FATHER GEEK remembers MARC DAVIS

Back over the Thanksgiving Weekend of 1989 Harry & I (Father Geek) were set up at a giant D-Con collectors/geek fest in a big north Dallas hotel ballroom. This was how we made our living (from1971-97), traveling the state selling Goldenage and Silverage comicbooks, vintage (silent thru the 50’s) movie material, science fiction and fantasy/horror 1st editions, 1920’s-60’s toys, and original art from the comics & motion picture cartoons. It was an ultra coooool lifestyle that allowed us about 20 days a month free time, but more importantly to us it gave The Knowles’ inside access to some very hard-to-find, even rare collectibles at affordiable realistic prices and we were above all else avid collectors of everything to do with American pop culture of the 20th century.

So there we were, a 17 year old Harry and a 44 year old Father Geek, surrounded by our inventory of prized childhood memories, just a fly speck in a room with millions of such items. Three things really made us stand out from all the rest of the dealers at this and other shows. First, we did not handle current comics, toys, and movie posters; only the decades old ones. Second, we had a sense of artistic style that always made our displays standout from across even the largest showrooms. And third, we had a large amount of framed and matted Animation Cels, pencils, storyboards, and cartoon concept art on display. This 3rd reason is what applys to today’s story more than the others.

We were in the back right hand corner of the room, our favorite spot to set up, and the show was really dragging, very few customers, mostly dealers just talking to each other, checking out the competition, looking for something they could use. This was common at such shows in the late eighties and we usually depended on less than a dozen sales of prime stuff to pull us thru. Sometimes it was picking something up that made the trip worthwhile and not sales at all. That would be the case this weekend. This day it would come wrapped in a plain brown grocery bag carried under the arm of a young skinhead in his late twenties. A guy in greasy jeans and a sleeveless heavy metal T-shirt with arms covered in tatoos. Not the kind that might decorate a biker, or even a punk rocker, but the ones typically belonging to someone in the military, especially the Marines, even more so the Navy. These were “Sailor Jerry” style artworks.

He stopped in front of our brick wall display of prime old comics, pretty good stuff; Tales of Suspense 39, Avengers 1, Batman 22 & 23, Superboy 1, Amazing Fantasy 15, Lois Lane 1, Hulk 2, Ironman 1, Sub-mariner 1, Marvel Mysteries, Mystics, WWII era Capt. Americas, early Fantastic Fours, Silver Surfers and Amazing Spiderman. He was interested in the Spiderman #2 we had priced at $750.00.

“Would we trade?” he queried.

“What’s you got?”we responded. He laid the weightless bag on the table and I carefully reached in and withdrew 10 pages of beautiful mint condition original drawings from SNOW WHITE and PINOCCHIO. They weren’t in frames, not even matted, but they were exceptional pieces of animation art. These weren’t the work of inbetweeners, these were fine finished drawings of lead characters by a lead animator done in the typical Disney Studio style from the late 30’s using graphite, blue and red pencils. I tried not to drool... Too much.

“How’d you come by these?” I asked.

“Well, my bunkmate when I was in the Navy and I got shoreleave in LA about 5 years ago and we went to see his Grandfather in Hollywood. He had worked for Walt Disney all his life and he had a garage full of this stuff. Stacks waist high. He told us both to pick out some pieces to take with us. I got these to put in my kids room, but I still haven’t got married. My car broke down and I need $550 so I brought these to sell. There’s a dealer on the other side of the room that told me he’d give me the money for your Spidey 2 (sic) if I could trade it out of you since you deal in these kind of things. Are you interested?”

“Sure! Who was your buddy’s Grandfather?”

“Marc Davis, have you heard of him? He was supposed to be pretty big at Disney in the old days.”

“Yeah, he was one of the ‘Nine Old Men’, one of Walt’s original group. Are you sure you want to do this?”

“I don’t really have a use for them. I don’t have anything in them and I need my car running.”

I made the deal and that’s how I came to know Marc Davis. In recent years hundreds of Marc Davis’ fine pencils have come on the market. On Harry’s birthday, December 11, 1999 there was an animation art auction in Hollywood that had 43 different pieces of his art in it. Several SNOW WHITES from the same sequences as I had picked up in Dallas years ago were included. There were pieces of marc’s art offered from BAMBI, CINDERELLA, ALICE IN WONDERLAND, PETER PAN, SLEEPING BEAUTY, 101 DALMATIONS, WALT DISNEY’S WONDERFUL WORLD OF COLOR, and even THE MICKEY MOUSE CLUB. They brought in prices ranging from $1000 for a Goofy and $2800 for a Cruella, to $1200 for a Peter Pan Mermaid and $3000 for Maleficent as the Dragon.

You see MARC DAVIS was a lead animator in nearly all the great Disney cartoon features. He and Grim Natwick were responcible for the look of SNOW WHITE. It was he who gave us Maleficent, and Cruella, and Tinker Bell, and Bambi, and the Coachman, and so so many more.

MARC DAVIS died the other day, and he will be sorely missed. Sure he was an old man who had lived a full life. He may have retired from drawing animation years ago, but he didn’t retire from animation. He was available to talk with and council young artists. He was there to inspire and spur on struggling animators. He made appearances at gallerys and shows around the country; signing artwork and bringing alive the early days of cartoons with his stories. Yes, MARC DAVIS will be missed! We’ll aways have his art, but he... he is gone.