On this day in 1913, Disney Legend Marc Davis was born in Bakersfield, California. It was some unpleasant experiences as a young child that indirectly led to his creating some of Disney’s most well-known characters, from Cruella De Vil to Tinker Bell, and developing some of the most iconic scenes in Disney attractions, such as the Jungle Cruise, Haunted Mansion, and Pirates of the Caribbean. Marc’s widow, Alice Davis, herself a Disney Legend, explained, “Marc was in 26 schools before he was out of high school. His father was a rainbow chaser… somebody who would always see the pot of gold over the hill, or the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. He also was a very fine jeweler. He could fix those clocks and barometers for boats in nothing flat. So whenever the family was broke, all they had to do is go to a seaport and he had more work than he could possibly handle. Whenever Marc would go to a new school, at recess the boys would circle around him and just beat the (heck) out of him. That’s the way they greeted you. So he started doing a whole bunch of drawings and he’d have all these drawings when he’d go to school and everybody wanted one of the drawings. He would do drawings for them and they didn’t beat him up. He said that’s what started him as an animator, drawing for all these kids all the time so they wouldn’t beat him up.”
