John Province talks with Virginia Davis, the first star in Walt Disney’s fledgling studio
Note: This interview first appeared in Hogan’s Alley #3, published in 1995. Davis died on August 15, 2009.
Until recently, even the best animation histories tended to approach the silent era in the same manner one handles a chain letter—reluctantly and quickly. The exceptions are no less than gemlike, and particularly scarce in the case of Walt Disney Studios.
The fact that the studio remains a living corporate entity may have been a factor in the segmentation of its financially precarious first decade from the rest of the canon. Discussions of Disney history tend to fast-forward directly to Steamboat Willie, the first talking cartoon, in 1928. The most vivid testimony of the collective indifference to silent animation came about in 1985 when Disney’s first studio, his Uncle Robert’s garage, and the veritable site of the birth of Walt Disney Productions, was offered for sale with no takers. Rejected by the Smithsonian Institution (the same year Fonzie’s black leather jacket was accepted) the structure faced demolition when Glendale, California, saved it. It reportedly remains in crates awaiting reconstruction in a suitable setting.
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With the death of Rudolf Ising in 1992, Virginia Davis joins Walt’s widow as the sole surviving veterans of Walt Disney’s first successful studio in Los Angeles in 1924. She may very rightfully claim the distinction of being Disney Studio’s very first star as well as the oldest surviving employee. In a very real manner personally responsible for the birth of Disney studios, Virginia Davis was an active participant in the events that placed the fledgling director-producer on his path to film history. Nearly 70 years after her last Alice film, Virginia Davis became the subject of the most in-depth study of silent Disney animation ever undertaken: Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman’s excellent Walt in Cartoonland.
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In 1992 Virginia Davis-McGhee was the guest of honor at the Pordonone Silent Film Festival in Italy and continues to speak on and appear the subject of those earliest years with the Disney brothers. As the last accessible link to those crucial early years, Virginia Davis-McGhee is somewhat overwhelmed by the three generations of fans eager to honor her. Active, lucid, and pleased to meet fans and well-wishers, those delightful ghosts from animation’s past could not have chosen a more charming and eloquent ambassador.
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