Mary Blair, Artist Extraordinaire

I have a great love and appreciation for Mary Blair’s artwork. It is so distinct and can only be described with words like vibrant, bold, colourful, and whimsical.

Mary Blair graduated from Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1933. If you are unfamiliar with the name Chouinard, it might be because the school is now known as the California Institute of the Arts as it merged with the L.A. Conservatory of Music in 1961. Walt and Roy Disney were instrumental in that merger. Mary graduated during the height of the Great Depression and had trouble finding work as an artist. She soon joined the animation unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, even though she did not necessarily want to work with cartoons. She married her husband Lee Blair in 1934 and they both briefly worked for the Ub Iwerks Studio. Soon Lee moved to the Walt Disney Studios and Mary joined him in 1940. But Mary was not happy working at the Walt Disney Studios. She would be put to work on projects that were well in their production phase, such as Dumbo, when she really wanted to work in the design and development stages, which would allow Mary to have more of a creative influence on the projects. She also had a hard time impressing the other artists with her modernization of bold colours choices. No one, that is except Walt Disney himself. She ended up quitting the Studios one year later but was soon personally asked by Walt to join him on a Goodwill Tour of South America. She was rehired only three months after she quit to travel with Walt, Lillian, Lee, and a whole team of artists to explore the culture and colours of South America. After the tour, Mary got her wish and was made an art supervisor at the Walt Disney Studios and was able to influence the films being made with her unique artistic style.

Mary is credited as an art supervisor for:

• Saludos Amigos
• The Three Caballeros
• Make Mine Music

Mary is credited for colour and styling for:

• Song of the South
• Melody Time
• So Dear to My Heart
• The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad
• Cinderella
• Alice in Wonderland
• Peter Pan

Mary also did some writing for the Walt Disney Studios. She wrote an episode for the Disneyland series called Magic and Music that was released on March 19, 1958. It was composed of segments from Melody Time and Fantasia. She also wrote Once upon a Wintertime, one of the segments from Melody Time. Her artistic style is very evident in this segment. She also had artistic influence over the 1952 shorts Susie the Little Blue Coupe and The Little House.

In the mid-1950s, Mary once again left the Walt Disney Studios to branch out on her own. But once again she was personally asked by Walt Disney to return to work on a very special project of his. This project was a boat ride attraction called Children of the World and was being built for the UNICEF Pavilion and the 1964/1965 New York World’s Fair. It was later renamed to It’s a Small World and Mary Blair headed up the design and the colour styling. She worked closely with Imagineer Roland Crump on the project, who thought that both Mary and Walt had a childlike look on life and that perspective really went into It’s a Small World. This attraction was later moved to Disneyland after the World’s Fair and was then replicated in four other Disney Parks around the world: Magic Kingdom, Tokyo Disneyland, Disneyland Paris, and Hong Kong Disneyland.  In all five Parks, It’s a Small World is located in Fantasyland. There are some Mary Blair tributes in It’s a Small World. There is a doll holding a balloon on top of the Eiffel Tower in the Disneyland version and there is a very similar looking doll underneath the Eiffel Tower in the Magic Kingdom version.

In the late 1960s, Mary Blair designed two large murals for Tomorrowland in Disneyland. These were made of tile mosaics and were on the buildings facing each other that housed Adventures Thru Inner Space and Circle-Vision 360. Together the murals were titled “The Spirit of Creative Energies Among Children.” Yesterland has some great photos of these murals.  Both of the murals have since been painted over and those buildings currently house Star Tours – The Adventures Continue and Buzz Lightyear Astro Blasters.

Mary Blair worked on another mural for Disney a few years later, only this time it was on the east coast. When Walt Disney World opened in October of 1971, the Contemporary Resort was one of two resort hotels ready for opening day. Inside of the Contemporary lobby is a large hand painted, tile mosaic that reaches 90 feet tall. It is made up of over 18 000 tiles! This mosaic features scenes of the Grand Canyon. It definitely shows off Mary’s bold colour style on a grand scale as it wraps around all four sides of a tall column.

Mary Blair passed away in 1978 and was honoured as a Disney Legend posthumously in 1991. She was also remembered with a Google Doodle on what would have been her 100th birthday.

And I just wanted to end with a quote from animator Frank Thomas about working with Mary Blair:
“Mary was the first artist I knew of to have different shades of red next to each other. You just didn’t do that! But Mary made it work.”