Mary Blair is one of the few women whose name is inscribed in the history of the Disney studio. She started out as a simple inker, and came to the point where her signature artistic style became defining in the Golden Age of Disney. She gave the world Cinderella, Alice and Maleficent. But the path to fame was thorny – Mary was in the shadow of her husband for a long time, quit the studio twice and faced mocking comments from male colleagues.
Mary Blair Comes to Walt Disney Studios
Mary Blair, née Robinson, was born in 1911 in McAlester, Oklahoma. She was in love with fine art from childhood. She especially enjoyed working with watercolors. Although the girl’s family was poor, her parents supported her interests. They cut back on food expenses to buy their daughter art supplies.
Mary herself also tried her best: she studied well, was vice-president of the class and was active in the school newspaper. She managed to get a scholarship to study at the Chouinard Institute of Art. This is an educational institution located in Los Angeles, which is known for its close collaboration with the brothers Walt and Roy Disney. At Chouinard, Mary met her future husband, Lee Everett Blair. He also studied at the institute on a scholarship. In 1932, Lee won a gold medal at the Summer Olympics in Los Angeles in the category “Drawing and Watercolor”. In those years, fine art was one of the Olympic disciplines.
Mary and Lee quickly fell in love. They were both ambitious to pursue artistic careers. The couple married in 1934.
For the first few years after graduating from the Institute, Mary’s career depended entirely on her husband: he would get a job at some studio and after a while would negotiate a position for Mary. Despite the fact that they had the same education, Lee was hired as an animator, while Mary was only an inker. She had to draw clear outlines of future movie characters. But when Lee quit the Harman-Eising studio in 1938, where he and his wife were working at the time, and went to Disney, Mary was promoted. After Lee left, a production designer position became available, which she took.
Mary worked at Harman-Eising for three and a half years. She quit, unable to stand the obsessive attention from one of her colleagues. Joe Barbera, the future founder of the Hanna-Barbera studio, did not give the girl a moment’s peace. Mary turned to her husband for help and asked him to arrange a job for her with Walt Disney. It was 1940. Disney was expanding his staff, offering vacancies to women. At that time, his film studio employed one thousand twenty-three employees, three hundred and eight of whom were women. Mary was hired in the character modeling department.
In the shadow of her husband
In the modeling department, artists created three-dimensional figures of movie characters. Mary, who had worked with watercolors all her life, did not like this kind of work. Fortunately, she was quickly transferred to the script department. One of Mary’s first projects was sketches for the cartoon “Lady” . This is a story about a small dog whose owners forget about her after the birth of a child. Mary developed the image of the main character – a cocker spaniel. But the project was put on hold for a while. It was released on screens only in 1955, significantly reworked, and was called “Lady and the Tramp”.
Mary also worked on smaller projects, including many short films. She found the work interesting and enjoyable, but she did not feel fulfilled. She felt that she was in the wrong place and that the tasks did not reveal her full potential. Meanwhile, Mary’s husband, Lee, had more opportunities – he was the color director on Pinocchio, and on the experimental Fantasia he took on the role of storyboard artist and scriptwriter.
One of Mary’s key jobs at the time was developing concept art for the animated film Dumbo, about a baby elephant with unusually large ears. Mary worked on the “Baby Mine” scene, in which Dumbo makes his way to his mother, who is locked in a cage, and they hug with their trunks. Mary put a lot of personal information into this touching scene: she dreamed of having a child, but she couldn’t get pregnant – she had several early miscarriages.
Mary wasn’t the only one who faced inner torment and a sense of injustice during those years. Conflict was brewing at Disney Studios . Pinocchio and Fantasia, two big-budget projects that had been highly anticipated, had flopped at the box office. The studio was deeply in debt. Working conditions had become stricter. Employees were forced to sign documents pledging to work forty hours a week. In reality, everyone was working overtime. At the same time, salaries were distributed unevenly, and the hierarchy that had been built in the studio became more visible. On May 29, 1941, some workers went on strike, which lasted five weeks.
Mary did not go on strike. But, like many others, she wanted fair treatment for her employees. She wanted more than just a decent salary — Mary dreamed of seeing her name in the credits of the projects she worked on. While her colleagues were on strike, she decided that it was the best time to leave. Mary quit.
Own path
Mary regretted her dismissal almost immediately. One day, Lee returned home and announced that he and other studio employees were going on a ten-week trip to South American countries. The trip was sponsored by the US government, which, with fascist sentiments growing in neighboring countries, was afraid of losing political influence there. In order to maintain friendly ties with Latin America, a decision was made to spread US culture there. The plan was that upon the employees’ return from the trip, the Disney studio would release several films celebrating Latin American culture.
