Google Remembers Disney Artist Mary Blair On Her 100th Birthday

To celebrate what would have been the Disney Legend's 100th Birthday, Google has honored Mary Blair with a Google Doodle. Google regularly replaces their familiar logo with colorful or interactive images to celebrate various holiday's or dates of historical importance.

Born Mary Robinson on October 21st 1911 she would go on to become an artist and animator for the Walt Disney company in the 1940's and 50's. Her early work for Disney was on Dumbo and for the follow up to Fantasia that eventually became Fantasia 2000. In 1941, Mary and her husband, fellow animator Lee Everett Blair would join Walt & Lilian Disney on a good will tour of South America that was sponsored by the United States State Department. During that trip, Mary and Lee worked on concept art for the animated feature films that would eventually become Saludos Amigos and The Three Caballeros.

For the remainder of the 1940's she would work on Fun and Fancy Free, and on two films that blended animation and live action - Song of the South and So Dear to My Heart. The 1950s Mary Blair was credited with color styling on Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan(1953). After the completion of Peter Pan, Blair resigned from Disney to work as a freelance artist and illustrator. She would go on to create ad campaigns for companies like Nabisco, Pepsodent, and Maxwell House.

In the early sixty's Mary Blair would return to Disney and create an attraction that would immortalize her colorful artistic style. Walt Disney himself had asked Blair to help design an attraction that was sponsored by Pepsi for the benefit of Unicef. The attraction debuted at the 1964 Worlds Fair. The attraction was called It's A Small World and is arguably the best known theme park attraction in the world. Blair would go on to create murals for Tomorrowland at Disneyland and the Contemporary Resort Hotel at Walt Disney World. Only the mural at the Contemporary still exists.

Mary Blair died in 1978 of a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 67. She was inducted, posthumously, as a Disney Legend in 1991.


-Admiral Duke