from 1997
MARC DAVIS
talks about a hilarious jungle ride with Walt Disney

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: One story you might enjoy, Tommy Walker was in charge of entertainment at the park (Disneyland). He was also the band leader for the USC band and when USC scored a touchdown, he would take off his band hat and put on a helmet and “kick the extra points.” He was an interesting character.

When I would go down to Disneyland, when I would meet Walt or something there would always be a crowd (of employees) because everybody wanted to be noticed by Walt and there was always Tommy Walker amongst others. But as I say, if you were with Walt then there was this gang of oh, 20 people or so, because they wanted to be noticed by Walt.

When I did the elephant pool (for the Jungle Cruise), I went down there and Walt and the guy that drove the boat and myself were in that, going through the elephant pool and all that. Walt was seeing this for the first time. This was the elephant under the waterfall and the elephant squirting another and I had one big elephant... really kind of a dumb idea ‘cause I should have realized it couldn’t hold up for too long... I had a huge elephant standing in the water and pulling a branch of this big tree. Well, of course, eventually the branch had to give up.

But this day, all these people appeared, here was Tommy Walker, with a white shirt, bow tie, elegant tweed suit on and he had a pair of rubber boots that went up this high (gestures tall boots) and he knew what he was going to do.

So they’re all on the shoulder, all these people and I’m on the boat with Walt and we’re going around there and get up close to where this elephant is pulling the branch and Tommy Walker says, “Oh Walt, by the way…” and he starts pointing up and he walked out by the elephant that’s standing, looks like he’s in about this much water, the only thing is he didn’t know that the elephant is on an iron frame in about this much (Marc gestures substantially more, deeper) water.

So he steps out with his rubber boots on and points up and totally disappears. Well, in all the time I’ve known Walt Disney I’ve never seen him laugh like that. He laughed without stopping and the tears ran down his face for fully ten minutes and here was Tommy Walker, elegant suit, soaking wet. A drowned rat.

More from Marc:
His work on "Pirates of the Caribbean"
His career in animation
Marc & Alice Davis' Christmas cards

See other interviews