In the 1960s, the development of the Audio-Animatronic revolutionized the way visitors interacted with theme park attractions. The rides and shows at Walt Disney’s Disneyland had never been simple static tableaus—hippos gawped at guests from the murky waters of the Jungle Cruise, boulders threatened to flatten the caravan that wound its way through the aptly-named Balancing Rock Canyon of the Rainbow Caverns Mine Train, and the Evil Queen spun a convincing transformation into a haggard Old Hag in Snow White’s Scary Adventures—but with the complex movement and motion of these newfangled animatronics, the company could now bring their creations to life in even more realistic ways.
While Disney’s WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering) worked out the particulars of creating and operating the hydraulics-powered muscles behind Abraham Lincoln and the Carousel of Progress’s all-American family of the 1890s, 1920s, 1940s, and 1960s (not to mention the dozens of macaws, cockatoos, forktails, and toucans that comprised the Enchanted Tiki Room’s musical menagerie), they were still in dire need of a costuming expert who could design outfits durable enough to withstand repeated motion and accessible enough for frequent upgrades and repairs.
Enter legendary Disney costumer Alice Davis, whose imaginative work on “it’s a small world,” Pirates of the Caribbean, the Carousel of Progress, and Flight to the Moon not only enlivened some of the most well-known pieces and personas of the Disney Parks, but set important precedents for the company’s future projects as well. An aspiring animator and illustrator, Davis’ exceptional understanding of the human form and her ingenious costuming skills were instrumental in helping Disney perfect the Audio-Animatronic as quickly as they did.
Here’s how she pulled it off.
From frustrated illustrator to costume designer
Image: Disney
Passing by the esteemed Chouinard Art Institute on the way home from school every day, Davis often imagined herself among the celebrated artists-in-training who studied within its walls. At the age of five, her skill as a budding artist had already garnered modest attention in a city-wide competition, and by the time she graduated high school, she had won a work scholarship to study at the Institute.
Established in 1921 by Nelbert Chouinard, the Chouinard Art Institute was more than an accepted training ground for aspiring artists. It provided a direct funnel to the Walt Disney Studios, so much so that the number of Disney artists studying at the school began to spill over into nearby homes and soundstages for additional live-model drawing sessions and fine art classes. (Though fundamental to the education of so many pioneers in animation, the Chouinard Institute was eventually merged into California Institute of the Arts in the 1960s.)
Like many before her, Davis had her sights set on a career in animation or illustration, both of which hinged on the Animation Drawing classes offered at the school… and the good graces of those looking over the scholars’ shoulders. That particular door would never open for her. In an interview with D23, she revealed that her plans to study animation were derailed during a conversation with the school’s founder.
“We have GIs coming back from the service,” Mrs. Chouinard told Davis (née Estes), “and this is their second chance to get a decent job and be an artist, so we won’t be able to get you in for two years.”
It was a devastating complication for Davis. The scholarship would not be held indefinitely; if she didn’t receive the opportunity to study animation now, there was no question of doing so later when the men had taken their turns. Undoubtedly, there would be still more men waiting to study animation after the GIs had gone through the system, too… a line without end in sight.
“I can’t understand that [only men are allowed in animation class],” Davis told Chouinard. “I was raised to understand that if you were capable of doing a job, it didn’t matter whether you were male or female.”
Chouinard agreed with the sentiment, but bending the rules remained outside the realm of possibility—regardless of Davis’ talent as an artist or her financial concerns. Instead, she suggested a new major: Costume Design. It was a decision that would propel the young artist down a career-altering path.
A wedding, a wandering princess, and a foot in the door
Image: CalArts
Costume design may not have been Davis’ first passion (or, for that matter, her chosen profession), but it wasn’t without its own challenges and rewards. The former, Davis learned the hard way after flunking the first design class she took. Perhaps unsurprisingly, her understanding of bodies, shapes, patterns, and colors—an extensive store of knowledge that would inform her creativity later on—was more rapidly furthered by instruction in Fine Art and Animation Drawing.
