent. And this one, now this one is, this one literally was Walt's horse ran into his horse. He fell off the horse, and his own horse crushed him. Yes. And several days later, he passed away. But this was contact from Walt's horse.

So this is the most one-to-one of the deaths. Could you say Walt caused it? I don't know. There's horses involved too yeah um but that's pretty crazy we've been talking about this stuff forever and been fans of it way before the podcast i was what's that thing they say online i was this many days old that uh walt horse hit another guy's horse and the guy died yeah yeah yeah that's a little close to walt disney killing pretty close yeah yeah um obviously it's it's basically like this is

thunderdome so i guess you really can't a detail i i came across a couple times is that especially in this era of hollywood where actors were doing a lot of swashbuckling characters and manly man characters there was a streak among the talent in front and behind the camera of like you know stolen valor of adventurer of like i'm a manly man like this and polo fits that bill because it's very uh you know physically demanding and involves riding a horse you know tactically adrenaline manhood kind of sure in a real situation um but who could like who could withstand that this thing is this is so dangerous uh um but that's yeah so that's wild and there's like newspaper reports of this, of the funeral happening.

And I do feel like the Walt involvement was kind of sidelined. It's indirect, but that's crazy. And then less than a year later, May 1936 happens again. And Jason seems like you know the weird thing about this. Winslow Felix is the guy's name um and this is not an actor but rather a car dealership guy now well this one walt it's not walt's horse this is just he's parties among the horses uh but imagine you're like you're only still a couple feet away this happened to you earlier in the year. Yeah.

And then again, wild. But Winslow Felix, I never knew any of this. Yeah, I didn't know this. That it is, okay, so it's off of the 110 freeway by the Shrine Auditorium by USC. Still this big, very old school sign that is Felix Auto Dealership. I don't know what the rest of it is, but it's this big sign with Felix the Cat on it. Yes.

And I never knew why Felix the Cat was on that sign. This I did know. And it was that he had given a car or sold a car to the Felix the Cat. Gave a car. Gave a car to the Felix the the cat gave a car i gave a car to the felix the cat pat sullivan felix cartoon producer pat sullivan and then a creator or just a major the article i'm reading here just says cartoon producer but let's see who created felix because i would like to be

able to say it every other episode so he is and his name coincidentally felix and and i guess the guy had had the permission to endow this and he's like oh you can use felix the cat on your felix car dealership wow and it's just stood the test of time earthquakes right like felix the cat is still there like you would still drive by and see you forget the the i don't know if people know that the the angels a down in anaheim and anaheim said that that came down during the earthquake. Really? Yeah. Yeah.

That was, I remember the morning of that being a, or whenever there was no power, we probably didn't find it out. But I remember my dad telling me the A came down. And that's just a pretty thin little structure, but they had to rebuild it. But yeah, that is weird. The Felix sign remained. Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer created so pat sullivan was a creator co-creator okay and otto mess felix tougher to remember the two names but you'll find a way mess in memory uh messmer and sullivan uh um the new king features syndicate unless

the king features by felix they may have. Oh, DreamWorks Animation. So part of Comcast NBC Universal. Okay. So we'll get some weird Felix movie. They'll jam that. We'll either get a top of the line one or they'll kick it to Woody Woodpecker status. And we'll get a weird. Oh, yeah. Well, there's like weird Top Cat movies produced in other countries.

Yeah, there's two Top Cat movies. The second one is a prequel to the first movie and these were mostly marketed in mexico wow they are cg yeah so i look i understand ip is big but like is why is top cat have i like top cat a lot i'm a top cat fan but i don't know why at a point, I think you could probably sub in almost anything and go like, do people really? Is it really a draw? If it was a different cat with a different hat on it, would people even go, oh, that looks okay?

Would you have a better shot taking the Doughboy's drawings that Chris Van Artsdelen drew and turn that into an animated movie. Yeah. Much more of a built-in audience than top cat. Well, but someone's out to Mexico, someone's grand,

you know, they used to watch when they were at the grand house, they're counting on the rabbit ears going and you'd watch top cat and executive here. They remember that. And they're like, let's go, let's do it.

