I want to tell you about Mary Costa, not just about her career and her importance to Disney animation history, but about the WOMAN. I can do that, because I met her. Even now, as the world seems topsy-turvy, she is what I think of when I think of goodness and the best of humanity.
Have you ever met someone you think is the embodiment of what it means to be our “highest selves”? I’m talking about someone who might as well have a halo above them. They seem in tune to their spiritual self and engage what mystic througout history called “lovingkindness” and what is called in Jewish theology “chesed”, which means “kindness or love between people”, or the early Christians called “Agape”. Mary Costa shines with all that, so it’s only appropriate that she’s a Disney princess.
I’ll tell you all about my experience with her, but first, let me tell you about Mary Costa’s exceptional and fascinating career and life, that goes way beyond Disney.
Mary Costa was born an only child in 1930 and raised in Knoxsville, Tennessee in a Baptist family, and started singing Sunday school solos as a 6 year old. She and her family moved to Southern California while she was still a teen, where her father died unexpectedly at Christmas. when she was 16. Still, she continued to sing, winning numerous vocal contests and landing at the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. By the age of 18 she had already been on the Edgar Bergen/Charlie McCarthy Show on the radio, and performed with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis at UCLA.
Mary herself talks about getting the speaking and singing voice of Sleeping Beauty:
“That audition was just one of the joys of my life because there was just one little upright piano in this big, big soundstage and this wonderful man, George Bruns, who ended up doing the music. He taught me little birds calls in the woods and the songs. I was just loving every minute of it. And then, three people came walking out of the sound booth and I knew something was not on track. It was Marc Davis and Winston Hibler, and one other gentleman – I’m not sure who that was. Marc Davis told me: “now, don’t panic! We were just a little bit concerned about your accent.” And I said: “what accent?” because it was extremely southern! They said: “What we thought was that if Vivien Leigh, a beautiful English lady, could do a southern belle, then surely a southern girl can do an English princess!” And I said: “how do you mean?”
So, Marc Davis, who was dramatic and very humorous said in a very English voice: “do you think you could talk like this?” and I said: “Of course, I can talk like that” (with a British accent). And he said: “how do you do that?”; I said: “because my dad and I used to do that when I was a little child, when you would imitate everybody”. He said: “Could you sustain it?” “Oh yes, I could”. “Could you read lines like that?” “Yes, if you tell me what I’m supposed to say, I’d do that.” So, they put the dialog before me, and worked with me for about a half an hour and then, we put it on the recording.
At 5 o’clock, that afternoon, I was back in Glendale, not thinking I would hear anything at all. And it just happened that all of us were in the house: my mother, my aunt, my three cousins and I, and the phone rang and my mother got the phone and we all kind of rushed to this little middle hall that connected all the rooms. She was whispering to us: “It’s Walt Disney!”. You know, he called her personally because he knew from Walt Schumann that I had lost my father and that we were living in Glendale, and that they were all pulling for me to succeed. He talked to her so sweetly, because I remember her saying: “thank you Mr. Disney. I’ve very proud of her”, that kind of thing, like a mother would do. And then, he said: “May I speak to Mary?” This was my first talk to him, which was the first of many to follow because he said: “Mary. Now, you call me Walt!” and I said: “yes, Mr. Disney, I will!”. He said: “No, no, no! Call me Walt!” and I said: “yes, sir!” He said: “I’m so proud that I have found exactly what I want and I know that you will do a good job. I want you to be very disciplined for me because I want that voice to be just as clear, always, as it was in this audition.” I said: “yes, I will”. He said: “I’m not going to be meeting you in person for quite a while, but we will talk on the phone, and then, you know, when I feel it’s the right time, I’ll come over to the soundstage and we will meet. But we’re going to be talking because I have many things I want to tell during these recording sessions.”
And this was the start of talking to him twice or three times a week, or whenever we would record, sometimes, they would skip a number of weeks and then, we would start again. But he would always talk to me on the phone after a session and he would give me advice. Then, right in the middle of Sleeping Beauty, he stopped to be able to open Disneyland. I was 22 when I started, and the voice parts were done over a period of three years.
The strange is that, when I was a little girl, one of my first pictures my mother to took me to see was Snow White, and I was so fascinated by her. I never knew I would grow up to be a Disney Princess! I talked to Walt’s brother, Roy Disney Sr. in the 60s and he said: “you know, Walt knew that he wanted you to do the part of Princess Aurora in about four notes when you started singing!””
You can read that entire interview on the blog Animated Views HERE.
She started working on the film at the age of 22, but it took 3 years to finish, not least because Walt was busy with Disneyland.
