Of all the cast member misadventures I’ve shared over the years in books like Mouse Tales: A Behind-the-Ears Look at Disneyland, the most eye-opening stories frequently involve untoward behavior by the characters. There was the crazed visitor who pulled a knife on Alice in Wonderland and demanded a date, the tourist who groped Minnie Mouse, and the guest who claimed she was the one who was fondled—by one of the Three Little Pigs.
But one I initially didn’t tell the complete story of was the day Winnie the Pooh got hauled into court for walloping a nine-year-old. According to newspaper reports and court records, the Silly Old Bear was framed. It was all an accident. Well, not exactly… as I discovered a few months after Mouse Tales was first published.
I got my first hint that there was more to the story in October 1994, during a short-lived event called the Disneyana Showcase put on by Storyboard magazine (short-lived because Storyboard’s publisher passed away not long after). As I signed copies of Mouse Tales and other vendors peddled postcards and pins, the show’s mascot—an energetic beaver named Wally—cavorted with the dozens of showgoers walking the aisles. At one point, Wally came over to my table to get my attention. He didn’t speak, but clearly he wanted to make an impression.
Near the end of the day, a middle-aged fellow of modest build and height stopped by to say he was a “friend” of Wally’s. (It took me a minute to realize “friend” of was Disney Code for him actually being Wally.) When he introduced himself as Robert Hill, I knew exactly who he was—the actor who played Pooh on that fateful day in court. I asked him if he was happy with my retelling of his incident. “Yes, but there’s more,” Hill said cryptically. “The kid had it coming.” And with that, he wandered off.
We’d run into each other a few more times, and I formally interviewed him twice—the first time in 1998 at his apartment for More Mouse Tales. Robert, who joined Disneyland’s Character Department in 1969, was unlike all of the other characters I’d spoken with over the years. He wasn’t cuddly. During his Disney days, he preferred playing the sullen donkey Eeyore, trudging about alone, true to character. He’d get upset when other actors would play Eeyore upbeat, “to get cheap laughs.” The costume’s large paws made it difficult to sign autographs, so Hill usually refused—resulting in several written reprimands. When he did sign, to be authentic he wrote “EOR,” as Eeyore did in the A.A. Milne books—baffling most of the guests.
Robert had no touching stories about life-altering encounters with precocious children. Frankly, he talked as if the guests were the enemy. He spoke at length about the many injuries he and his costumed colleagues had suffered at the hands—and feet—of mean-spirited guests. He said the characters developed their own tactics for anticipating and avoiding an attack, moving to soften any blows, and even subtly fighting back. Hill became a master of furry-self defense. He never wanted to hurt a guest, but was willing to do whatever it took to make sure they didn’t hurt him.
One summer day in 1974, Hill was dressed as Winnie the Pooh, greeting guests between the Plaza Inn and First Aid (where today the corndog cart sits). On top of Pooh’s head was a large fiberglass honeypot that covered the actor’s head and had subtle patches of black screening in the front and back, for the actor to look through. A tall, nine-year-old girl approached from the rear and socked him in the back.
“Boom! You might as well be in an oil drum,” Hill recalled. He turned his head inside the honeypot to look out the back while the girl thought he was still looking straight ahead. “I saw her winding up for a second run on me, so as she closed in for the kill, I spun around to scare her, but she was already on top of me. I spun around and Pooh’s ear caught her in the side of her head. The ear was a fur-covered fiberglass shell. Her father said, ‘Why did you hit my daughter for no reason?’ Hit her? In this thing? My arms were hanging like something on a seal. I was harmless. But I could tell we had to get out of there.”
The Pooh troupe hurried off stage, and Robert went to tell his lead what happened. He recalled, “The next thing you know, the family is a City Hall, where the situation multiplied. They registered an official complaint: you ‘beat and battered my child.’ My supervisor came and asked for my story. He saw no issue with it. At the time, the leads knew the limitations of the costumes, because they had all come up through the ranks themselves.”
The girl’s family filed suit, demanding $15,000. Both parties agreed to go to non-binding arbitration, where she was awarded $1,000. Disney said it wouldn’t pay more than $500. The family said they’d already spent about $160 on medication, that the girl suffered deep bruises, persistent headaches, and possibly future brain damage, so they wouldn’t go below $1,000. The lawyer thought he was calling Disney’s bluff. After all, did Disney want to risk the media attention of Winnie the Pooh slapping a little kid?
The case finally made it to trial six years later. Disney’s lawyer asked Hill to testify holding the Pooh costume, so he could point out its limitations. Disney had a strict policy to never publicly display a “broken-down” costume. If he was going to demonstrate the costume, he was going to be inside it.
So, Robert first took the stand as himself, to tell his side of the story—that he didn’t slap her; he accidentally bumped her with a furry ear after being pushed from behind. Two things furry characters are never allowed to do are talk and retaliate. Then, after a brief recess, Hill reentered the courtroom—as Pooh. He demonstrated what he did at the park by skipping, dancing and nuzzling the court reporter.
“The plaintiff’s attorney, when he saw me come out with the costume, I swear he did a facepalm. ‘We’re screwed,’” Robert remembered. “I skip out, the whole bit, you hear all the people: ‘Ooooooh.’ Even the non-smiling bailiff was smiling. Meanwhile, I’m looking back at the jury room, and it’s filling up with spectators. ‘You’re not gonna believe it—Winnie the Pooh’s on trial!’ It was standing room only in the back.”
Finally, Hill was asked how high he could lift his paws. Since the arms were inoperable stubs, he couldn’t get them more than three feet off the ground—and the girl got hit in the head five feet high.
It took the jury just 21 minutes to find Disney innocent. After the ruling, the bailiffs and other court reporters asked Hill to put the costume back on, to pose for pictures with them.
Twenty years later, after another meet-up with Robert, I was able to tell his full story when I revisited the case for The People v. Disneyland: How Lawsuits & Lawyers Transformed the Magic.
Speaking of which, if you’ve got some spare space on your bookshelf, you can complete your David Koenig Collection by visiting me this weekend at the MiceChat booth at D23. I’ll be signing all of my books, including the coffee-table beauty The 55ers: The Pioneers Who Settled Disneyland. I’ll even bring along my latest page-turner—Shooting Columbo—a blow-by-blow account of the making of Peter Falk’s classic TV detective series.
In addition, I’ll have signed copies of the memoirs of two Disneyland treasures from Opening Day: long-timer Bob Penfield and the park’s first tour guide, Bob D’Arcy. The Bobs have autographed copies of, respectively, The Last Original Disneylander and A Walk in the Park, specifically for D23 attendees. They signed about two dozen of each, so grab ‘em while I’ve got ‘em!
See you real soon!
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