But in the future, someone's grand will have grown up with doughboys and oh yes i remember that's true spar with each other it was like a verbal polo match oh i'd love if doughboys drawings came to whatever to the meta however content is consumed today i would love a reboot of the dough boys i this is um proves that anyone can be a dough boy i don't think this is shockingly never came up on the show but uh i i wrote a one-act play one time or a few years ago well amy geo used to co-produce and nick mondernach would uh was involved as well as show it they used to be theater that was like one act plays right and i wrote a one-act play for me and mike to do as uh where we it is two guys working at uh an uncle's hot dog stand at the jersey shore but they because they had been run out of town because they wrote a top cat movie that was so

bad they had to flee los angeles and work at a hot dog stand uh it was one of the few things i am mad uh never got uh put up let's go do it this was never performed never performed i don't even know i wrote this in 2016 or 2017 when he was doing let's go do it i'll dig it out on the old laptop special patreon tier yeah sure come see that's a new level high level jason's one act well yeah i think i don't know i'd like yeah i mean whatever turn it into a radio play just the two can you get a one line no you could do the third character you could do uncle johnny it's called uncle johnny's fancy hot dogs oh it's my oh yeah yeah oh boy that's a high status character a owner of the stand yeah he's a maniac he's very mean oh great all right um cool um okay well that's this is an

exciting step wow boy that ties a ton together and if they and so put it up and then they'll make the movie based on the it'll be kind of a meta deconstruction of Top Cat. The movie's that. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

We all know Top Cat's many endeavors and qualities and all. Well, I do. I don't want to. I don't want to. I don't want to. My mom was a big Top Cat fan. I got her some Funko Pops of Top Cat. What does Top Cat sound like?

I can't do a good Top Cat. He's not like, he's a little Phil Silvers-ish. Okay. To reference, man is in dead freight. No, no, no. That'll help. Sergeant Pilko. He's like, he's always like up to, he's always scheming.

He's always like trying to, there's an idiot cop he's always tricking. And then they're all just like thieves. They're all like, just like stealing and carousing. They're all like into ladies too. and and uh carousing they're all like into ladies too it's uh i don't know it's kind of fun all right i'm not saying it needs to be have another hundred versions i'm just saying there's some charm to the original okay okay uh and we're in worth the part of one act play at least um part of one act so anyway so this this is wild what in two scenarios somebody uh died near walt disney while playing polo and then he still went off and got the injury uh i've

there's almost no literature about this but the the the the conspiracist might say what if there is more what if i don't know maybe he i don't know what how you cheat in polo but what if he did like pull the reins a little like what if he gave old what are their names uh the tacky what if he gave tacky a little like a little extra nibble and whispered an idea in his ear yeah what i mean what would happen is i'm playing polo, you are just like seconds away from falling off and really hurting yourself, which would get your adrenaline up in such a crazy level that you would start to probably feel like murderous thoughts toward other people who have almost hurt you really badly. Yeah. So, hey, it's possible. Yeah. The horse is too company's ability

to to yeah to retcon sure to take walt mythology when they want it but bury other when they don't want it was there a was there a famous disney fixer oh that's an interesting question that's yeah because every studio kind of had especially yeah in the old days yeah i mean now they had now jbc said i don't need that i'm i'm just doing it myself i'm the fixer i'm the fixer but uh uh yeah that's interesting because yeah weird stuff would happen all the time like scotty from the full service was kind of a fixer in addition to being a pimp essentially in addition to being um i guess you would say he was a prostitute himself as well um but yeah did they have like an all-purpose full service guy not maybe not in

the scotty bowers way that's what i'm saying but is there was there a mike from breaking bad at the disney studios an irishman or uh yeah yeah there got to there would have to have been somebody. I heard you paint Mickey's house. I heard you use the den. How'd you use it then? I don't know. I don't know. And yeah, we don't know his name. We don't know who it is being that or it was like one of these.

That's how the Keenan Wynn got involved. Oh, yeah. Rough character actors, Walt Light. He was around for that first, and then like, oh, you know what? You'd pop on camera, too. What'd you do this week, Walt? Who'd you kill?

