Charles Solomon: How did you first meet Walt?

ALICE DAVIS: Marc and I had been married for about 10 months; we had just bought this house, which was a fixer-upper. I was taking wallpaper off walls and sanding doors, so I called Marc and said: “You’re taking me out to dinner tonight: I’m too tired to cook.” He took me to the Tam O’Shanter, and we were having a drink when this hand appeared on Marc’s shoulder. I looked up and into the face of Walt Disney. Walt kind of smiled and said to Marc: “Is this your new bride?” So Walt sat down, had a drink with us, and asked what I did professionally. He said: “I like the way you speak of your profession; you seem to know what you’re talking about. I’d like to have you work for me sometime—you’ll get a call.” And I thought: “Sure I will.”

He didn’t know I had already worked for him; I had done the costume for Helene Stanley for the live action of Briar Rose in the forest. Marc had told me how he wanted the skirt to flow when she was turning and gave me a sketch of the clothing and it worked out very well. I enjoyed it and I was pleased that I was able to get the material to work the way he wanted it. So I didn’t say anything then.

CS: Then you went on to work for him officially.

I got a call from Walt’s secretary out of the blue. He wanted to know if I’d like to do the costumes for It’s a Small World. And I said: “Would I! It’s a lot better than scraping paint off the walls.” She said: “Be here at 9 o’clock tomorrow morning.”

Not only did I work with Marc, I got to work with Mary Blair, one of my idols. She set all the colors for the costumes. I did the research and made pencil sketches. We would discuss the colors, and I’d take fabric swatches or colored paper and staple them to copies of the sketches. We had just one year to put the whole thing together to open in New York, so there wasn’t time for a lot of meetings. They were just doing the clothes and weren’t making any patterns. I said: “You have to make patterns because if something happens to a costume, you have to have a pattern to make another one very quickly.” So I showed them how to do the patterns. We got all the costumes made, and put the ride together on Stage One. We listened to “It’s a Small World” from early morning ’til late evening, day after day after day. They only had one tape and that tape made the dolls work. I was never able to get the man handling the sound to turn it down.

CS: You told me a funny story about meeting Walt on-site in New York.

Just as Marc and I were coming over the bridge to go out, Walt and the CEO came around the curve. Walt saw us and yelled: “Alice, how come you put long pantaloons on the can-can girls?” I knew he didn’t want a long story about how we couldn’t keep the skin on the knees from tearing and we’d had to make long pantaloons to cover up the problem, so I said: “You told me you wanted a family show, Walt!” They all started laughing, and Marc and I took off.

CS: After Small World, you went on to create the costumes for Pirates of the Caribbean.

I’ve always said I graduated from sweet little children to dirty old men overnight. Actually, there was a break for a while, but when the [World’s] Fair was over and everybody got back they started on Pirates. I got a call stating they thought the job I did on the Small World was very good and they’d like to have me do the Pirates. I said to Marc, “I’d like to do it,” and he said “fine,” so I went to work.

As far as I’m concerned, Marc designed the costumes: I only redesigned things when there was a mechanical problem. Marc had one of the Redhead’s guards in a tank top, but we couldn’t do it because the skin kept tearing on the shoulders, so I had to put a shirt on him.

CS: The Redhead has always been a stand-out.

She was a chore because the figures are made out of a very strong, clear plastic. They would sculpt the figure, then make molds, cutting an oval out of, say, the back of the knee, so you could bend the leg. Inside the plastic would be the pipes and wires for the hydraulic system. I didn’t particularly like working around the figures when they were in operation, because if you forgot that a certain time an arm came down, it could knock you for a loop.

To make the Redhead work the way they wanted, they cut the plastic off right underneath the bust and at the top of her hips—and she had quite a shape. This was where having been a girdle designer came in handy because I knew elastic materials and how to work with them. I made a corset that went from the bottom of the bust to the hips and formed her waist. I used grippers to hold the corset in place, and had them cut plastic stays for me, which worked fine. They were strong enough to twist and bend for 16 hours a day.

I found that you had to make sure the material wouldn’t get caught between the moving pieces at a joint. I lined everything with either taffeta or satin so it would slide over the surface of the plastic. Some people thought I was spending too much money and that I didn’t need to line everything, but I went on the ride not too long ago, and garments I made are still in use.

CS: Some of the Pirates posed special problems.

There was a tremendous satisfaction in figuring out how to make the costumes work without seeing the wires. I don’t know if I could make clothes for normal people again. For example, the pirate that’s lying on the cannon barrel: all of the controls came up through his stomach and chest, his hands were bolted together, his elbows and knees were bolted to the cannon barrel, and his feet were bolted together. The front of his shirt was maybe 12” wide, and the back of the shirt was a tremendous volume of material. The pant legs looked like a gorilla suit because they had to bend to fit the legs without making it look like the material was all bunched up. One suit had to fit two characters at the same time because one was sitting on top of the other holding a gun: there was no way you could get that to work any other way but to do the two figures as one. I spent many nights awake, staring at the ceiling, figuring out how to put things together.

CS: What was it like to work for Walt?

Making Walt happy meant giving him top quality: He always wanted the best. On Small World, I asked him how much I would be allowed to spend on the costumes, and he said: “We don’t think that way. This show is going to be about the detail and the flavor of the dolls: If they’re very cute and intricate and have the flavor of the country, that’s what I want. We don’t worry about what they cost. I have a building full of men over there that are supposed to do that. We’re supposed to produce the best because the public will always pay you back.”

CS: Why did you stop working at the park?

I stopped working because there were problems with my being Marc’s wife.

I think people thought I was freeloading. We were also friends with Roy and Edna Disney; whenever Roy would come into the shop with, say, the head of the Bank of America, he would bring them over and introduce them to me, and always give me a hug and kiss me on the cheek. People thought it showed I was freeloading. Little did they know that they were making three times as much as I did because I was being paid as a jobber. If there was a holiday, I didn’t get paid for it, and if I missed a day, I didn’t get paid for it, and if I worked seven days, I still got paid for five.

Also, I was trying to get them to let me make two costumes for each figure because if something happens, you have to have another costume ready. It doesn’t take any more time or effort to cut two costumes. When the seamstress knows how to put it together, she can put the two together faster. But one group started complaining about that and the interlining. They would call Marc into the office, then they would call me in and dress me down in front of Marc. That did not sit well, and that did not make for a happy home. I did the General Electric Show after Pirates, and Marc said: “When you’re done with the General Electric Show, you’re not working there any longer or it’s a divorce.” So I stopped.

CS: You were originally interested in animation, not costumes or fashion design.

I always wanted to be an animator, but that just didn’t happen in my time. Retta Scott was the only woman animator I knew of. I’m not broken-hearted over it, although I would have loved to try it. I took animation drawing at Chouinard—Mrs. Chouinard let me take it as an extra class because I wanted to so badly. That helped me in designing the costumes for the Audio-Animatronics figures and for brassieres and girdles and such because I learned how the body worked and where the stresses came and so on. It really helped tremendously.

CS: Many women working in animation cite you as an inspiration.

Is it gratifying to see more women in the field today?

I’m very pleased to see women able to take jobs that they weren’t allowed to before. I would still love to see them make the same amount of money that men do for the same job. I think we’re still second-class citizens. We pay the same taxes and the same rent, we pay more for our clothes and we pay more to have our clothes cleaned, yet we’re paid less.