It was in the latter class that she met one of the most important people in her life: Disney animator and Institute instructor Marc Davis. After two and a half years of animation class and several more of dating (something, Mrs. Davis explained to The “E” Ticket magazine in 2007, that didn’t begin until her studies were nearly complete), the two were wed at the Burbank Courthouse in 1956. Soon afterwards, Marc commissioned a costume from Davis for an upcoming film called Sleeping Beauty.
The problem, as Marc explained it, was that the movement of the princess’s skirt needed to appear realistic on screen. Disney already had a character model lined up in actress Helene Stanley, and now, all they lacked was a suitable skirt. Davis was up to the task. It was her simple black bodice and full skirt that gave life to the character of Aurora/Briar Rose as Stanley twirled and gestured and danced in front of the animators.
Between her costume work for Sleeping Beauty and a handful of freelance drawings for the 1960 live-action circus film Toby Tyler, however, Davis still had yet to nudge her foot in the door at the studios. That opportunity would come even later, when, following years of silence after a fortuitous run-in with Walt in Los Angeles, Davis received a call inquiring about her services for a new project at the Disney company: A little boat ride set to the tune of “It’s a Small World.”
Davis goes to work for Walt
Image: Disney
The dolls for “it’s a small world” may have been far smaller in scale than the full-sized Aurora costume Davis created for Stanley, but the project proved far more complex and time-consuming. At the rate of $25 a day (half of what the employees under Davis were already making), she was given just one year to research, design, and test the costume pieces for roughly 300 dolls.
The premise of the ride—then slated for a run at the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair before it eventually received a permanent installation at Disneyland—was that of a musical melting pot. Miniature dolls were to depict children from around the globe, each outfitted in the costumes of their own countries and singing a song of universal friendliness and harmony. It was an ambitious goal, to be sure, and one that had already hit a few snags.
At the outset of the job, Davis told The “E” Ticket, no one had approached Walt to discuss the ethnicities of the dolls. “All you have to do is look at a picture of people from that country and make the skin that color,” Davis said. In addition to providing appropriately-shaded swatches for the dolls’ skin, she also assisted a team of four women in putting together costume patterns for the 26 countries represented in the attraction.
Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)
While Davis was later assigned a crew of quality control checkers for her animatronic creations in “it’s a small world” and Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland, she was forced to jump through a few hoops after taking her dolls to New York for a pre-World’s Fair test.
“The Union would not allow me to touch any of the costumes—no fabric of anything,” she recalled. “I just had to stand there and tell people how to do things but I couldn’t touch anything. Some of them would purposely not get the job done to see if I would break and touch the fabric. […] I’d wait till they left and I’d take the things home that needed to be done that I knew they wouldn’t do. I’d stay up all night working on the costumes and I’d have them finished and on the hangers by morning. They never figured out how so much got done.”
Davis didn’t just have her eye on a successful run at the World’s Fair, however. Like Walt, she was also thinking about the future of the Disney Parks and the enormous challenge of keeping its signature attractions looking fresh and new. To this end, she told Disney that they would need to consider keeping duplicate costumes on-hand for their animatronics; the constant repeated motions often accelerated the deterioration of the fabric, and it would take too long to make repairs or, worse, temporarily shut down the rides in order to find archived patterns and pull the materials to make entirely new sets of clothes.
Bringing 18th-century pirates to life
Image: Disney
Davis wouldn’t get the opportunity to prove her point until she accepted her second assignment from Disney: outfitting the swashbuckling pirates, terrified townspeople, and slap-happy animatronic drunks that populated an upcoming attraction called Pirates of the Caribbean. It was the biggest undertaking of Davis’ career to date.
As with “it’s a small world,” Pirates of the Caribbean took its passengers on an elaborate cruise, albeit one somewhat removed from the smiling, singing dolls and colorful landscapes featured in “the Happiest cruise that ever sailed ‘round the world.” Initially designed as a walkthrough museum of wax figures, the final form of the Pirates attraction introduced Disneyland guests to an eclectic crew of cursed, violent thieves who attacked a fort, pillaged and burned a seaside port, and made off with a king’s ransom of gold and jewels.