Ah, boy. The fifth polo injury. I could keep three out of the press, but these two are going to leak. There are other, there's there's other guys like there was like sped red was it harry turtle or did you come across that name maybe there was a guy who ended up being like in the long run was a producer but like early on that he was playing with you mean or well like a guy he he was a polo player when he was younger

and then the depression hit and there was like a drop off of polo before it got popular again but it was like a guy who like ended up at a dinner and then he got hired by disney but he was such an avid polo player he like climbed the ranks and he was in charge of the donald duck team walt captain the mickey mouse team oh they named the team that's right you can see that and they would like they played in like mexico city and they went to arizona and they said they were often underestimated because they had donald duck in the center of their uniforms everyone thought they were oh they were like losers who are like they wouldn't be very good. Scrappy, mad, not classic champions like Mickey. Yeah.

He would go on to oversee the Disney nature movies. Wow. So people rose up the ranks in Disney via polo. Through the Boys Club. Through the sauna and the polo teams. And all of the stuff you hear about. This is what I keep telling zach reno that we need to do with tennis we need to start playing in places where like the the wealthiest hollywood elites are

playing and then we'll we'll beat them at tennis and then they'll like us and then they'll let us be in movies uh but i don't know i don't know if that exists i don't know i mean i'm sure it exists i don't know well you beat them twice and on the third game you throw it so they think you they like conquered but do you think they'll still respect me no you just have to play so you have to sell it so much you're saying i have to take them up to the brink of losing and then they still get to win so then they still feel good yeah you hustle though they feel good about me enough to say that I'll be in the new Top Cat. Yeah.

You are mo-cap Top Cat. Then I get to get the golf balls or the ping pong balls on me to motion capture. You know, Gad seemed hot and cold on the roll anyway. He probably wasn't going to do it, but you seem like a good sport. You know, you seem like a reliable one. Can you do a Phil Silvers voice off the top of your head? You know who he is. And these are all fat cat types.

These are all, I'm imagining the heads of the studios are still like Louis B. Mayer and Daryl Zanuck, who also played polo with Walt. Oh, jeez. I read. Wow. Daryl Zanuck. I think Howl Roach was out there.

I saw that name as well. Well, here's one other odd little thing. oh i read wow all these carol zanuck the cowl roach was out i saw that name as well um well here's what i here's one other odd little thing like in that you can't find a lot of people talking about the possibility that walt killed somebody while playing polo um but oddly one of the only people i found a big twitter thread where talking about this issue was connor ratliff from george lucas talk show and the dead eyes podcast which as we record this he just put out this episode where he has tom hanks on the center of the whole narrative he's been he's been weaving but he did a mega thread about all of this and

about how it all relates to the classic uh waltz cartoon that hasn't come up yet mickey's polo team which was a big a big short where that involved the disney characters but also hollywood celebrities uh like riding on horses and was it the marks brothers yeah yeah charlie temple's in the crowd with the three little pigs this was like the original space jam too yeah're right. Where even the crowd has celebrities in it. Right. You're right. Yes, yes, yes.

Which he pointed out also is weirdly, with Polo having all this stress for Walt, that that short was the subject of a lawsuit. Because somebody else claimed that they had the idea of a short where Polo, where the horses ride the people. Somebody else had that idea, took Walt to court. The case was dismissed.

So the thing that Walt is trying to do as a stress relief is nothing but, it only adds more stress. It brings him in. He gets sued because of the cartoon. He gets hurt. There's this accident. People die in front of him. The other thing that Connor found that he posted,

and you solved this mystery mike is why oh right this thing was called this internal riviera country club magazine was called the riviera chucker like so that was the phrase that uh that i guess is what you do in the game uh amount of it's called like a period or a quarter or okay oh that's what oh yeah yeah um so but that might actually be a different term also um i think that's the same that right it would have to be but i was like what is chucker what is chucker i i chucker looks like it was spelled c-h-u-k-k-a-a a or a this is two k's i feel it has to be well is that what a player is called but that's what i'm saying yeah maybe it's like what that's maybe what a player is called? Well, that's what I'm saying. Yeah, maybe it's like what that's maybe what a player is called. And this is what like the period is called. But this is a big article from 1935 about him being into polo.