Subsequent to performing in 1959’s Sleeping Beauty, Mary Costa had a very successful career as an opera singer, with 44 starring performances in operas through the early 80s.
Here you can see her singing an aria from La Traviata on the TV show The Hollywood Palace:
She married producer Frank Tashlin in 1953, who, beyond working in animation, was known as the director of classic 50s comedies like Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter and the Jerry Lewis hit Cinderfella. It was during that time she appeared in a number of TV specials, including this one, with Frank Sinatra:
And speaking of other aspects of her singing career that affirm Mary’s importance to American pop culture, she was the operatic diva chosen by Jackie Kennedy to perform Libera Me from Verdi’s Requiem at a memorial service for JFK after his assassination. It was telecast from the Los Angeles Sports Arena in 1963, and played all over the world. She sang with the Roger Wagner Chorale, and Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Zubin Mehta.
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But now let me tell you about my OWN experience with Mary Costa. I mentioned she is one of the most gracious people I’ve ever met, but let me go further. Whether or not you believe in such things, she’s what I’d call an angel on earth.
In late fall of 1998, I started planning to have an event at ArtInsights that featured Mary Costa. We’d have original art, a new limited edition that would be out in the summer of 1999, and special sculptures representing Sleeping Beauty. On December 17th, 1998, my 16 year old sister Jane was killed in a car accident and understandably threw our family into crisis and grief. Since Jane’s birthday was June 18th, we decided to have the memorial service and bury her ashes on her birthday, in 1999. The Sleeping Beauty event was planned for June 19th, so when it turned out she was arriving on the 18th, I wanted to call her and explain why I couldn’t pick her up at the airport and was sending someone else. Instead of acting like she was put out, she asked if there was anything she could do. Since she is Christian and my family is Catholic, she asked if I’d want her to come and pray with my family that day. Although I said it wasn’t necessary, I was struck by how her first response was to ask “How may I be of service?”. That was my introduction to her.
When I met with her the next day, the 69 year old arrived in a lovely pick suit, perfectly coiffed and presented, looking a decade younger than her age.
Soft spoken and emanating peace, she immediately asked me how my family was doing. As we prepared to open and for folks to arrive at the event, she asked if we could pray. I’m not Christian, and several of the people helping with the event were Jewish, one was an Atheist, and one a Muslim, which I explained. She said, “oh, that’s ok, everyone can pray in their own way, and I love including everybody!” So we got in a circle and she said a prayer that was actually inclusive to the point of saying “and we also reach into ourselves and ask to be our best for this wonderful world” – that’s pretty close to verbatim because I was so impressed with her including all beliefs. She also thanked everyone for being a part of the event and being there. This was a far cry from my experience a few years earlier (see Jodi Benson: Evangelist)!
The event went beautifully, and my family came to meet her towards the end of the show, where upon she struck up a conversation with my dad about Jane and asked him to tell her all about her, at one point even holding his hand. I remember her asking for his autograph and him laughing, but she said, “this has been such a beautiful experience, talking to you, I don’t want to forget it or you.”
The whole time, she had this inner glow that just drew people to her. She had no flamboyance or fluster, she was just perfectly present, and you could just feel her openheartedness.
After the show, she wanted to go have dinner, which we did, and she told dozens of stories about her time hanging out with Frank Sinatra and the Rat Pack, her memories of working with matinee idols like Van Johnson, and talked about film stars that, as a movie geek, I loved hearing about first hand! It was like a 3 hour interview, a girl’s night out, and getting to know a new friend all rolled into one..and she was FUNNY! To this day, I have secrets I can’t share about one weekend in Los Vegas in the 50s. I’ll never tell!
It happened that Tarzan had just been released in theaters. The weird thing is there’s a character named Jane in the movie, and she looked a lot like my sister, who also had long brown hair, was an avid reader and explorer, and loved creatures of all kinds. We had a picture of my sister at the event, and it was Mary who pointed out how wonderful it was that, in a way, this character felt a bit like a tribute, especially since the movie came out on Jane’s birthday.Through it all, it was bizarre and wonderful to be watching a new Disney film with a Disney princess!
I feel fortunate to have had the experience of meeting a Disney legend and icon, but more than that, I feel honored to have been in the presence of someone who shows what love in action, on a daily basis, looks like. Mary Costa is the true definition of a role model, and in these days when there are people out there actively hurting folks while calling themselves Christian, she is a beautiful reminder that there are loving people of belief out there. What a gift she is to movie history, and to the world.
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Inspiration for this blog is based on two new original production cels we got from the 1959 animated classic Sleeping Beauty. You can click on them for more information:
To see all the production and limited edition art relating to Sleeping Beauty, click HERE.
