Mary Blair: Disney’s “Modern Woman”
In the early days of the Walt Disney Studios, it was primarily populated by male staff members. The majority of animators, in-betweeners, layout artists, etc. were all men. There were, however a few “unsung” female artists, and one of the studios greatest was Mary Blair. During her career, Blair developed a style very unique to classic Disney, driving development of conceptual art. She introduced modernism, in which color is used to form deep contrast and may be unnatural to the image that they are illustrating. She also applied that style to the “It’s a Small World” Attraction at the Disney Parks, and many other projects outside of Disney.
Mary Blair was born in McAlester, Oklahoma on October 21st, 1911. She moved with her family to Texas and later to Morgan Hill, California in the early 1920s. She graduated from San Jose State University in 1931 and won a scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles, where she graduated in 1933. The next year she married an artist named Lee Blair and the two of them became members of the California School of Watercolor, where Mary also gained a reputation for being an imaginative colorist and designer.
Her first job out of school was as animator at MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). She joined Disney in 1940 and her first assignment was working on concept art for Dumbo (1941). Following that, she worked on a second version of Fantasia (1940), Bambi (1942) an earlier version of Lady and the Tramp (1955). She also accompanied Walt and Lillian Disney, along with a group of other artists, on a special tour of South America during the 1940s studio strike. Because of her imaginative use of watercolors, she became known for “creating new worlds,” and as a result, Walt promoted her to a art supervisor on the films Saludos Amigos (1943), The Three Caballeros (1944), and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949). She was also able to apply her skills to the studios’ early live-action/animated films Song of the South (1946), Fun & Fancy Free (1947), and So Dear to My Heart (1949).
As the Walt Disney Studios transitioned into the 1950s, Blair worked as a color stylist on several feature-length films: Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953) and the short films Susie the Blue Coupe (1952), The Little House (1952), and Donald Duck Visits Lake Titicaca (1955). After “Peter Pan,” she resigned from Disney and moved to New York where she worked as a freelance graphic designer and illustrator creating the advertising for companies such as Nabisco, Pepsodent, Maxwell House, and Beatrice Foods. She also illustrated several Little Golden Books published by Simon & Schuster, created clothing designs, and even designed Christmas and Easter sets for the Radio City Music Hall. However, Walt Disney invited her back to the studio to apply her style to the “It’s a Small World,” attraction at Disneyland, which opened at the park on May 28th, 1966.
Blair later created a mural patterned after “It’s a Small World,” for Dr. Jules Stein’s Pediatric Surgery’s waiting room. Stein had summoned Walt Disney to create a mural for his waiting room to ease children’s tension as they were waiting for surgery, and Walt asked Blair to do it. (The mural can be seen today in UCLA’s Stein Eye Institute’s Pediatric Center.) Not long after Walt Disney’s death, in 1967, Mary Blair created mural art for the Tomorrowland Promenade. Since then, her murals have been replaced by other park attractions, however there is still a 90-foot mosaic of her work that can be seen inside Disney’s Contemporary Resort in Walt Disney World. She also created sets of Walt Disney note cards for Hallmark.
Mary Blair retired to Soquel, California where she tragically died of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 66 on July 26th, 1978. She was honored as a Disney Legend in 1991, being one of the first women to be given that honor. Her artwork was featured in an exhibition called “The Colors of Mary Blair,” which was at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan in July 2009. The Walt Disney Family Museum also held an exhibition of her work called “Magic, Color, Flair: The World of Mary Blair,” from March 13th to September 7th, 2014. In August 2017, Simon & Schuster published Pocketful of Colors, which is a picture book biography on Mary Blair. Blair was undoubtedly a pioneer among women animators and an artist who changed the face of Disney.
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