Voice of Disneyland's Lincoln takes criticism

The animatronic president is set to debut after getting a high-tech update. But scholars say his speech, unchanged from when it appeared decades ago, is not like the real thing.

It looks like Abraham Lincoln. It moves like Abraham Lincoln. And it quotes Abraham Lincoln. But historians say it still doesn't sound like Abraham Lincoln.

After a four-year absence, Walt Disney Co. pulls the curtain back today on a new high-tech version of Lincoln for its "Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln" show at the Opera House on Main Street in Disneyland.

The animatronic Lincoln, incorporating cutting-edge technology that gives the mechanical man nuanced, life-like facial expressions and lip movements, first premiered debuted at the 1964 World's Fair in New York.

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.

To be sure, no one living today has ever heard Lincoln speak -- and there are no recordings. Much of what scholars have deduced about Lincoln's delivery comes from contemporary accounts of his relatively high-tenor voice.