And that points how he. Oh, my God. Over the course of doing this. And this is before the injury. Four black eyes, seven stitches, four chipped fingers. My gosh. Plenty of pains and aches. And it talks about how when he started playing one day, he appeared at the office with a black eye uh and he walked past his secretary who said good morning

and he said yes it is a good morning as if to say is there something wrong is there any reason on my face it wouldn't be a good morning what are you implying you bring it up you bring it up so it is like he was ufc guy it was like he was had just got a ufc fight that's how bad the injuries were did we all come across the celebrity cut from well mickey's polo yes this is crazy this is also there's so many crazy parts of this because we mentioned will rogers uh-huh will rod you can see in the american adventure who's in the bottom of this very of the chucker magazine one of will's last visits to riviera here he is talking to hal roach little rascals producer an avid polo player huge star

humorist actor fake cowboy um real political satire the original bill maher you might say we should all say as much as possible huge huge uh star and and was an avid polo player uh and died in a plane crash so was excised from supposed to be one of the silly oh there's a horse that looks like will rogers but then he died and they had to cut it crazy uh was in talks with walt to be the star of his first feature length film. His first feature length. Snow White hasn't happened yet when all this happens? This was almost a project he was going to do,

where Will Rogers is Rip Van Winkle interacting with animated characters, much like the upsetting Alice in Wonderland shorts. You just said that the other day. I never thought about those being scary, but I guess you're right. Those are pretty unique. They're a little unnerving. They're a little unnerving,

like in the way that the voyage to the moon, you know, that early... Oh, yeah, that face. The Malay movie, the moon face, is certainly an aesthetic, a much more pleasing aesthetic, but both of these things probably technologically uh uh advanced for their time vicious incredibly ambitious so walt almost made this rip fan winkle uh with will rogers but then he had to go and die

uh so this was this was the he all this was almost his first feature-length Walt Disney movie. Which could have changed everything. It could have changed everything. This polo field deal that's not good, that's going to lead to this creepy, out-of-date Rip Van Winkle movie that nobody's going to like today. Could have been a huge hit. Could have been a huge hit.

Could have led to the bankruptcy that Roy was always worried about. Not every Dwayneson movie's a home run like not every you know sometimes sometimes you make a rampage creatively they are but like oh yeah creatively they're all masterpieces i mean sometimes you make a rampage sometimes you make a southland tales you know uh which one's which yeah i think if i had to choose one to watch uh i go Southland. No, I think what I'm saying is they didn't make a lot of money. They are both seen as financial.

Southland is why The Rock won't take risks anymore, because he took one and he fell on his ass. Yes. A cult, kind of a cult following now, Southland Tales. Yeah, yeah. But what's his biggest hit? Red Notice. The biggest film ever made right yes yeah no film has ever been viewed more right other than don't look up like four days later yeah yeah all the biggest movies

of all time came out in december right last year on netflix right all five of the top movies uh dethroned snow white um but there's a few paths there's a few paths that never came to be and it's one where rip van winkle is made it's a massive hit it leads to the funding they need to build the burbank lot and all those other endeavors and there's one where it's a massive failure and uh disney is like washed up this is all over and then he's just he's nursing his polo injury with nobody to help him and he has no money no idea no way to get his ideas off the ground just prowling on like a crazy guy um or yeah it's like the orson welles where it's like makes really interesting work never never has a big hit again you know never has a big he's never given citizen kane money and freedom again you know polo is at

the center of all of everything polo right so maybe it's time to get to the flip side of it which is that uh he has to he's forced to stop playing polo because of his own injury and witnessing several deaths that had nothing that said nothing to do with it i don't know maybe people just died around you more often as the old days yeah penicillin still is the new tag on it um but no now so it's not immediate right he quit he does quit polo but it's not as if he then says what else should i do maybe i should do disneyland uh it's it's not until the late 40s that the injury is getting bad and the stress is getting bad again uh so they hire a

there's a nurse at the studio who becomes walt's personal nurse as well and that is hazel george uh and she begins enacting the five o'clock special a small side room off of Walt's office where she would massage him to treat this old polo injury and he would imbibe on a scotch while unloading his burdens on Hazel

one other weird thing about all this is that you find this that the side room there's the offices where I work but when it's five o'clock special time and i need to go take a load off drink a scotch get massaged what does he call that place he calls it his laughing place which just came up in cotino that he called it was it was that he called the ranch his laugh he called palm springs his laughing place. He called Palm Springs his laughing place. But he also called this little room his laughing place.

