Mary Blair: Coloring Outside the Lines at Disney

Imaginary Worlds

Eric Molinsky

Arts, Science Fiction, Fiction, Society & Culture

4.8 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2025

⏱️ 36 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In honor of Women’s History Month we’re producing a two-part series about two artists who were visionaries and trailblazers. In part 2, we look at the career of Mary Blair. She changed the way Walt Disney wanted to make animation and brought modernist sophistication to his style. But not everyone at the studio was on board with Walt’s dream to “get Mary in the picture.” I talk with animation historians John Canemaker and Mindy Johnson about the influence of Mary Blair, and how we’ve experienced her work more than we’ve actually seen it. And I talk with author Gabrielle Stecher about the more complicated aspects of Blair’s legacy. Mindy Johnson’s book is Ink & Paint: The Women of Walt Disney Animation. John Canemaker’s book is Magic Color Flair: The World of Mary Blair. Gabrielle Stecher’s article is “Examining The Legacy of Mary Blair.” This episode is sponsored by Audible and Remi. Go to audible.com/sunrise and listen to the highly anticipated new audiobook in the Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins Go to shopremi.com/imaginary and use the code IMAGINARY to save up to 50% your first mouthguard. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:31.1	You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief.
0:36.3	I'm Eric Malinski. This is part two
0:39.1	of our two-part series on Mary Blair and Millis and Patrick. Their careers began on parallel
0:45.3	tracks. They both went to the Chenard Art Institute in Los Angeles. They both worked for Disney
0:51.2	during the Depression. They were each singled out for their talent early on, and then they left in 1941.
0:58.8	At that point, their careers went in very different directions.
1:03.0	But in their own way, they each had a significant impact on pop culture.
1:08.9	Mindy Johnson is an author and historian of animation. She says Mary Blair and her husband
1:14.3	Lee met in college. At that time, they were focusing on painting landscapes with watercolors.
1:21.5	And where she and her husband Lee had dreams of continuing as fine artists, that was their goal. It was quickly clear because of
1:31.2	the depression that they would need a job. They would have to go out and get a J-O-B. John Canemaker
1:39.0	is also an author and historian, and he wrote a book about Mary Blair. He says Lee got a job working at Disney
1:45.8	before Mary did. She was skeptical. She said she really wasn't interested because she really
1:52.2	wanted to go back and, you know, if she had to make a commercial life for herself, she wanted to do
1:57.7	it in illustration. She didn't like taking orders from other people about
	...

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