Thoughts on Walt
Page 19 of 26

Alice Davis on Walt Disney
December 31, 2001

Alice Davis is best known to Disney fans for the costumes she created for such attractions as Pirates of the Caribbean, Carousel of Progress and "it's a small world." Prior to that she created costumes used in live action references for the animators. She's also known as the wife of Disney Legend Marc Davis who created Tinker Bell, Maleficient, Wendy and others plus the characters for America Sings, Pirates of the Caribbean and the Country Bears.

LaughingPlace.com had the opportunity to interview Alice in the home she shared with Marc for decades (Marc passed away in January 2000). The interview, conducted by Tim O'Day, is split into two parts. The section presented here today is about Walt Disney. The remainder, specifically about Marc and Alice, will be coming up soon here on LaughingPlace.com.

LaughingPlace.com: Tell us about the very first time you met Walt Disney.

Alice Davis: I met Walt Disney the first time not quite a year after Marc and I were married. And I was painting a hallway here and I’d been peeling all the wallpaper off and I was very tired. So I called Marc at work and said "you’re taking me to dinner tonight," which meant Tam O’Shanter. So when he came home and picked me up we went to Tam’s for dinner. And we’re sitting there and all of sudden I saw this hand appear on Marc’s shoulder and I looked up and it was Walt Disney. And he sat down and joined us and had a drink with us, and he started asking me what I did professionally and so on. When he was all finished asking me all the questions he kind of smiled and he said "you’re going to go to work for me sometime. You’ll hear from me." He didn’t know I’d already done a couple of jobs for him, but that’s alright.

So anyway a few years later the phone rang and it was his secretary. And she said "This is Walt Disney’s secretary calling and Walt wants to know if you would like to the costumes for the ‘it’s a small world show (at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair)." And I said "Would I!?" And she said "fine you be here tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock." And I went to work designing the costumes - I did the research and designed the costumes. There was no time to do any color things. They were just really quick pencil sketches with notes.

Mary Blair and I then got together and she decided the colors for the costumes. If there was a color I thought wouldn’t work for a country - that there was something wrong with it - I’d go back and research that. The one I couldn’t find any information on - I knew the bear skins for the queen’s guard (Great Britain) had to be black, but Mary wanted to do them bright red. So I had a brother who was a history nut and he looked it up and found it for me - that was if you made it any other color than black you did not recognize that the English defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. (laughs) So they were black. And Mary and I were very proud that when the UN people came through the day before the show opened we didn’t get a single complaint on any of the costumes.

LP: Since you met Walt in a social setting, dinner at the famous Tam O’Shanter, what was Walt like in social situations?

AD: Delightful! He was very kind, very gentle and when he asked you something he would sit quietly and listen. He was a very good listener. But you had to be very careful because he always remembered everything you said. And you could go 5, 10 years and he would ask you a question and you would answer it and he would say, "That’s very interesting. Why did you say thus and so 10 years ago?" And you had better come up with good answer.

LP: Was he the same Walt as we saw on TV?

AD: Very much so. Only not quite as…there were times on T.V. where he would be tense and nervous. He was very nice.

LP: Was he funny?

AD: Yeah, he could be extremely funny. And he could tell marvelous stories. Also, he was very clever at conning you into things. Like when he was helping Mrs. Chouinard with the school keeping…He wanted to do a big Chouinard ball, a costume ball (as a fundraiser for the Choiunard Art Institute in Los Angeles). And he was doing it at the Beverly Hilton Hotel. They had three different people who had been head of the ball and they all stepped down. The last one backed out about a week and a half before the ball was to go on.

Marc said he got a call from Walt and said "Walt wants you to call his office" which I did. Walt said "When you went to Chouinard you worked on some of those balls didn’t you? You know, they’re having trouble getting that ball ready for the show we’re doing at the Beverly Hilton this year. Do you suppose you could go down there this afternoon and see if you can help them out?" And I said "Yeah I’ll go down." So I went down and I was made the chairman of the ball!

In the meantime Marc ended up with pneumonia in the hospital and I had to get a queen for the ball. In fact, he said get a king and queen to attend. So I thought to myself "I’ll get President Eisenhower." He was no longer president and he was retired down in Palm Springs. And I said Eisenhower and his wife Mamie would be great. He did some very nice oil paintings, landscapes. So I called Walt’s secretary and ask her if could she have Walt, when he goes down to Palm Springs, ask President Eisenhower and Mamie to be king and queen of the Ball Chouinard. Walt’s secretary started laughing and said "You really want me to ask him?" And I said "Yes, would you please?" About 15 minutes later, the phone rang and she was still laughing and she said "Do you really want to know what he said?" and I said "Yes." And she said he Walt replied, "Hell no!!! She said he then paused for a long moment, got a big grin on his face and said "That’s what I like about that Alice. She always thinks big."

So anyway I called the guy who was head of publicity for the Studio. He knew Jayne Mansfield and she wasn’t doing anything at the time so he said he’d see if she could do it. And she was married to Mickey Hargitay at the time and she said fine, she could do it. So I went down to the school the next day and went to the art design class and I said "You have until tomorrow morning to design a gown for the queen of the ball and its going to be Jayne Mansfield. If you win, you get to meet Jayne Mansfield." So everybody came in with sketches the next morning and the sketch I chose was from Bob Mackie. He was the student.

LP: Did you find Walt unapproachable on any topic or was he always open?

AD: It depended. Sometimes he’d be in a mood and you didn’t want to approach him. Period.

LP: Is that when he wore his "grouchy bear suit"?

AD: Yeah, yeah. You could tell. You could tell that his feathers were rumpled and you didn’t want to rumple any feathers so you’d just kind of smile and kept going.

LP: Many animators have said he never complemented directly…

AD: He was that way with everybody. Never could complement anybody. And also you never thanked him for a raise.

LP: Why not?

AD: Because if he gave you a raise and you’d thank him for it he’d say "Don’t you think you’re worth it?" And you went a long time before you’d got another raise because it embarrassed him. And he never liked to be embarrassed. You never did anything to embarrass Walt.