So Walt's using this term. I mean, I guess it makes sense that an old guy had a bad, tired joke. Then he just would say it about everyone. Maybe when he went to the bathroom and there was one stall, he goes, this is my laughing place. You're supposed to laugh if you were around him. Remove the name Waltney from this story a major studio head in the 30s had a private nurse who would give him massages and scotch at five o'clock and like that's like we're describing an affair like this is a mystery maybe well maybe like there's no potentially

we've talked a lot about you know we were talking about imaginary having a affair with claribel we've talked about all having we know he fathered rue we just established this in an affair with kanga but yeah no this yeah well i mean like hypothetically i'm interested in the world where that happened because it's interesting in the way i'm i wonder if he specifically did all the horse ramming but in looking into hazel specifically i didn't see any proof of that but maybe they kept the proof well right in the laughing did i do a couple googles for it yeah i did take a look because obviously yeah secret room with the female nurse where you have a drink every afternoon i'm just asking questions it does

sound suspicious it does it certainly does very suspect i mean there's so much weird suspicious stuff that like he was in chronic pain for all of his life you know you would hear him about being very irate sometimes or very short with people and it's like well yeah when you're in chronic pain you're often very uh irate but like the detail that like he went to a chiropractor instead of a doctor if he had gone to a doctor and they put him in a cast it might have just healed up instead instead of growing massive calcium deposits geez which doesn't help kill him but it doesn't i don't know it's not good either and if you're dealing with chronic pain and lung cancer from smoking a pack an hour like you know yeah he seemed the health seems so much more poor than i thought here's

one thing i'll say about hazel george uh this this is no slouch hazel george because she was also a songwriter a like accredited under a pseudonym accredited as gill and i wonder is that some weird workaround to like make it sound like a man's name to people not trust a female songwriter if so that's insane at this time be surprising but she wrote songs for the mickey mouse club and old yeller and zorro and all this why was she rich why does she have to be this old man's nurse i don't know maybe because it was it because of like when you're on the property at that time you're just like in the way that he says you the background painter also go figure out how to make a pirate ship fly you know what i mean like is it just it's an all-in when you're at the disney lot i work for hire like yeah see steve dicko go create

a spider-man but it's just like we paid you you created that and like eventually decades later the estates make some money. But, like, he should have lived at the top of the Empire State Building. Instead, he just lived in a regular apartment in New York City for much of his life, you know? Yeah, but even with songs, like, they would somewhat take care of songwriter money. I don't know when the Sherman Brothers, like, Sherman Brothers eventually, I think, got paid very well for all the stuff they did. But if there was a way to be screwed, because but everybody they were trying to screw so yeah it's a good question as someone who just listened to a two and a half hour interview with Mike Love

who dictated every single little lyric or half lyric he wrote that he wasn't credited for on the Beach Boys songs I listened to it longer than our podcast it was the poorest quality i've ever heard there's a piano tinkling in the background people are coughing the whole time you hear a vacuum towards the end of it i think they turned the lights out of this room wherever he was and he's still going on and then i thought of bubba bubba and you see like no you're the interviewer left mike you were just talking about this a couple days ago and i think you need to do some sort of audio to talk about this. I'll try to pair this.

It was fascinating. No one else should have to endure the two and a half hours as I did, but I can get it down to a tight hour 20. Oh, sure. There are little tricks, you know, to screw people at them. But do you remember inside Llewyn Davis when they do the novelty song and the producer asks him, it's like, what was it? Do you want the session fee or do you want like those residuals or the right? He's like, you're kidding.

The song's trash. Give me the session fee. And then it is a massive hit well i just earned it uh michael mcdonald's fee for the sample of i keep forgetting on warren g's regulate he just got a lump sum of ten thousand dollars little a little awareness that that would become one of the the staples of west coast g funk and he could have stood to make so much more but he it was a one time that's that's a pretty small little uh there's a yeah there's a collection of that those stories isn't isn't it i could quote completely completely wrong

didn't marlon brando take up front on the godfather i think he was like desperate for money and he took like just a lump sum i could be totally wrong about this it's some movie like this where he took like a lump sum and then lost out on millions of dollars something like that oh no so he doesn't get money when the from like poorly made t-shirts at the mall where it's like where it's dunkler and with scarf face yeah he would have made tons of money on that um but anyway i think hazel sounds cool that's maybe some of my like i think hazel sounds cool. That's maybe some of my, like, I think Hazel sounds cool. And, like, she would, like, you know, give it to him a little bit in terms of, like, verbal sparring. Like, they'd have a little, you know, she was, like, one of the only people who could, you know, like, kind of joke.

