Aluminum, 48.5cm (19.1”), designed by John Hench, a veteran Disney artist. The top part resembles the London 1948, the Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956 and the Melbourne 1956 torches with three cut-out Olympic rings above a circular legend, here “VIII OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES”. Below is another section with the Squaw Valley official logo between two laurel branches, and the legend “OLYMPIA TO SQUAW VALLEY”. Part of the wick is still inside the top. Walt Disney was Chairman of the Pageantry Committee whose duties included the organization of the Torch Relay. This torch with number 24 was presented by Walt Disney to Tom Leetch whom he had assigned to the Torch Relay and the Pageantry. Walt Disney thanked Tom Leetch after the Games for his successful cooperation, and presented him with this torch mounted on a wooden base (26x31cm (10.2”x12.2”) so that he could display it at his home. Furthermore, included in this lot are a Citation on a wooden plaque, 26x31cm (10.2”x12.2”), awarded to Tom Leetch for his contribution to the ceremony and overall pageantry, by the Organizing Committee President Prentis Cobb Hale, and the Chairman of the Pageantry Committee, Walt Disney. Plus a 4-page Thank You from the OC President Hale for a job well done, with 2 pages of appreciation letters by Brundage, Nixon, Bingham, Ditlev-Simonsen and other illustrious worldwide dignitaries. Disney had planned to have the flame lit in Olympia, Greece for the first time for a Winter Olympic Games (Oslo 1952 was lit in Morgedal, Norway, and Cortina d’Ampezzo 1956 was lit in Rome), as was the tradition for the Summer Olympic Games since Berlin 1936. And the torch would announce this fact by the wording “OLYMPIA TO SQUAW VALLEY” – but the Committee in Olympia deemed the time too short to stage this ceremony after they were notified. It was too late to change the design of the torch! It was quickly decided to light the flame again in Morgedal, Norway, as for the Oslo 1952 torch relay, at the house of Sondre Norheim, the “father of skiing”. From Morgedal the flame was transported by car to Oslo and Copenhagen, and from there by plane to Los Angeles. Over 600 high school students carried the flame, one mile each student, in 19 days from Los Angeles to San Francisco and Sacramento, the capital of California, on to Squaw Valley. On opening day on February 18, the flame was taken by helicopter to Little Papoose Peak from where Andrea Mead Lawrence, winner of 2 gold medals in Oslo 1952 in slalom and giant slalom, skied down with the flaming torch to hand it to Kenneth Henry, speed skating gold medal winner in Oslo 1952. He skated around the rink of the Blyth Memorial Arena before lighting the cauldron on the Tower of the Nations platform where it burnt till the closing on February 28. Torch with wooden base, torch lightly spotty, EF. ($240,000)