Vault Disney Presents Disney Legends - Mary Blair (1997)

Mary Blair is the artist who's color and design style most influenced Walt Disney's films in the 1940's through the early 1950's. In the 1930's, she had come from the Midwest to California to join the flourishing watercolor movement there. She started at the studio after her husband, Lee Blair, got a job there. She invited herself on the Latin America trip Walt was sent on by the US Federal Government in 1941 where Walt discovered her sense of style and color. Mary discovered her unique artistic style on that trip. She quickly became one of Walt's top artists. Her influence dominates Walt's films from here after.

Walt sent her on a several week trip through the American south to do paintings that set the tone of Song of the South. Many woke academics today smear her for collaborating on this film. Films like Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, and Peter Pan are especially hailed for Mary's influence on their look. At the time, some Disney artists were jealous of Mary's influence, and some claim her husband even became an alcoholic resenting how his wife was outshining him. Some biographers also allege him of enabling Mary becoming an alcoholic herself to sabotage her career.

In the late 1940's Lee moved the family to New York City where he started his own studio. Mary continued working remotely for Walt, providing some of her most influential work, until she resigned in the early 1950's to focus on her family. Mary continued to take on freelance work, fashion design, stage set designs, and book illustrations. Her children's books and greeting cards were especially popular with many at the time.

In the early 1960's Walt sent for Mary to help develop Small World for the New Your 1964/65 World's Fair. This was when she became close friends with Alice Davis, wife of Disney animator and one of the Nine Old Man, Marc Davis. Alice developed the costumes for the attraction while Mary focused on the color and design. Walt brought in Mary having recalled her charming children designs she'd done for the Las Posadas sequence from The Three Caballeros. After that, Walt had her work on several murals for Disneyland and other places that had hired his studio to install doing the same.

When Walt died, like many of Walt's favorites, Mary was shut out from the studio. She worked on the color design for the film based on the Broadway film How to Succeed in Business Without Even Trying which was directed by another friend from her Walt Disney days, David Swift. After that, Mary continued to work on freelance work and ad campaigns. Mary's alcoholism and issues with her family are credited with destroying her style (Alice Davis said she was alarmed at what happened to her friend in her later days citing her colors became muddy) and she died at age 66 due to complications from her alcoholism.

Mary Blair is such an influential artist that her style is imitated in the CGI animated films and many children's books to this day. Although she's been praised as one of the top female artists of the field, post modernists have been trying to tear her down in recent years over her association with Walt Disney. They also accuse her of cultural appropriation. The Walt Disney Company also changed her focus on the Children of the World in Small World when it inserted Disney characters into the ride. Fortunately, we can see this attraction as it existed in the vintage footage from the time.

Mary Blair was made a Disney Legend in 1991.

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.