Sedona entertainer Dev Ross gave a presentation on her experience as “Disney’s First Female Writer” on Thursday, March 13, at the Sedona Heritage Museum.
Ross said her writing and entertainment career, which included winning an Emmy in 1989 for her work on “The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh” and a 2002 Humanitas Award for “Balto II: Wolf Quest,” as well as contributing to “Darkwing Duck” and “Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” began when she was a kid as a response to the religious bullying she experienced as a Jewish girl.
“I grew up in southern California. I was a surfer girl, and my hangout was Seal Beach,” Ross said. “What I did is, instead of them beating me up, I decided to entertain them, and it changed everything. In my backyard, I built a puppet stage … And I wrote these shows, and I would charge the neighbor kids, and they would line up at my gate, and I would charge them a penny to come in and watch my shows. [I] would inculcate into the shows little things about friendship and being tolerant of people who you thought were different than you. I didn’t even know at the time. I was just trying to defend myself from getting punched.”
“I graduated from college in 1974, then worked as a server for six months,” Ross subsequently said. “During that time, I auditioned for [Twelfth Night Repertory Company] and got hired to tour. Within about 10 years, we transformed that tiny theatre company into a major equity touring company that traveled all over the United States. We also had a successful TV show for about five years on PBS.”
In 1985, Ross was working at a camp in Santa Barbara run by Jane Fonda, teaching theatre to children, after missing out on an audition for “Saturday Night Live,” when she was hired as Fonda’s script analyst.
“I’m working with Jane, and she’s started watching me as I’m working with the kids,” Ross recalled. “She just starts coming to my classes, and we start talking, and she said, ‘Dev, the world doesn’t need another actress. What the world needs is women writers.’”
“Just by the fact that we’re females, we have a different perspective,” Ross added. “Those differences are important. It’s not fair to keep women out of certain professions just because they’re women. We bring in a fresh, different perspective, and that matters.”
“She went through a lot because of her political views,” Ross said of Fonda’s opposition to the Vietnam War and “Hanoi Jane” nickname. “We had bomb threats almost every week at the company. Watching her, someone so famous, deal with these challenges was eye-opening. I would go to her house and see her argue with her teenage daughter, Vanessa. [Fonda] once told me, ‘No matter how famous you are, your kids will … rebel, or cause problems. It’s not perfect.’”
When Ross was nine months pregnant in 1986, she landed a job interview at Disney through a teammate on her softball team.
“The curious thing is that they had no women, and the government was forcing them to hire women,” Ross said. “I had to go in and pitch to Disney. So I did, and I was fearless. Normally, I’m full of insecurities about everything, but being nine months pregnant, I thought, go for it.”
Twelve weeks later, after giving birth, Ross started at Disney, where she worked until 1993 before moving to Universal Studios, where she wrote for the “Land Before Time” franchise until 2001. She had moved to Cornville in 1981 and Sedona in 1991, but continued commuting to Disney until her departure.
The duo’s musical dramedy “The Dead Quilters Society” will also be returning to the Mary D. Fisher Theatre on Saturday and Sunday, March 29 and 30. For tickets and more information, call the Sedona International Film Festival at (928) 282-1177 or visit sedonafilmfestival.com.
SHM will have an extra Sedona Stories presentation this month: “Tiny Pluto has a Big Heart” on Thursday, March 27, at 10 a.m. with Sedona-based author Diane Phelps Budden and Lowell Observatory historian Kevin Schindler.
“The discovery of Pluto in 1930 at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff brought Arizona and the observatory to the public’s attention, and they fell in love with this little planet,” a SHM press release stated. “Diane will discuss Clyde W. Tombaugh’s early years when he developed a passion for astronomy. Kevin will share Arizona’s ongoing connection to Pluto research and how the New Horizons mission revealed breathtaking features of Pluto’s surface.”