Jester talks truth to the king, kind of. Yes. Yeah, yeah. yes yeah yeah um she there was even some exchange like that where he walt described himself as uh one of the what's the phrase one of the last benevolent monarchs he just said that out loud to her and then she said well i'm one of the last uh great court jesters um that's how that's the type that's how funny stories were right back in the old days i'm giving it i'm reading it on a curve she seems great like she seems like a fascinating character in her own right it's just so funny the way the company frames these like myth making sometimes where it's like do you know what that sounds like that sounds a little strange yes yeah yeah a bit um

she becomes an important figure in a number of ways. And maybe we'll build to the biggest one. But she gives him advice. He vents to her. Okay, so down the road on the path to his death. And by the way, she's advising on his health and saying maybe you shouldn't eat. I was looking at a book that describes his diet, which we were talking about following the Walt diet, which is more fully fleshed out in this book I saw. Oh, good.

Chili and beans, hamburgers, potatoes, and pie. Yep. So he got the 210 pounds at some point off of all this. There's another list that makes sure to include puddings and jellos. Although I think low-fat. Low-fat gelatin. You know, you gotta watch the fat. think low fat low fat gelatin you know you gotta watch the fat or low fat pudding you know even though he's he's concerned about health in other ways i found this bizarre wall quote uh he said this out loud smoking and drinking are sins because

you are one of god's creatures and if you don't take care of the body he gave you you are committing a sin and he said that out loud but never stopped smoking what he knew that's his way of saying i know i know god hates me but what are you gonna do that is a very strange quote because like he is the the disney brand is wholesome yeah and and the walt disney story is wholesome and and pure and american not often openly religious outside of like like christmas carol level religious like one or two mentions of god yeah yeah i know yeah yeah religion does not come up a ton but it came up in this bizarre way of like how you you sin if you smoke and drink two things

that i do a ton you're right and i'm not going to stop doing at any point right very strange uh anyway uh hazel apparently is the person who told walt about cryonics so here's another bizarre part of the story in the legend the idea that walt might have frozen himself and he for sure was interested in it he looked into it you know we believe that he did not freeze himself but his interest in the entire area came from hazel um but then the biggest thing was getting him into modeled trains but specifically uh the thing that she said to do was there is this big chicago railroad fair coming up and you should go and take uh take an animator or something uh and he went with ward kimball one of

the one of the nine old men one of the great classic disney animation figures do you guys find any of this the chicago the railroad fair um i actually don't have much detail on that i i saw this story where he came home one day and put a chunk of metal on the kitchen table was like that's a piston whoa like that was a memory the family had um anyway she knew about this you should go this is a huge deal this is a world's fair of railroad stuff and he loves train but apparently the interest in trains was not really before that it came from going to this he came back starry-eyed reminded him of his youth um and what does this thing have it sounds boring when you hear about it what does walt just go look at a bunch of old trains. But it was this whole like a World's Fair.

There was all this other stuff going on. There were a bunch of turn of the century vehicles running around and there were fireworks and there was a miniature New Orleans. There were themed environments at this event. There were little robots. There was a robot of Paul Bunyan. There was an Indian village. There were all of these things

that eventually get put into disneyland he comes back from this thing august 1948 days after he comes back from the railroad fair he sends a memo to a guy and says hey we should build this little park across the street from the studio so if this woman does not say go to this thing and walt doesn't go and steal all of his ideas from the railroad fair then maybe we don't get the ball rolling on disneyland that's or at least it looks much different it's a different yeah because you're describing the the some of that basic stuff that it's it's like where i grew up and it's a display of turn of the century vehicles and a railroad is a big part of it a lot of potential future episodes i mean obviously mickey mouse park

the unbuilt burbank mickey park yes uh is very interesting also uh walt's diet trying to find every trying to find multiple instances of like okay what's walt's diet do we eat try to do we each try to eat like walt for a day and see how we feel after a podcast at the end of the chili into scotch into pudding just just vomit so i'm caking the floor of the garage my third eye just open like i'm just activated like none of that sounds out of the realm of possibility for the way i already eat so yeah that's all great stuff to eat so yeah let's try to pack it in it's great so hazel is really um yeah incredibly much more influential yeah yeah so that's even more of to the theory if not for the polo injury if they had had the polar injury might not have

