from 1997
MARC DAVIS
talks his career in animation

by Scott Wolf

One of the great pleasures of working for Disney in the 1980s, was that I had the chance to meet some of Disney's legendary artists. Although most, like Marc Davis, were retired, with various events such as the Disney Legends Awards there were always opportunities to meet these amazing individuals.

Marc Davis had an amazing career in animation and designed and animated characters such as Bambi and Tinker Bell, but he also went on to design many of the Disney parks' well-known characters and scenes for some of the most popular attractions such as "Haunted Mansion" and "Pirates of the Caribbean," and "Jungle Cruise."

Marc was actually the first person I ever interviewed, long before I dreamed of doing Mouse Clubhouse. I was working on a book for Disneyland and turned on my rundown tape recorder to get a few stories about attractions he worked on. Although Marc passed away before I had this website, I'm thrilled to be able to share our conversation with you!

Marc Davis: I started working for Walt Disney on December 2, 1935. I came there because I have a great knowledge of animals, how they moved, their anatomies, everything else, and I thought I had something special to offer them. But, I didn’t know when I arrived there that they were already working on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” So I ended up as an assistant animator on the girl Snow White and I worked with a marvelous man named Grim Natwick who lived up to his 100th birthday, and they had a big party for him out in the valley and the woman who was taking care of him said it was almost like he lived for that party, because about three months after the party he died. A wonderful guy.

SNOW WHITE AND BAMBI

MD: Anyway, I worked as I said on the girl Snow White. Then after that, this was just the start of the second World War, Disney decided to do “Pinocchio,” to do “Fantasia,” and also to do “Bambi.” Well, since my knowledge of animal anatomy, and so on was so great, I was part of that story team, and they moved us from the studio down here on Hyperion up to Hollywood where we were kind of left alone pretty much and it was quite a group. The man who had been the story director on “Snow White” was also the story director on “Bambi.”

I’d say we didn’t have too much contact with Walt Disney at that time, outside of just being in meetings and sitting in the back row or something like that, I really couldn’t say that I knew him.

They were building the new studio out in the valley, and this was interesting because the lease we had on the building in Hollywood was running out, so they moved us. We were the first group to move in as creative people at the new Studio (in Burbank), so we were up on the third floor, the 3B wing, and this was where we would see Walt Disney now. He had story meetings there.

I’d say now this was almost three years that I had worked on “Bambi.” So anyway, he became so intrigued with the drawings that I had done of the characters, the young characters, that he said, “I want to see this man’s drawings on the screen. He has to become an animator… teach him how to animate.” So that’s how I became an animator literally.

And something you might enjoy if you remember the story of “Bambi” at all, the film, Perce Pearce who was the story director would come down to all of our rooms in this wing and he would say, “Man is in the forest.” That meant Walt Disney. Walt’s in the wing and that meant to shape up and whatever stupid thing you’re doing, don’t do. That’s when I became acquainted with Walt.

SW: Did Walt ever find out?

MD: I don’t know. He probably did but he was too smart to make anything out of it. He was a very brilliant man. You know, he had an apartment in the studio and he could stay there overnight and he had a large meeting room. He had a secretary and he had a little bedroom and he could prepare food or have food prepared for him. And then the nurse would come up after work and give him his medications and all that sort of thing. So this was a great spot, a great thing, but he was something really special. And as I said, I don’t think a lot of people realized what a tremendous man he was. A lot of people are jealous of him, too, I think. I think a lot of the bad mouthing that you hear about Walt Disney is out of sheer jealousies. This man, you know he really created America’s number one art form really. It wasn’t that there wasn’t animation done other places but he was the man who developed it and it was like when he did Snow White, this was kind of called Disney’s folly, but this thing just sang and is still a great film if you see it today.

SW: So was “Bambi” the first film you actually animated on?

MD: Well, they kind of threw me a bone near the end of “Snow White,” so each one of us got a scene or two to do on Snow White. I did one of the dancing scenes of Snow White dancing with the two dwarfs, one on top of the other.

SW: That’s a classic scene. They let you do it just to be nice?

MD: It was just fun to do and as I said, they were just throwing a bone to the assistant animators who worked very hard and many times after hours and everything else.

SW: What a way to start!

MD: Yeah, that was the first scene. But then I animated all the way through on “Bambi.” The thing that I did, I worked on the young animals and on the design, pretty much what Bambi looked like, what Thumper looked like, and what Flower the skunk looked like. I animated an awful lot of Flower in the film, a little bit of Bambi and a little bit of Thumper. Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston did a book on “Bambi.” If you look at the inside cover, there are all these heads you see in there. You see my initials also, they’re M.D. and what I did, I took this photographic study of human babies and I took expressions that they made and put those into this little deer’s head, actually I did a lot more than are there.

