THE COLD TRUTH ABOUT FROZEN WALT

If anyone can speak to the truth of urban legends, it's me. Well, at least where one of them is concerned.

I'm talking about the much-promulgated myth that Walt Disney was cryogenically frozen at the point of death and awaits thawing as soon as the world needs him again. And I can speak to that story, because I'm the one who wrote it.

It all began in Montreal back in the late 1960s when I was writing for the Globe Newspaper Group, a collection of nefarious supermarket tabloids that included MIDNITE, SPOTLITE, BULLETIN, EXAMINER and CLOSE-UP.

One night, a friend had come over for a visit, brandishing an application for a job as editor on one of those rags.

"Look at this," he cried. "Look at what they want me to do! I could never write stuff like this!"

I scanned the story idea they'd asked him to complete and said, "I think I could."

And that simple statement was the start of a two-and-a-half year odyssey into the never-never land of what I liked to call "social science fiction" - not as a tabloid editor, but as a freelance "reporter".

Within a short time, I was churning out 8 to 10 stories a week and (even at the Globe's misery rates) earning as much or more in a couple of hours each night as I made all week at my legitimate job in educational television at McGill.

Not only did I find the work endlessly amusing, but it earned me a certain cachet among the people I worked with, whenever they'd gleefully find themselves written into one of my tawdry tales.

But never did I think that anything I wrote would last past the next issue.

Then, one fateful day, an editor handed me a picture of a cryogenic unit and said, "Your Dad's an undertaker. You ought to be able to do something with this."

And he was right.

After a bit of brainstorming, I decided to put a celebrity in it, then create a fictitious hospital employee who'd stumbled on the freezer unit and discovered the shocking truth.

Now, it happened that Disney had recently died; and since I'd always considered him  overrated and overly commercial, I jumped at the opportunity. But I was careful to lay the blame for his bizarre preservation not with the family but with the greedy, corporate suits who'd inherited his legacy.

Then, I collected my $22 (plus a $5 bonus, because it was used as a cover story) and proceeded to forget about the whole thing.

It was only 2 years later that I happened to pick up a copy of the Village Voice and read about a rebel animator who claimed he fully believed that Disney was not dead but frozen. And once again, I had a good chuckle and moved on.

Then, shortly after that, I was listening to a comedy album by a group called Firesign Theater and nearly fell out of my chair when they made reference to the story, as well. Then, it was Johnny Carson's turn. Then came a British comic called Alexei Sayles, then Jay Leno and on and on and on.

In the 70s, when a former Canadian Cabinet Minister, Judy LaMarsh, began hosting CBC Radio's flagship morning show, I was invited on as a guest to talk about my days on the tabs and the Disney myth, in particular.

"How could a nice guy like you write something like that?" she wanted to know.

"For the money," I replied.

But that was only half true. The fact is: I enjoyed my short-lived spree of literary mischief. In fact, I suspect I learned as much about writing in that brief period as I ever have anywhere else.

And if you think that age and experience have mellowed me and made me repentant... well, think again!

I'm perfectly willing to set the record straight and say that, to my knowledge, Walt Disney was buried exactly as the real newspapers reported and was never frozen.

But I reserve the right to maintain my opinion of the man's work and worth as well as my enduring skepticism about the corporate conglomerate that continues to trade on his name.

And, in lieu of royalties, I'll gladly settle for a good chuckle now and then over urban myths and the people so eager to believe them.

I suppose that's recompense enough.