The Origin of Walt Disney’s Mustache
Everyone knows Walt Disney and his mustache. For more than half a century, facial hair was banned at Disneyland even though its progenitor sported one. There’s not much press about the origin of Walt Disney’s mustache but the D23 website does offer an interesting bit on when Walt started wearing his trademark ‘stache:
His toothbrush mustache became a permanent visage trademark starting in April 1925, when he first grew it on a bet.
As I’m wont to do, I was searching various newspaper archives for some background information on Dick Nunis for a book review. I searched for the Celebrity Sports Center and Nunis to see what clippings I could find. While digging, I stumbled across a 1962 piece by Olga Curtis, a reporter for the Women’s News Service. It ran in the McComb Enterprise-Journal out of Mississippi and likely popped up in plenty of other papers, too.
The article is titled Walt Disney Would Limit Sit-Still Entertainment. I scanned it for any interesting tidbits and was surprised to read that it was about how Walt Disney was a proponent of physical activity for children.
Walt Disney has probably provided more “sit-still” entertainment for children than any man alive — but he doesn’t believe in letting kids get all their recreation watching a screen or picture tube.
The article drops a quick mention of the Celebrity Sports Center in Denver before shifting to Disneyland, calling it the recreation center near Anaheim (recreation center?). What really caught my eye, though, was Walt himself, quoted as saying kids are so protected these days that they aren’t even allowed to just go outside and be kids.
“There are so many restrictions now on youngsters, for their own protection, that they’re not allowed to use their personal initiative. So it’s up to parents to fill the gap, and a sports program is one way of doing it.” — Walt Disney, p. 10
It seems as if the more things change, the more they stay the same! But why was Walt promoting sports programs?
Serendipity
As a librarian, I’m familiar with the term serendipity. A loose definition would be a fortunate discovery by accident; looking for one thing and stumbling across another valuable item. Sort of.
As I continued through the article, I hit a paragraph that made me stop. It was something I’d never heard before and I quickly reached out to a few friends to see if they were familiar with Walt’s quote about why he wears a mustache. None them had heard the story.
The Origin of Walt Disney’s Mustache
Check out the following quote from the November 8, 1962 article.
“More children have been injured on sandlots with out supervision than ever got hurt in supervised play,” he said. “I’m a good example. I used to play ball on a vacant lot in Kansas City and once I got a weed in my eye and another time I lost two teeth and split my lip, which is why I’ve worn a mustache all these years. — Walt Disney, p. 10.
So, he split his lip as a pre-teen/teen while playing in Kansas City? Is this a Walt-washing of his own history? Or is it the truth?
This is something I’ve never run across, and it’s an example of how people’s stories can change over time as we unearth new research resources.
Interesting, and that’s some good research! I think often the truth is a somewhere in between. Maybe he was willing to take the bet as a young adult because he had a scar he wasn’t happy about on his upper lip?