hired hazel who might not have told him to go to the railroad to go this road so it's and then he immediately sends a memo and says i want to build mickey mouse park across the street but the problem becomes money or am i going to get the money for this he's complaining about how he can't find money to hazel and he says hey if i asked you for some money would you give me some money and she says yes which seems odd but it makes him go maybe people would be enthusiastic about this so then he tasks her with going and raising money from the employees will you start a fund to make Mickey Mouse Park happen? And from that fund grows out the theme park. I didn't know any of this.

So her connection to all of it is very direct. It's always alarming when the company you are an employee of is fundraising for the company you are an employee of. Look, I feel great about when Funny or die started saying why don't everyone buy stock and then we all did it and if you'll notice we're all millionaires today yes i have the famous giant sale of funny or die i have noticed yeah um this one maybe did work out better uh although she did end up you know she lived uh alone in a little apartment her final years uh near the in burbank near the studio uh but she did have a friend into her her older years this is very bizarre uh so there's this

book in the 70s about walt called walt disney american original uh by bob thomas i believe is the writer a lot of stories from the book come from this woman, Hazel. I know where you're going with this. You found this? Yeah, yeah, yes. How weird is this? It's so weird. This is a big book, by the way. Like, before the, you remember there were, in the early 2000s or so,

there was the two competing Walt biographies came out within the same 10-year span. Oh, really? I think before that, the Bob Thomasomas book i i believe talked about a lot well for you a big major one that told a lot of stuff not warts and all but a little a little bit of warts uh this book comes out and it's well received and then the author bob thomas is contacted out of the blue on the phone by a high-pitched voice who says this is michael you can guess who michael is that is michael jackson michael jackson person just personally calls this writer on the phone and what it leads to so they so so they

meet and they hang out and he asks a ton of questions about walt among which he says a certain swear word i don't know what the swear word is and he says did walt ever say that word michael jackson needs reassuring that Walt didn't swear. Anyway, weird. So then they meet and then he says, oh, one more thing. Do you have Hazel George's number? And he said, no, I only met her once. I'll find a way.

He contacted her. And then Michael Jackson started visiting Hazel, this nurse, all the time. All the time. Brought her flowers all the time. Brought her classical music well mike just showed a photo of michael jackson at the bedside of walt's old nurse what's happening what do you mean i didn't this is all a shock to me i was kind of like all right then he hired the nurse and i'm i wonder no the nurse thought of disneyland told him about cryonics and then became close friends with michael Michael Jackson until they both died.

Yeah, in her 90s, right? Like she died in 96. So this must have been happening in like her late 80s, early 90s. You know, the late 80s and early 90s when Michael Jackson has nothing else going on. Right. He's hanging out with his nurse. Wow.

Really weird. The photo you have is that's like bad era. That's like very like iconic. Yeah, that's classic Michael. Yeah. This is now i feel like i have to go back to every episode and find something we said offhanded without thinking and see if it also leads to like national treasure-esque like rabbit holes i could be i also get the feeling with this hazel george stuff that there is way more even that's been written about because she seems so fascinating and is intertwined with so much stuff he wrote all these songs and like was there for his most

vulnerable moments yeah shit there's also some exchange where uh she like kind of jabs him a little and he says oh you know what my next project is an audio animatronic nurse they have a little like sitcom banter like george and gracie style that seems like they had a real act going that's fascinating yeah and then michael at the end yeah then she hung out with michael jackson a bunch in the early 90s michael knew who she was like he was excited yeah yeah weird also i looked at this book today. She is mentioned on 10 pages of this 300 page book. Why did, why did he gravitate to, I want to talk to Hazel. Yeah.

Right. That's so fascinating too. I mean, he had ultimately had children with his own nurse. So it was maybe a feeling of nurses. Maybe it was a nurse thing. I guess he had. He wanted to be like Walt and meet a woman who worked on walt i don't know that's interesting there's a lot there's more here is all i'm saying and we have

like we have just found the 279th weirdest thing about michael jackson he shows up everywhere in this in all of these topics he's constantly showing up yeah and sometimes we have to make a point of avoiding a hundred a lot of the time yeah this case we'll go with it we have to say this woman became the person who inspired everything all of the back of everything disney does today disney is built on this nurse her ideas and walt crushing four of his vertebrae this is what we have learned yeah it. It's the butterfly effect, right? Yeah. Is that what they call it?

