The Queens of Animation

by Nathalia Holt

  Mary Poppins premiered on August 27, 1964, at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The theater, with a façade reminiscent of tiered East Asian pagodas, had opened in 1927 and was famous for its handprints of celebrities cast in the concrete sidewalk out front. Walking over the handprints that evening was a host of celebrities, including the stars of the film, Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, and a variety of Disney characters, such as the Seven Dwarfs and Mickey Mouse.

  The premiere was a fund-raiser for the California Institute of the Arts, known as CalArts. Walt and his brother Roy formed the school in a 1961 merger between the Chouinard Art Institute and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. To promote it, Walt had made a short documentary film, The CalArts Story, that would be screened before Mary Poppins began. Walt was proud of their work, saying, “CalArts is the principal thing I hope to leave when I move on to greener pastures. If I can help provide a place to develop the talent of the future, I think I will have accomplished something.”

  It was the studio’s first gala Hollywood premiere since the spectacle of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs back in 1937. The grand celebration was fitting for the fantasy film that was already drawing near universal acclaim. “Disney has gone all-out in his dream-world rendition,” declared Variety. Audiences seemed to agree, as the movie grossed thirty-one million dollars during its first run. For a film that had cost approximately five million dollars to make, less than Sleeping Beauty five years earlier, the profits were enormous. The film would go on to be nominated for thirteen Academy Awards, including Best Picture, the only film created in Walt’s lifetime to be considered in this category.

  The lesson to studio executives was clear: animation was a bloated dinosaur. They could never expect a film like Bambi or Peter Pan to pull in significant profits. After the release of The Sword in the Stone in 1963, a film that had made only one million dollars, the animation department of the studio slowed down its feature work, and it was unclear when, or if, it would ever pick up again.

  Walt had previously pushed feature production at the studio, but his attention was now divided. The same audio-animatronic bird that sat on Mary Poppins’s hand during filming in 1963 was making its way to Walt’s newest project. This time the exhibit wasn’t in Disneyland; instead, it was destined for the 1964 World’s Fair, to be held in New York City. The fair’s theme that year was “Peace Through Understanding,” and Walt was in charge of designing four separate exhibits: Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, Carousel of Progress, Magic Skyway, and It’s a Small World.

  It was this last project that had Walt turning his thoughts to Mary Blair. He was envisioning a boat ride celebrating the children of the world, as the exhibit would be located in the United Nations Children’s Pavilion and proceeds from its ticket sales would benefit UNICEF. As part of the ride, they would need to create models of hundreds of children of different nationalities, reflecting the individual characters of the countries but also communicating a message of peace and unity. It was a delicate task for any artist, but after Walt looked over his staff and heard their proposals, he had only one question: “What is Mary doing?”

  Mary, still living on the East Coast, was incredibly busy. She was not only illustrating Golden Books but working on a wide range of freelance projects, including fashion design for Lord and Taylor; advertising for national brands such as Nabisco, Johnson and Johnson, and Maxwell House Coffee; window-dressing for storefronts on Fifth Avenue; and designing sets for Radio City Music Hall. Yet as soon as she received the call from Walt, she dropped everything and got on a flight to Los Angeles.

  Walt and Mary had a similar perspective. They both looked at life with the excited, curious gaze of a child. They were not childish or immature, but the feeling that the world was full of wonder waiting for them to discover it had never left them. It was this feature of their personalities that Mary captured in her paintings, a sense of pure childhood joy unspoiled by years of painful adulthood. When Walt viewed Mary’s art, he recognized this sensation in himself. For the boat ride, he wanted to seize that feeling and impart it to others.

  Immediately Mary threw herself into the “most interesting job I’ve ever had,” as she called it. She began to send collages to her colleagues in Burbank full of her vision for the ride, and they were astounded at what they contained. Her ideas burst with color and texture, the patterns colliding unexpectedly. The packages just kept coming. Although she had been given very little direction, her artwork for the ride was unstoppable, and she produced it at a remarkable pace.

  She was drawing from multiple inspirations, chief among them her visit to Mexico City in 1942, when she had witnessed the tradition of Las Posadas. Her memories of the children she met were so happy that she couldn’t help but see their sweet, round faces as she crafted the ride. Yet no one seeing the joyful spirit of the lead designer’s plans for It’s a Small World could imagine the personal pain she was enduring.

