May 18 - Larry Lansburgh

Image courtesy d23.com

On this day, in 1911, Lawrence Muzzy Lansburgh was born in San Francisco, California. Larry’s father, Gustav Albert Lansburgh, was an architect who designed many of the opulent theaters built on the west coast during the early part of the twentieth century. His work includes the San Francisco Opera House and the El Capitan Theater in Los Angeles (the latter now fully owned and restored by the Walt Disney Company). The family was wealthy enough that young Larry learned to ride horses at a venerable old stable on the campus of Stanford University and developed a lifelong love of animals at the same time.

After finishing high school, Larry moved to Texas to tend livestock and compete in the rodeo scene. He loved working with the animals but couldn’t make enough money to keep his stomach full. Eventually he had to give it up, move to Hollywood and become a stuntman for Cecil B. DeMille. He hated it but it paid the bills. Or at least it paid them right up to the moment he fell off a horse and broke his leg in 1939. Now in his late twenties, and injured, Larry desperately took the first position he could find. That job just happened to be as a delivery boy at the Walt Disney Studio. Larry probably couldn’t feel it at that moment, but he was going to turn out just fine.

Image courtesy npr.org

Larry started out at Disney whisking memos and story boards and all manner of things between the different departments, including bringing Walt his lunch every day. As time went on, he slowly worked his way up through the ranks, learning film editing, writing, sound production and cinematography. As a cameraman, Larry joined Walt and his crew when they went on their goodwill tour of South America. Some of his footage can be seen in the two films that came out of that tour, Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros. 

Following World War II, Larry started producing and directing films, becoming instrumental in the filming and production of the True-Life Adventure films. By the mid Fifties, he was making his own documentary films for the company. His 1956 film, Cow Dog, was nominated for an Academy Award. In 1957, Larry started his own production company, sort of. For the first several years, he was mostly funded and distributed by Disney, but he did have the autonomy to make whatever movies he wanted. Two of his movies from this early period would win Oscars, The Wetback Hound in 1958 and The Horse with the Flying Tail in 1961. During this same period, he was also asked to direct several animal based episodes of The Wonderful World of Disney. 

Image courtesy filmaffinity.com

Larry never liked the word documentary. He always felt that there was plenty of drama to be found in the lives of animals, if only you looked hard enough. But he was equally against using gimmicks to make a story. If you let the animals be themselves, the story will present itself. Larry was a also a pioneer in not only championing the ethical treatment of animals in film but in keeping guns out of sight of his audience, especially on films geared toward kids, and if a gun did appear, it was never used gratuitously.

By the early Seventies, Larry had moved his production company to a sprawling ranch in Oregon. He continued to make films throughout the next couple of decades, mostly using local talent.  He also used his prodigious talent as a horseman as a judge for the American Royal Horse Show, held each fall in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1998, for all his help in moving the Walt Disney Studio beyond animation and into live action films, Larry was declared an official Disney Legend. Three years later, among the dogs and horses he'd loved all his life, Larry passed away on his ranch in Eagle Point, Oregon. He was 89.

October 21 - Mary Blair

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