Mary had never been abroad, and she really wanted to go on this trip. So she went to Walt Disney herself and asked permission to accompany her husband. Walt not only agreed to take her along, he hired her back.
Together with other studio employees, Mary visited Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Guatemala, Chile and Mexico. This trip restored her inspiration, breathed new life into her work and helped her develop her signature style. Before the trip, her work was often confused with her husband’s, but now they were absolutely different. Mary became bolder – she was not afraid to experiment with color. For example, she confidently combined pink with yellow, painted eccentric patterns and increasingly leaned towards abstraction. Her new style captivated Walt Disney, who once remarked that “she knew colors he had never even heard of before.”
Returning to the United States, Mary and her colleagues began working on Latin American projects. The first was the cartoon “Salute, Friends!”, which consisted of four segments. Each of them told about one of the Latin American countries. Mary worked on the Brazilian segment. Thanks to her concept art, the artists managed to reflect the bright carnival atmosphere of Rio de Janeiro on the screen. The cartoon was released in 1943. The name Mary Blair appeared on the screen for the first time. She recalled that it was during those years that she felt that she had finally found her place in business.
The Tale of Cinderella
In 1946, Lee was demobilized. He did not want to return to the Disney studio, but decided to try himself in a new direction – he founded a company producing television advertising. Mary supported him, and they moved to New York. Walt did not want to lose his favorite artist, so he allowed her to do what no one had been allowed before: work remotely, periodically coming to meetings.
At the same time, the studio was mired in debt and was on the verge of closing. During the war years, it had failed to create a single successful project and existed mainly due to propaganda shorts that were made by order of the government. It was urgently necessary to release a new box office cartoon. Disney decided to return to classic fairy tales, namely princesses. The studio had had the script for Cinderella since 1940.
The main problem was that the cartoon had to impress the audience, but the budget was severely cut. For example, the artists could not afford to create complex detailed backgrounds. Mary, who was responsible for the concepts for the future film, decided to experiment. At that time, she was fascinated by mid-century modernism, which was characterized by streamlined design and a lack of additional details
Mary decided to work on Cinderella in this style and give the audience the impression that they were watching a film from the pre-war era. Since the design of the image was as simple as possible, Mary decided to focus on bright, saturated colors: blue, pink, gold… When working on Cinderella’s costumes, she was inspired by contemporary fashion: skirts just below the knee, fitted corsets that emphasize the figure, voluminous sleeves, ribbons and bows.
Mary is responsible for the iconic scene of Cinderella’s transformation before the ball. She drew 24 sketches in which Cinderella’s rags turn into an exquisite ball gown. And sparkling stars fly around in spirals.
Mary leaves for the second time
Mary became one of the studio’s driving forces. She did almost everything: developed characters, edited the plot, was responsible for the color scheme of the projects, painted the scenery, and was generally responsible for the atmosphere of the entire film. The following Disney projects – Alice in Wonderland, Lady and the Tramp, and Peter Pan – were created with her active participation. Mary was the author of the scenes in which Alice falls down the rabbit hole, and the children from Peter Pan soar over Big Ben at night.
Unfortunately, Mary’s family life was not so smooth. While working on Cinderella, she became pregnant. But the birth of a child could not solve her problems with Lee: her husband often drank, insulted Mary, and sometimes even raised his hand against her. One day she found out that he was cheating on her. But Mary did not plan to divorce him – in the fifties, this was considered something shameful and wrong. On the contrary, for her friends and relatives, she created a picture of an ideal family.
Family troubles also influenced Mary’s work. She developed concept art for Sleeping Beauty, a new Disney project about princesses. Her favorite heroine was the evil fairy Maleficent, in whose dark image Mary reflected all her pain. She was inspired by ballet costumes, as well as her previous work – in Cinderella, the fairy godmother could be a young woman with horns on her head.
Mary never finished her work on Sleeping Beauty, but artist Mark Davis continued to work with her concepts. The atmosphere at home was getting tense, and Mary herself began to drink more. She wanted to save her family and decided to quit. She never worked on Disney cartoons again. Mary left behind a great legacy. For many years, her work was used in the studio’s projects. Even Cars, which was filmed in the 21st century, was inspired by Mary’s old concepts.
After leaving the studio, Mary worked as an illustrator of children’s books. But she was never able to completely break off her collaboration with Walt Disney. In the late 1950s, Walt brought her to work on Disneyland – she was responsible for the design and decoration of the “It’s a Small World” attraction. Until Disney’s death in 1966, Walt and Mary were very close – Walt was even the godfather of her sons. When Walt died, Mary took his death very hard.
She died in 1978 from a cerebral hemorrhage. She was 66 at the time. And in 1991, Mary was posthumously awarded the title of “Disney Legend.”