FROM 2007
PETE RENOUDET
talks about doing the voice of Abraham Lincoln

by Scott Wolf

Pete and his wife Flo are wonderful people who each have an amazing history with the Walt Disney Company. Flo worked in the music department while Pete worked in Art Props.

Pete is an amazingly versatile person, however, and while working for Disney he also worked on numerous Disney films and appeared in some of them. He provided the voice for many of my favorite attractions including Henry, from the "Country Bear Jamboree."

It gives me a great deal of pleasure to share our conversations with you.

Pete Renoudet: For Lincoln, for the "Hall of Presidents," I was trying to come as close to Royal Dano who had done the original out here (Walt Disney chose him to be Abraham Lincoln in “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln” originally for the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair which later moved to Disneyland).

Scott Wolf: Do you know why they didn’t use Royal Dano?

PR: He was either too ill or maybe he had already died, I don’t know.

SW: When you were preparing for that, did they give you recordings to become familiar with his voice or anything?

PR: No, I knew what Royal Dano sounded like, being a movie nut from way back, and I’d seen the Lincoln show here several times.

SW: And you ended up playing Lincoln a few more times after that.

PR: Yes, I played Lincoln on stage in “The Rivalry” and I played it on TV in a Lincoln’s birthday tribute they did on all the local channels, with the Gettysburg Address.

SW: And in "Animaniacs"?

PR: Yeah.

SW: And the “Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy"?

PR: (laughs) That’s another Lincoln, yeah.

SW: Are you a Lincoln fan? I see your books on the shelf.

PR: I am, yeah, I sure am, but I’m not so sure Lincoln would be too happy with “Billy and Mandy.” (laughs)

SW: What was that? I’ve never seen it.

PR: It’s the craziest thing. It’s this weird little animation thing about these weird little people, and it’s present day. But, for some reason Lincoln is president. There’s no explanation for it.

SW: Are all of your Lincoln’s the same? The Royal Dano style?

PR: Pretty much the same, yeah.

I’ve read that Lincoln had a very high pitched voice. Now whether they meant high in timbre or to deliver the Gettysburg Address and to be heard there were no microphones, so you had to pitch it up just to be heard.

But maybe it was high pitched.

You know, Blaine Gibson was measuring my head for the “Carousel of Progress” (in Walt Disney World’s Magic Kingdom), for the addition of the son-in-law that was coming in at the end of the show and when he measured it with the calipers or whatever he used he said, “Oh, this is really strange. You’re the first person I’ve ever met who has the exactly the same size head as Abraham Lincoln.”

(Blaine had sculpted the original Abraham Lincoln head for Walt Disney. For reference he used an actual life mask of Abraham Lincoln that was done in 1860 by Leonard Volk.)

More from Pete:
Doing voices for the Disney parks

See other interviews