The Laurence Olivier of Animation
Have you ever heard the simile “An animator is like an actor?” What that means is that in an animated movie, once the backdrops of the film have been completely painted, and the voice talent for the film has been recorded, someone now has to bring all of the characters in the film to life, in front of the backdrops, and that isn’t the job of the voice actors. It actually is the job of the animators! While the voice actors give the cartoon characters their souls, the animators give them the ability to move and cavort about the screen.
In the later years of Walt Disney’s career, he was in an interview where he was asked by the interviewer “Mr. Disney, if you could choose one piece of animation that your studio has done today as your favorite, what piece would that be?” Walt thought about it for a moment, and he said “Well, probably the moment in Cinderella where she gets her ball gown.” That moment was animated by a man named Marc Davis. Known as one of Walt’s “Nine Old Men.” Marc Davis was one of the most renowned and prolific animators! He worked his way up from being a storyboard artist, to a character animator, to a Disney park attraction designer for the Walt Disney Studios.
When he got promoted from storyboard artist to character animator, Marc Davis worked on animating supporting characters in the feature length films such as Thumper and Flower in Bambi (1942). In the 1950s, he got further promoted to animating the princesses and leading ladies such as Cinderella in Cinderella (1950), Alice in Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Tinker Bell in Peter Pan (1953). He wanted more than anything, however, to animate the villains, and was finally able to do so with Maleficent in Sleeping Beauty (1959). (He animated Sleeping Beauty/Princess Aurora in the film as well.) His final animation assignment was the supervising animation for the character of Cruella De Vill in 101 Dalmatians (1961).
After completing work on “Dalmatians,” Davis went on to become one of the head creators of many of the most beloved Disney Park attractions, including “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Haunted Mansion,” “It’s a Small World,” and “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln.” He served as a mentor to animator Andreas Deja, who would go on to animate the more modern Disney villains, including Gaston in Beauty and the Beast (1991), Jafar in Aladdin (1992) and Scar in The Lion King (1994).
Marc Davis’s wife, Alice Davis, worked as a costume designer for the studio. When “Beauty,” was in production in the mid-1950’s, she received a phone call from future husband, Marc, to design a costume for Helene Stanley to wear as she performed live-action modeling for the animators for the character of Sleeping Beauty. (Stanley provided live-action modeling for Cinderella and Anastasia in “Cinderella,” and also Anita in “Dalmatians.”) After marrying Marc in 1956, Alice was ultimately hired by the studio to be a full-time designer by Walt himself in 1960. While her husband created the audio-animatronic figures for “Pirates of the Caribbean,” “Haunted Mansion,” etc., she created the costumes that the figures would wear in the rides. She and her husband both retired from Disney in 1978 and were married until Marc’s passing in 2000 at the age of 86. She does, however, continue to serve as a creative consultant on Disney films, including Disney/Pixar’s Up (2009). The “Up,” creative team interviewed their closest, personal friends and relatives to ask their opinions on “What are the most important things in life?” which served as their inspiration to tell the story of “Up.”
The extraordinary artwork that Marc Davis created for Disney individually and also with his wife is incredible and insurmountable! One can easily credit him as one of the world’s greatest animators, not just in the history of Disney, but in the history of animation in general as well, as evidenced by his work on screen and at the Disney parks. Marc Davis and his wife Alice’s 44-year-marriage was a true match made in heaven, and it became one of the most unique and ambitious assets to Walt Disney Animation.
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