Left: Mary Blair at work.
Right: Thelma Witmer & color stylist Eyvind Earle working on Sleeping Beauty (1959).
Tonight TCM is premiering a batch of winter themed Disney cartoons and movies beginning with the Oscar nominated film So Dear to My Heart (1948) that combines live action and animation to tell a sweet story about a young boy who raises a mischievous black-wool lamb. This is followed by a three animated shorts (Rescue Dog; 1947, The Grasshopper and the Ants; 1934 and Corn Chips; 1951) and the live action musical Babes in Toyland (1961) starring one-time Mouseketeer, Annette Funicello. The evening concludes with the dramatic adventure film Never Cry Wolf (1983), an Artic-based documentary titled White Wilderness (1958) and the Viking fantasy The Island at the Top of the World (1974). This is classic entertainment that the whole family can enjoy so if you’ve got children who need to be in bed before midnight I suggest using your recording devices so you can watch these programs at your convenience.
While pursuing the credits for So Dear to My Heart and the animated short Corn Chips I noticed that they included work done by two female animation artists I admire, Mary Blair and Thelma Witmer. Women are not typically associated with animation and they tend to be excluded from histories about the subject but thanks to a number of recent books and exhibits, Mary Blair’s career has gone through a reevaluation and she’s become widely recognized as one of Walt Disney Studio’s most original and influential talents. Unfortunately, the same can’t be said of background artist Thelma Witmer who worked with Disney for more than 20 years but remains largely unknown. Today I’d like to briefly turn the spotlight on these two innovative women who had a hand in creating some of the worlds most beloved and admired animated films.
Mary Browne Robinson was born in McAlester, Oklahoma in 1911 and relocated to Northern California when she was in her early twenties. She studied art at San Jose State College and eventually attained a scholarship to the prestigious Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles where many of Disney’s best animators learned their craft. After graduating in 1933, she married fellow artist Lee Blair and began working with him in MGM Studio’s animation department. In 1940 she was hired by Walt Disney Studios and a year later she became part of a Disney research expedition that toured Mexico and South America for three months. During that period she painted bold, intuitive and highly stylized watercolors depicting the striking beauty of the region that caught Walt’s attention and he quickly decided to promote her to art supervisor on The Saludos Amigos (1942) and The Three Caballeros (1944). For the next 10 years Blair worked as a concept artist, color stylist and character designer on a number of successful Disney productions including So Dear to My Heart (1948), Song of the South (1946), The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949), Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953).
Top: Mary Blair’s concept art for The Three Caballeros (1944) & Cinderella (1950)
Middle: Blair’s concept art for So Dear to My Heart (1948)
Bottom: Concept art for Alice in Wonderland (1951) & Peter Pan (1953).
After resigning from Disney in 1954, Mary Blair worked as a freelance artist for 10 years but in 1964 Walt asked her to design the elaborate It’s a Small World theme ride for the Disneyland amusement park. Her strikingly modern and colorful designs were so well received that she was asked to create mural art for Tomorrowland and Disney’s Contemporary Resort in Walt Disney World. During this period she also worked as a color stylist on the screen production of the musical comedy How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying (1967). She eventually returned to Northern California and died in 1978 at age 67 after suffering a cerebral hemorrhage.
According to relatives, Blair was proud of the work she did with Disney because it had made so many children happy. She never received any accolades while she was alive but she posthumously received a Disney Legend Award in 1991 and Winsor McCay Award in 1996. Last year a large collection of her art & design work was displayed at the Disney Museum in San Francisco in an exhibit titled MAGIC, COLOR, FLAIR: The World of Mary Blair.
Top: Original Thelma Witmer art for a Christmas book she worked on (1940)
Middle & Bottom: Examples of Witmer’s animation backgrounds for A Knight for a Day (1946), Hold that Pose (1950), Pluto’s Christmas Tree (1950) & Chips Ahoy (1956)
Finding information about Thelma Witmer has been much harder but after digging through newspaper and public record archives, I was able to discover a little bit more about the elusive Disney artist. I do know that she was born in Nebraska in 1901 and her father was a shoe salesman. In 1920 the family, which included her mother and a younger brother, moved to Northern California. Afterward Witmer apparently spent four years in college but I haven’t been able to find out where or what she studied although I assume it was art because ten years later she and her parents were living in Hollywood while Witmer found employment as a commercial artist. During this period she worked on an illustrated Christmas book and in 1944 she was hired by Walt Disney Studios as a background artist. Her first credit for Disney was the animated short Donald’s Off Day (1944) and subsequently she worked on over twenty animated shorts featuring beloved Disney characters such as Donald Duck, Pluto, Goofy and Chip ‘n’ Dale before being asked to contribute backgrounds to the feature-length production of Cinderella (1950). Much like Mary Blair, Witmer’s work was often surprisingly bold and modern and these two inventive artists both worked together with the animation team behind Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953).
As I mentioned before, Blair left Walt Disney Studios in 1954 but Witmer stayed there for another twelve years continuing to create stylized backgrounds for popular Disney films including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959) and The Jungle Book (1967). She apparently left Disney after completing Jungle Book and for a brief period she teamed up with Hanna-Barbera Productions where she provided animated backgrounds for a number of animated television shows such as The Banana Splits Adventure Hour (1968-1970), The Perils of Penelope Pitstop (1969) and The Harlem Globe Trotters (1970). After 1970 Witmer seems to have stopped working since I can’t find any more animation credits associated with her name but she continued to live in Los Angeles until her death in 1996 at age 95. Records show she never married and lived alone with her parents (they passed away in 1955 and 1961, respectively) in West Hollywood suggesting that she may have been somewhat of a recluse. This might explain why I found it so difficult to track down information about her.
Pencil sketch of Goofy by Thelma Witmer
Hope you enjoyed this brief look at the careers of two golden age Disney artists who helped pave the way for women working in animation. Tune into TCM tonight where you can enjoy some of Witmer’s skillful backgrounds while watching Donald Duck and Chip ‘n’ Dale’s antics in Corn Chips following So Dear to My Heart, based on Mary Blair’s imaginative concept art.
Further reading:
- Worth as Much as a Man: Cracking the Celluloid Ceiling
- MAGIC, COLOR, FLAIR: the world of Mary Blair