Of course, there are still "historians" (who has never heard Lincoln's voice) who criticize the voice being used for the Lincoln animatronics.
While Although Disney imagineers spent the last year sweating such technological details as how to coax Lincoln's synthetic lips to purse as if he were saying "oooh," they nonetheless left the audio pastiche of Lincoln quotes that the figure speaks unchanged.
Instead, Disney dusted off and remastered the original 40-plus-year audio recordings made by character actor Royal Dano. And Dano's rendition, despite being identified in the public's mind as the voice of Lincoln, didn't sound much like that of the 16th president of the United States, prominent Lincoln historians say.
"I'm listening to Royal Dano again," said Lincoln expert Harold Holzer, who has written 35 books about the Civil War-era president. "You know, I am an absolutely committed Sam Waterston man. ... I will take his readings of Lincoln over anyone's on Earth."
Really, this is truly a waste of time, and I wish these people would find another hobby.
Tony Baxter, senior vice president for creative development for Walt Disney Imagineering, said criticisms about the authenticity of Dano's performance are all based on third-person accounts of Lincoln's voice -- no one knows for sure. And while although Baxter acknowledges that Dano tends not to be as soft-spoken as the president is described, the late actor nonetheless evoked a Lincoln that is "emotionally right."
Moreover, past attempts to change the beloved attraction met with fierce backlash. "Weighing it all, it felt like more of a humbling voice that we felt was more appropriate with what we were trying to do," Baxter said. "We changed the voice in the previous show and we got tremendous negativity, so we brought back this voice, which has kind of been the voice of Abraham Lincoln for 45 years."
It's one of those things where Disney fans simply don't want the thing they grew up with, or familiar with, to be changed.
Zz.
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