WORLD WAR II

After Bambi, what happened was the war came and it wiped out all of Disney’s foreign revenue. Disney depended more on worldwide distribution of his films than probably any other film company, and so we had an awful lot of money coming like from England. Well, all the money in England was blocked. We couldn’t get it anymore. This was practically worldwide, so fortunately for Disney he was asked by the United States government to do films that would help the war effort. I worked on some of those. I worked on a series, it wasn’t too many, but it was on Navy fighter tactics. This was after the battle of the Coral Sea and the battle of Midway, which America won with really inferior fighter planes to the Japanese Zero. And the American plane was a Wildcat which was kind of slow by comparison, but these guys had a system that worked beautifully. And as I say, they won those two battles. Anyway, they did things on training sea captains because they were making all these Liberty ships that were cement hulls and so on to ship cargo around the world and it was for the Army and so forth. So there were all these things going on.

We did things, for instance, mosquito abatement. I worked on a film for that because you know a lot of the war was in places where they had swamps and malaria and all this. And also we also did films for how to raise food, you know it was in these third world countries and how to do it real easily. I must say, it was quite a thing.

They had at that time such things as the Northern bomb site which was the most highly developed bomb site in the world. Every morning there’d be as I recall about six armed guards who would come in and this covered thing that they had, black, and brought it in and it would be worked with all day and then at going home time they had all left their guns in the Norden bomb site (on the studio lot). So there were all these things which were quite extraordinary. And that really treated the dearth for Disney to survive the wartime.

And then after the war, well, I should say more just before the end of the war, we did things like Alexander P. de Seversky’s “Victory Thru Air Power” and I worked on that and unfortunately I got overlooked on screen credit on it, but I did an awful lot of story work for that man. Les Clark who was one of the animators, he also got overlooked on screen credit. But, I worked quite thoroughly on that, I became part of Disney’s doing the New York World’s Fair in the early 60s and I ran into Alexander P. de Seversky and oh he was so delighted to see me. I had lunch with him several times and he had one of the first space capsules there which he was exhibiting for the world to see and maybe it was the first one, I’m not sure.

Now, during this time, Disney was not able to do his regular films. They did a lot of films with a lot of short subjects that they tied together and various things (including “Make Mine Music” and “Melody Time), and this was a far cry from “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” or “Bambi,” or “Pinocchio.”

SW: Didn’t you work on “Song of the South” during the war also?

MD: I worked on it, I animated the first sequence on it and I also worked on stories on it, but I did the sequence where the fox and the bear are down in the cave and the fox is building the tar baby, if you remember that.

SW: Oh yeah, I love that movie.

MD: That was the first sequence I did.

They weren’t capable at that time when this was made of doing a full-length animated film so the stories that Uncle Remus told were these stories, the animated ones, and the rest was live action, and it was kind of an interesting thing.

We went to the, I think it was the 30th anniversary of it in Atlanta. Alice and I went and the gal who played the mother (in “Song of the South”) was also there. She was also the matriarch of “All My Children.” Aunt Phoebe.

SW: Ruth Warrick?

MD: Yes, Ruth Warrick. A lovely lady.

Alice Davis (Marc’s wife): She started walking down the aisle to give a speech and all the little kids in the crowd all started yelling, “Aunt Phoebe, Aunt Phoebe.” It had nothing to do with Song of the South, it was Aunt Phoebe.

POST WAR – CINDERELLA AND PETER PAN

So the one film that came finally to be done was “Cinderella,” and that was the first real full animated Disney film again, and the strange thing is I talked to the lady who did the voice of Cinderella this morning. Her name is Ilene Woods and a very lovely person. So anyway that was the shift back.

After that we got into pretty much regular production had there not been a war. In other words, that included, amongst others, “Sleeping Beauty” for which I worked on and “101 Dalmatians.” Now there’s a number of these films that came in along there I did not work on including “Lady and the Tramp,” quite a few I didn’t work on. But this was good because you expanded yourself on one idea. I always wound up and worked on story between pictures. This was one of the things that Walt liked about me was that his contention was that I could do anything.

SW: And of course, you worked on the film Peter Pan.

MD: Yes, I did Tinker Bell.

SW: And there’s that big rumor that you based her on Marilyn Monroe.

MD: Yeah, it’s a rumor. They like her (Marilyn Monroe). (Chuckles)

SW: You designed Tinker Bell, did you also animate her?

MD: Oh, I animated a lot of her. I animated like the close ups and that. If she had to fly from here to there and zoom over, somebody else could do that.

SW: But you did the iconic scenes like when she’s standing on the mirror.

MD: Yeah, I did all that. You know, “Peter Pan” was done as a stage play, it was not done as a book. So Tinker Bell was a spot of light, so they must have had like a strong flashlight or something and that was Tinker Bell. When I did this Tinker Bell there were some people that complained that I made a little fat a--ed pixie out of the thing, which was not true but I tried to make a personality out of her and we had to in our case because a spot of light would have been nothing, it wouldn’t work.

More from Marc:
A hilarious jungle ride with Walt Disney
His work on "Pirates of the Caribbean"
Marc & Alice Davis' Christmas cards

See other interviews