  Two of those ignorant of her struggles were Alice Davis, Marc’s wife, even though she and Mary had become as close as sisters; and Rolly Crump, who had been smitten with her at first sight and was quickly becoming a close friend. The ride was built at a large soundstage in Los Angeles, although it would ultimately be shipped to New York for the fair. During breaks, Mary sat outside with Rolly, enjoying the California sunshine as she smoked or drank coffee. In those moments she felt light and happy, and New York seemed far away. As she chatted, she painted an idyllic picture of her family life that she wished were true: A warm and loving husband who threw her an inner tube from their boat as she dived into the bay. A snowy afternoon spent building snowmen with her family before retreating for hot cocoa by the fireplace of their grand home. It all sounded perfect, but the more Rolly heard, the less he believed. Even Mary was aware that she sounded like a child describing a dream rather than an adult sharing her life experiences. Yet how could she reveal the disturbing truth?

  Mary’s colleagues got their first sense that all might not be right in the Blair marriage when Lee accompanied Mary on one of her trips west. He bristled at the widespread acknowledgment of her talent and even grumbled to Walt, “I could have done this,” painfully conscious that he hadn’t been asked. Mary said nothing.

  The project was coming to fruition, and they were ready to test the movement of their animatronic children. To do so, the team made a mock-up of It’s a Small World on a spare soundstage. Each section was positioned as it would be on the ride, the set was lit up, and the melody played so incessantly that it soon grated on the nerves of every member of their group. Alice Davis, who was working as a costume designer for the ride, felt that the song followed them wherever they went, later saying, “We hated it.”

  Alice was walking a fine line on this project, with her husband on one side and her best friend on the other. Mary and Marc sometimes disagreed on how the costumes should be styled. On one occasion, Mary directed Alice to decorate the queens of the ride with jewels to set them apart from the other dolls. Alice obliged but then was told by her husband, who disliked the adornment, to remove them. Alice did. When Mary saw her friend squirm, she felt terrible. She said, “I’m sorry you’re in this uncomfortable position,” then added, “but put the jewels back on.” Ultimately, Mary was in charge.

  At the California dry run—quite literally dry, with no river in the soundstage for the boat to float in—they showed the final design to Walt for his approval. Then, so that he could get the full experience, they seated the boss on a boat equipped with wheels and slowly pushed him through the attraction. The scene must have looked comical from afar, but to Walt, the soundstage had turned wondrous. The ride featured Mary’s art magnified. It was a celebration of her style, never fully appreciated in his films. Yet he did have one complaint. “Why,” he asked Alice, “did you put pantaloons on the French cancan dancers?” Alice faltered, as in truth the costume had been added because of a complicated technical hurdle they faced in getting the audio-animatronic dancers to move naturally. Preferri
ng a jest instead of the truth, she quipped, “You told me you wanted a family show.”

  New York City was ready for the Disney group, although not in the way they were expecting. As President Johnson gave the keynote address and crowds gathered to see what future delights the space age would hold for them, voices were rising in the U.S. Federal Pavilion. The protesters chanted “Jim Crow must go!” and “Freedom now!” so loudly that the president’s voice became inaudible. Some held signs that read A WORLD’S FAIR IS A LUXURY BUT A FAIR WORLD IS A NECESSITY and SEE NEW YORK’S WORSE FAIR—SEGREGATED SCHOOLS FOR NEGROES, PUERTO RICANS AND RATS.

  The activists were part of an effort aimed at bringing attention to the neglected boroughs of New York City, which had been untouched by the extensive preparations for the World’s Fair and were suffering from dilapidated schools, high levels of crime and unemployment, and police brutality. It was the beginning of massive protests and riots that would rattle New York and other major cities across the United States in the summer of 1964. The World’s Fair demonstration was originally supposed to be a larger “stall-in,” in which thousands of cars would surround the fairgrounds and block the visitors expected to arrive. While this level of civil disobedience didn’t occur, the protesters gained significant attention for these issues, forcing President Johnson to discuss their demands the next day when questioned by the press.

  Amid social upheaval, technology was sparking new innovation. In 1964 a doctoral student at MIT was poised to transform how humans interacted with machines. Ivan Sutherland had always considered himself a visual thinker, understanding best what he could see and touch. As a student, Sutherland was captivated by a 1945 article published in The Atlantic by the legendary engineer and MIT alumnus Vannevar Bush. In his piece, titled “As We May Think,” Bush dreamed of a machine called a memex, a device capable of storing “books, records, and communications” and acting like a supplement to a person’s memory; it would come complete with a stylus that allowed writing directly on the screen. Sutherland recognized that there was something intimate about the interaction Bush described, and with Bush’s article in mind, he designed a new computer program called Sketchpad.