By the time it debuted in March 1967 (a mere three months following Walt’s death in 1966), theme park visitors had already glimpsed the wonders of Audio-Animatronics in the stately Abraham Lincoln and charming Tiki birds, but never before had they seen such a wide range of moving characters. The pirates that populated the shores of the Caribbean city were by turns humorous and menacing: waving their swords, chasing after villagers, toasting their compatriots, napping with farm animals, blasting cannons and firing pistols, pulling faces behind the bars of the local jail, and debating prices during a rather questionable auction for young, scared brides.
Although Pirates of the Caribbean only featured 70-odd Audio-Animatronics to the ~300 moving figures of “it’s a small world,” Davis’ job was complicated by the figures’ life-sized frames—frames with all kinds of pipes, wires, and tubes protruding in a most un-humanlike fashion. Davis couldn’t make “normal” costumes for the figures, that is, costumes that any living person would be able to button, snap, or pull over their heads. Instead, she was forced to adapt each 17th- and 18th-century pattern to fit the action that the Audio-Animatronic needed to repeat: a corset to fit the pipe that comprised the Redhead’s torso, double-lined coats to prevent the pirates from wearing out their clothes quickly, a “onesie” garment to disguise the fact that the pirate seen hugging the cannon had no visible chest.
Davis makes her mark at last
Image: Sam Howzit, Flickr (license)
There was no question that Davis was both innovative and skilled at her job, but not everyone understood the rigors—or the necessity—of making durable, accessible costumes. Well before Disney realized they needed a dedicated costuming department, they sent employees to source clothing from local Goodwill stores and sew the pieces together to make rudimentary outfits for the figures and animatronics stationed around the park. That simply wouldn’t work for the intricate period pieces (and even more intricate Audio-Animatronics) Walt envisioned for Pirates of the Caribbean.
Though she hadn’t yet gotten the green light from Disney, Davis began strengthening the costume material and duplicating costume pieces in order to save time and money on future repairs. Those who were unfamiliar with the process saw things differently. They thought she was wasting the company’s money on unnecessary expenditures, and told her as much.
For Davis, this was the last straw.
“I went back to the shop and thought, ‘It is embarrassing and upsetting to me that they have so little respect for me after working for them for so long. Why am I doing all this for a day worker’s salary?’” she said in 2007. After returning to the office, where she was told a salary raise was out of the question, she packed up her tools and went home.
Had Disney not recognized the valuable work Davis was doing, they might have lost a truly legendary talent that day. Luckily for all involved, it was a short-lived error. They told Marc to bring her into the office again the following morning, where they promptly re-hired her—with a raise, to boot.
“They apparently realized that it wouldn’t be so easy to replace me because no one else knew how to make pirate costumes for Audio-Animatronic figures,” she added.
A Legend lives on
Image: Disney
By the time Davis hung up her scissors and steam iron in 1978, her costumes could be spotted everywhere from the cherub-cheeked children of “it’s a small world” and swarthy-faced buccaneers of Pirates of the Caribbean to the multi-century family in Carousel of Progress and Mission Control technicians in Flight to the Moon.
Today, her legacy—and her role at the company—lives on. Davis may no longer design costumes for the Disney Parks, but the swatches and patterns she created are still used to keep some of the vintage attractions running smoothly and looking, pardon the pun, uniform.
In recent years, she’s also consulted on additional projects for Disney, including Pixar’s 2009 animated feature, Up, and appeared at various Disney gatherings and community events. She was inducted as an official Disney Legend in 2004 alongside fellow Imagineers Bob Gurr and Rolly Crump (among eight deserving others), and, in the spring of 2012, her influential body of work was further honored with an engraved window on Disneyland’s Main Street, U.S.A.
You can spot it just to the left of the Main Street Cinema, where it proudly reads: “Small World Costume Co., Alice Davis, Seamstress to the Stars.”
