Thoughts on Walt
Page 20 of 26

LP: Do you have a favorite memory of working with Walt?

AD: I remember a day when he was just like a little kid. I was working on "it’s a small world." They were going to come in and shoot some film of the dolls and the girls hadn’t finished dressing the dolls so I was up running around finishing dressing the dolls and then Walt walked in.

He was on Soundstage One and he called, "Alice, come down here, I want to talk to you." And I thought, "Oh, God, what have I done now?" And I had on these pants, I called them my work pants and they had wild flowers printed all over them. They were the most gaudy things you ever saw and I didn’t care if I got anything of it.

So anyway I came down and he took me by the arm and said, "I’ve got something to show you." He lead me out of the soundstage and walked me over to this station wagon and the grandmother from the General Electric show ("Carousel of Progress") was sitting in the front seat with a little shawl around her shoulders. "Isn’t she cute?" he said. He was a like a little kid. "Do you know what I’m going to do with her?" And I said, "What?" And he said, "I’m sending her first class on a plane to New York instead of putting her in a box. I’m having a young lady go with her and we’re going to put her on the plane ahead of people in a wheelchair. We’re going to put her in a seat and then we’re going to take her off and have publicity in New York for the grandmother." He had the wheelchair in the back and he was going on and on about this. And he was like a little kid with a new toy. I’d never saw him that way and I never saw it afterwards but that was the one day he was like a little six year old just thrilled to death with his new toy.

LP: Like playing a prank…

AD: Yes, playing a prank at the same time. But a new toy he liked very much. He loved the Audio-Animatronics figures. He was very proud of them. But he was very upset with Mr. Lincoln because Lincoln was a very difficult one to do. And they had never done anything like this before and they had to do the soundtrack and movement all the way through. If anything happened in the middle there was no way of taking that out. So these poor guys had to listen to that speech for weeks. The show had to go to New York unfinished. Then they would get a sound building at night in downtown New York to be able to use when they weren’t using the studios. And they’d come back and Mr. Lincoln would be doing great and all of sudden he would just sit down right through the chair and just splinter the chair. I don’t know how many chairs he went through.

LP: Splitting logs…

AD: Yeah, with his get-a-long.

They got to New York and the pavilion opened and no Lincoln. Before they left for New York, Walt really got angry and was just really down on people to the point where Marc was going to quit. And I talked him out of it. They all went back to New York and they finally got it. I think it was two weeks after the pavilion opened before they had Mr. Lincoln working. When they finally got him working the New York Times wrote that it was marvelous that he got up and stepped forward and gave his speech and sat down - explained the whole thing. But he didn’t step forward. He stood up and brought one foot up to be with the other and then back.

So anyway, next door the Japanese had a place where they were giving away free ball bearings.

LP: Well, that’s exciting!

AD: Well what they were doing is they would go in there first and then they’d come see Mr. Lincoln and they thought it was a real person and they would throw the ball bearings at Lincoln thinking he was going to scream out or something stronger. Never happened but we had to go next door and tell them to stop giving away the ball bearings because they were going to destroy Mr. Lincoln.

The first day the whole stage was covered in ball bearings! You didn’t dare walk out there. You had to shuffle your feet because if you took a step you’d step on those ball bearings and go sliding across and fall on your get-a-long.

LP: Did he see your designs for Pirates?

AD: No, because I tried to get them as close to Marc’s drawings as possible. The only time I redesigned anything was when the mechanisms wouldn’t allow, like the famous redhead when she’s being auctioned. The guy that is standing next to her with the rifle, Marc had him in a tank top and he had really hairy shoulders and all this. And I was so upset we couldn’t do that. But the movement, the skin kept tearing on his shoulders so I had to cover it.

One thing that was funny was "it’s a small world" just before it opened at the Fair in New York City. Walt had his general and his admiral with him - - General Potter and Admiral Joe Fowler. The three of them came to take a tour of "Small World" before it opened early in the morning along with the CEO of Pepsi Cola who was sponsoring the attraction. Well, my younger brother was married to the CEO’s favorite niece so she insisted that Marc and I call him when we got to New York because he wanted to meet us.

So I called him and he said, "I’m going to be there tomorrow morning around 8:30. Would you be out in front? We’ll meet you there." And so I described what we looked like and that we’d be out front. We were standing there and this big, black limo appeared in the distance coming toward us. Just about then, out from around a corner comes Walt with Potter and Fowler in tow. Marc and I are saying, "Oh dear God."

Before the limo even comes to a stop the door opened and out jumps the CEO of Pespi-Cola. So he steps out and instead of going directly to meet with Walt he he walks over to Marc and I. "Oh, God, what do we do now?" He came and he stood and talked to us and we could see Walt getting very hot under the collar.

LP: Did you ever run into Walt when he was prowling around Disneyland?

AD: Only to say hello. Because when he was in the Park he didn’t get to prowl around much because all the children would attack him. And he loved it and he would stay with them for a long time. He would talk to them. He loved the children. That was his favorite time at Disneyland, when he was with the children talking. He was marvelous.

LP: Whenever people who worked with Walt talk about him they get this little mischievous gleam in their eye, why is that?

AD: I think that one of the most exciting things that ever happened to me was to meet Walt Disney and to be able to talk with him and more or less call him a friend. I still will never recover from it. And the same with Roy.

LP: Many think he was a fictional character. What do the kids of today miss out on by not knowing Walt Disney?

AD: They’re missing learning about the more gentle, kinder side of life. He was a very gentle man. He loved magic. He loved beauty. But he liked it for everybody. He wasn’t, you know - he loved hamburgers. He loved chili. He loved canned peas. There was nothing fancy or put on about him. He was just a real person. And I’d like to add here that I think he and his wife did a wonderful job raising his two children. And the fact that he drove his daughters to school every morning was just marvelous.

LP: You have a lot of friends who are animators to this day

AD; Yes, true friends.

LP: A lot of them went to the California Institute of the Arts, which Walt helped to create. How do you feel about that that he left something like Cal Arts behind?

AD: He left it behind because he felt that art had enriched his life and made him what he was and that he felt he owed something back to art. So he wanted to have this school to show people that he was proud of what art did for him and that it could enhance your life quite a bit.

One thing about Cal Arts is that I was always told that Walt left half of his estate to build the school. And the reason he built the school was he felt that he needed to pay back to art what art did for him and to give a chance for other young people to get a good education in art. He thought it would be wonderful to have all the different crafts going so that somebody who was studying stage design would be able to work with the students who were going to be actors and work with the people who were going to be costume designers so that by the time they finished school they could walk out and have the experience to take a job. And he said, you know a few might even come to the studio, too (laughs).