SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. – Much of the world watched the opening ceremonies of the XXV Winter Olympic Games on Friday, coming from the two Italian host cities, Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo. A lot has changed since the very first televised Olympics took place at Lake Tahoe in 1960.
Not only were those the first televised Olympics, but it was the first time that opening and closing ceremonies became theatrical productions.
The work Walt Disney did at the 1960 Squaw Valley Winter Games set the new standard for all future Olympic pagentry, forever changing opening and closing ceremonies.
Since the beginning in ancient Greece in 776 B.C., the Olympics were a religious and athletic festival held in Olympia, Greece, every four years to honor the Greek god, Zeus. The “modern” games began in 1896 and now feature winter and summer Olympics and promote international sports competitions.
Walt Disney’s magic created an event at the Olympics at Squaw Valley that many thought was an impossible endeavor. When he was awarded the VIII Olympic Winter Games in 1955, Alex Cushing, the owner of the resort at the time, had just one chairlift, two tow-ropes, and a fifty-room lodge in what is now known as Palisades Tahoe in the Olympic Valley.
So small was the Lake Tahoe area at the time that, when the 1956 Winter Olympics came to a close (in Cortina d’Ampezzo, just like 2026), there was no representative from local government to accept the Olympic flag, as is the tradition when passing the event from the mayor of the current host city to the next host city.
Just getting the games to Tahoe was much like the fairy tales Disney brought to the screen.
In 1958, the Olympic Organizing Committee hired Walt Disney as the “Chairman of the Pageantry Committee,” and the creative genius and his team got to work, bringing magic and Tinseltown to Tahoe.
What they brought to the 1960 Olympic ceremonies:
- The United States Marine Band played “The Parade of the Olympians.” The 740 athletes then entered the arena, with each national delegation heralded by a salvo of fireworks (a first for daytime fireworks, an idea Disney took back to use in his theme parks).
- Two thousand pigeons were released (they were to be doves, but many feared the snow and cold would kill them), and once they were clear, there was an eight-round cannon salute—one salvo for each of the previous Winter Olympic Games.
- 30 sixteen-foot “snow” statues were created and placed along the Avenue of the Athletes and in other significant locations throughout the area.
- Tower of Nations was created as the medal ceremony stage and other events. The Tower stood 79 feet tall and 20 feet wide. Suspended upon the metallic grid that composed the Tower’s frame were the Olympic rings.
- For the first time, there was an Olympic Village where athletes could gather at the end of the day for movies and refreshments that Disney organized. He also realized many athletes never saw medal ceremonies, so he added the Tower of Nations for not only the public’s benefit, but also for the athletes.
- At the end of the opening ceremony, as the athletes paraded out, 30,000 balloons were released, and shells were fired that exploded with bursts of flags from each nation that drifted back to earth via parachutes.
Disney believed in involving youth in the events:
- Recruited musicians and singers from public high schools in California and Nevada – 3,680 students in all.
- 125 Explorer Scouts were brought in as the official flag-raisers, messengers, and crowd control during the events.
- More than 700 high school runners from the California Interscholastic Federation took part in running with the Olympic Torch from Los Angeles to Lake Tahoe
Besides a talented team of publicists and imagineers, Disney brought in name entertainment to perform and participate in the first-ever Olympic Village:
Art Linkletter, television star and host of Disneyland’s live opening special, with appearances by Bing Crosby, Roy Rogers, Red Skelton and Jack Benny, along with actresses Marlene Dietrich and Jayne Mansfield. The Olympic Prayer was delivered by Karl Malden. According to the Walt Disney Museum, Danny Kaye managed to lead several international delegations in a chorus of ‘Row, Row, Row Your Boat.” They said press reports from the time describe Kaye performing rollicking musical numbers in a dozen languages, working Korean, Japanese, and Russian into his act, something that moved those seeing him for years to come. Disney also brought up the entire Golden Horseshoe Revue from Disneyland to perform, including a staged saloon brawl that led many in the audience to fear it was real.
To help defray the costs of the ceremonies, Disney brought in corporate sponsors, just as we see today.
The Squaw Valley Olympics were called the “greatest games ever staged,” “the greatest show on Earth,” and one LA Times reporter said, “you’ll never see anything of that kind so well done in your lifetime.”
As you watch the ceremonies in the Olympics now, keep in mind that the imagination of Walt Disney and what he did at Lake Tahoe started it all. He took perfunctory events and created spectacular productions to bring the world together.
For more information on the Winter Olympics at Squaw Valley, read David C. Antonucci’s book, Snowball’s Chance, and “The Vault of Walt: Unofficial, Unauthorized, Uncensored Disney Stories Never Told” by Disney historian Jim Korkis, or visit the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco.