That's the Ashton Kutcher movie? You know what? I'm just realizing now. I pulled up this book. This was one of the biographies I was thinking of that were around the same times. And it says Disney Editions 2017. I think they reissued. I didn't think I realized this.

This might have been an updated reissue of the time because this is the one i think the family stands by approves of they didn't approve of this other book walt disney hollywood's dark prince which my dad gave me as a present when i was a child and my mom was like uh thank you for taking an interest in scott's interest but this seems weird but and then which i read i'm reading about his union stuff when i'm like nine it's kind of crazy this the the walt disney the triumph of american imagination came out in 2007 if you can see it has the like neil gabler is the author uh it kind of has the font the cartoony-ish font Yeah I've read that one Anyway

Bizarre I didn't think this would be this Vast and I didn't think Michael Jackson Would be involved and I didn't think People getting Crushed by horses would be involved This is unrelated but I just found a picture Of Michael Jackson with his pet spider

Carantula crawling up on his chest Have you ever seen that? I'm not familiar found a picture of Michael Jackson with his pet spider, Carantula, crawling up on his chest. Have you ever seen that? I'm not familiar with the mythology of Michael's spider. Okay, that's a scary photo. We have a name on the spider. You should know that. I don't know that. Michael Jackson's spider's name.

Tacky? Partner. Hazel, I have a spider to name. I need you to give me some of walt's names this story wow there's a spider on his face ah michael do you know that's there get it off michael has like all these wow this feels this this story this episode feels like one of those novels that's like a like infinite jest or underworld or something where it's like a journey through 20th century america like you know the full run of the 20th century

stories weaving in and out of other stories yeah we understand the 20th century now here's him in 2003 with a giant spider bite and now we know why because he's always palling around with spiders michael my spiders off you gee whiz taylor was begging him john peters john peters tried to warn him scariest thing big spiders you know well um so look um all the things we love came from all this so i guess you know what there's that thing in spaceship earth which wouldn't exist without any of this there's that line thank the phoenicians in this case thank the argentines thank you this and i don't mean like everybody from argentina i mean the four specific aggressive polo players from the 1930s if you had not crushed walt's vertebrae we wouldn't have a podcast man that's true i didn't

even think about us not having a podcast because of it. Wow. Yeah, that too. That's crazy. You're right. All right. Well, let's all thank the Argentines, shall we? Thank you.

Thank you, Argentines. Thank you, Argentines, for Walt Disney's original sin. Ruthless aggression on the polo field. Speaking of which, it's been a long episode i think i'm gonna go sin and put some scotch in my uh ruined god's vessel that is my body is your nurse here it is almost five we should all go have five o'clock we should all go to go see our nurses we're all we just have to be each other's nurses and it might very well might turn into amateur wrestling uh but for now we should get off mike for all that.

You survived podcast The Ride. You learned all about Walt's Polo Injury and the 20th century. Keep it tuned here where perhaps Jason's one-act play about Top Cat and Hot Dogs will get enacted, unless that is on the stage in the theater. You know, I still got to cut up the first play, the first play I ever did. I have some digital files. So many plays to match. I know, there still got to cut up the first play, the first play I ever did. I have some digital files.

So many plays to match. I know, there's so much plays. Well, yeah, this is the, well, we'll start a podcast, the theater program as well. You can start, this is the Patreon, but also you can like have the seats and like, oh, I'll see that one. Oh, maybe I'll skip that one. You know, we were talking about before we started recording, the price of everything is up.

I think black box theaters, the only thing where the price is down it's going for a fire sale and maybe some actual fires for the insurance money you know the ucb theater i think you mean the ptr theater we bought it see you there soon bye bye forever dog This has been a Forever Dog production. Executive produced by Mike Carlson, Jason Sheridan, Scott Gairdner, Brett Boehm, Joe Cilio, and Alex Ramsey. For more original podcasts, please visit foreverdogpodcasts.com and subscribe to our shows on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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