On this day, in 1911, artist Mary Browne Robinson was born in McAlester, Oklahoma. Her family had moved to Morgan Hill, California by the early Twenties. She had already graduated from San Jose State University when she received a scholarship to the Chouinard Art Institute. Mary graduated from Chouinard in 1933 and soon married another artist, and future Disney employee, Lee Blair. Her dream was to have a career in the fine arts but the Great Depression had other plans for her. To make ends meet, she ended up taking a job at MGM, in a medium she felt was beneath her: animation.
Mary continued to paint, and try to sell her work, whenever she could. Both Mary and her husband were devoted to watercolors. Even though her work at this time was saturated with color, few if any fans of her later work would recognize them as "Mary Blairs". Her paintings during the Thirties were probably influenced by the economic turmoil around her as they tend to be dark and moody.
By 1940, Lee, who had worked for several studios around Hollywood, had migrated to the Walt Disney Studio and Mary would join him there in April of that year. Her initial time with the studio would prove to be incredibly frustrating for her. She had plenty of work to do, making sketches and concept drawings for a variety of projects, but every film she worked on had already been pretty much conceived and she didn't have any room to let her imagination run wild. She also had to work under various other veteran company artists, so her work never looked like it was actually hers. To top it all off, one of the biggest projects she worked on was a "Baby Ballet" segment for a second version of Fantasia that never ended up being produced. Pretty disgruntled, she would resign her position by June of 1941. Lee, however, stayed on with the company, a decision that turn out to be spectacular for his wife.
In 1941, Walt was to embark on a three month goodwill tour of South America at the behest of the United States Government. He decided to bring a bunch of staff along to see if he couldn't pull some projects out of the trip. Lee Blair was one of the artists Walt chose to bring, mainly because he wanted to know if Lee's wife would also come along. During the time Mary had been with the studio, even though she felt stifled the whole time, Walt had fallen in love with her work. He was excited to see what she could do in South America. So, in August 1941, just two months after resigning, Mary was rehired.
South America would turn out to be the most important development in Mary's career. She experienced a literal color explosion in her work. She also began using charcoals, tempera and gouache in addition to her usual watercolors. As she layered color upon color, she found her true artistic voice and began producing the kind of work most of her fans enjoy and love. One of those fans was her boss, Walt. He was crazy about the pictures she was producing on the tour and gave Mary what she wanted from the beginning: her own artistic license at the beginning of a project, letting her create true concept art.
Mary was highly influential on the development of the two films that came directly out of the South America trip. Both Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros benefited from her color combinations and vibrancy. Walt was so delighted, he assigned her to work on many of the films throughout the late Forties and early Fifties. Mary's designs for Song of the South, The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan made each of those films richer and more beautiful than they ever would have been without her.
By 1953, Mary was ready for a change and once again left the Disney Studio. She would now spend her time raising a family, having two sons, and she became a freelance illustrator and artist. Her best know work from this period would be the Little Golden Books she illustrated, but she also designed ad campaigns for companies like Nabisco and Maxwell House and created sets for Radio City Music Hall.
In the early Sixties, Walt began ramping up several projects for the 1964 World's Fair. One of them was for Pepsi and UNICEF and he knew just who he wanted to design it. Mary was enticed to work for Disney once again, designing It's a Small World. The song that stays stuck in your head for days might be a Sherman Brothers classic, but the look of the attraction is pure Mary. It's a Small World was so successful, that Walt would have it moved to Disneyland when the fair ended. It became such a beloved part of Disneyland, that versions of it would pop up in Florida, Tokyo, Paris and Hong Kong. The sun never sets on Mary's endearing little children dancing in their fanciful settings.
Mary would continue to do occasional work for the Walt Disney Company, mostly in the form of murals. In 1967, she created two murals in Tomorrowland at Disneyland, both of which have unfortunately been covered over. In 1971, she put a 90 foot high mural in the Grand Canyon Concourse of the Contemporary Resort of Walt Disney World. This one can still be seen today. Mary also created a series of Disney note cards for Hallmark.
Mary had lived in Washington and Long Island before returning to Soquel, California in the later part of the Seventies. On July 26, 1978, she passed away from a cerebral hemorrhage. Her legacy, though, lives on. In 1991, Mary was made an official Disney Legend. In 1996, she was awarded the Winsor McCay Award. And on October 21, 2011, Google created a doodle in honor of her 100th birthday.
Also on this day, in American history:
First Transatlantic Voice Transmission
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