The Fabulous Disney Babe
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Alice is a brilliant artist and Imagineer in her own right. Walt had the foresight to choose talented women as well as talented men for his handpicked group of Imagineers. He told Alice the first time they met that someday she would come to work for him, and she pooh-poohed it. A few years later, she was kneeling in front of the Father figure in the first scene of the Carousel of Progress, pulling the drawstring that kept his pants on around his waist, when suddenly the animation turned on. "Hottest summer we've had in years!" Father said. Alice turned, red-faced, to see Walt and a group of GE executives grinning at her. She hadn't drawn for quite a few years, with the exception of the Christmas cards, when The Industry Standard called her: would she contribute a costume for them?
Costuming the Internet showcased several artists' views of what a woman going to a costume party as The Internet would look like. Dean Cameron, Costume Director of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Hollywood and Amy Van Gilder, an R & D Designer at Disney (the article says that she also worked in cartooning and puppetry and spent 15 years building puppets for the Muppet Show) also contributed. They got Alice's credits wrong, calling her a set designer instead of costume designer, but her drawing, again with her permission, appears below.
The caption read: "Alice M. Davis, 71. Designed the sets for Disney's It's a Small World (sic) and Pirates of the Caribbean rides.
"I own a computer, scanner, printer, but all I know to do is turn it on and off. It's total frustration. I'm going to school to lean, though. ... Now I know how my parents felt when airplanes and cars happened, or when the Russians put Sputnik up. I feel like I'm on horseback but all the kids are up on Sputnik."
Don't worry - that's going to change very soon!
Discuss It
-- Michelle Smith
Michelle Smith can be reached using the Talkback form below or by emailing her at [email protected].
The Fabulous Disney Babe's column is posted every Friday and when ever else she has something to say. For more on Michelle's background, see her first column. She also offers The Fabulous Tour: Disneyland Secrets and Stories. Click here for more information.
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-- Posted March 30, 2001