  The program took advantage of the light pen, a precursor to today’s mouse, conceived and developed at MIT’s Project Whirlwind a decade earlier. Sutherland’s program used the light pen to draw directly on the screen of a Lincoln TX-2 computer, creating the first visual communication between computer and user. It was just the beginning of what computer graphics would one day accomplish. The program was like an outstretched hand, reaching to pull artists without experience in engineering into the world of computers. Despite the open invitation, computing was a domain that those at the Walt Disney Studio weren’t yet ready to enter.

  It’s a Small World proved such a popular attraction at the World’s Fair that Walt decided he had to have a lasting version of the experience in Anaheim. As the lead designer, Mary began adapting the ride for the park. Her friendships with Alice and Rolly deepened, as the three were spending long hours together. Their time was not just confined to California—both Alice and Rolly visited Mary in Long Island as well.

  Sometimes their trips revealed more than Mary had anticipated. On a visit east while Lee was out of town, Rolly played with Mary’s teenage sons out on the veranda of their house. He boisterously performed magic tricks, his hands riffling the cards in the deck with ease. They sat for hours, the boys laughing with Rolly until the sun began to set. When Rolly turned to look at Mary, he saw her standing quietly apart and watching them. She was crying. “What’s wrong?” he asked. It had been a happy day and he couldn’t imagine what had upset her. Her eyes still wet, she replied, “I’ve never seen Lee play like that with the boys before.”

  The opposing sensations of pleasure and pain were pervading all aspects of Mary’s life. As she looked at the finished It’s a Small World ride in Disneyland, she felt both exultant and uneasy. The ride was bursting with her art, the pinnacle of a career spent experimenting with color and form. It also communicated a message she believed in and offered children a glimpse of the many languages, landscapes, and cultures of the world. And yet it was imperfect in her eyes. Given her unhappiness at home, it seemed worthwhile to pursue perfection in the one arena she could control. She found it nearly impossible to consider the job complete. If she had had her way, she would have tweaked and changed the design forever. But for all its flaws, whether in Mary’s perception or in the criticism of a subsequent generation, who noted the presence of ethnic and racial stereotypes, the ride lives on, carrying with it a vision of peaceful human connection.

  As difficult as it was for Mary to let go of It’s a Small World, her distress was mitigated by Walt’s plans for her. He delighted in the resurgence of their working relationship and had no intention of letting her escape this time. He proposed a number of projects: a large ceramic mural for the new children’s wing in the Jules Stein Eye Institute; a massive fifty-four-foot-long mural in the Tomorrowland section of Disneyland; a mural in what Walt referred to as “the Florida project,” later to become Disney World and still under construction; and the promise of even more to come. Mary had more artistic freedom and commanded a larger salary than she ever had in the past.

  Mary had barely made a start on the wealth of projects before her when she received horrible news. Walt was sick. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer in November 1966, and by the end of the month he had to be rushed back to St. Joseph’s Hospital, just across the street from the studio in Burbank. There was little for any doctor to do—the cancer was too advanced, likely caused by his five decades of smoking cigarettes. On December 15, he died. There had been little warning, and Mary did not have a chance to say goodbye. She was heartbroken. At the studio, whose halls had been kept alight so that Walt might see their glow as he lay dying across the street, there was a distinct feeling that nothing would ever be the same.

  Lee became so intoxicated one night at dinner that he passed out in his salad. The boys were alarmed, crying out for their father in voices filled with fear. Mary, however, had run out of anxiety for him. She merely picked up his head, then dragged him off to bed. The life they had built together, once full of artistic ambition and inspiration, had flattened into horror and dread.

  When Gyo visited Mary, she saw how miserable her former coworker had become. Mary cried over Walt’s death, which had devastated her, and Gyo comforted her as best she could. Yet Gyo suspected that Mary’s dejection was not due to Walt’s passing alone.

  With Walt gone, Mary found that all the happy prospects for her future at WED Enterprises had evaporated. She still had the work Walt had assigned her, but her future as an Imagineer—a term coined to describe those in the elite group that designed the Disney parks—was stalled. Walt’s admiration of Mary had long triggered jealousy among others at the company. Perhaps if he had loved her less, she might have been more readily employed after his death.

  However, there were worries greater than work pressing on Mary. Donovan, her elder son, was in trouble, and she felt she could confide in no one about it. Her sister Gussie could tell something was wrong, but Mary refused to acknowledge her misfortunes to anyone until Alice visited one evening. “Mary?” Alice said in the solitude of the kitchen. “I happen to love you very much and I think something terrible has happened in your life. Could you share it with me? Would it help you to get it off your chest?” Mary looked at her dear friend and said, “No one asks me anything,” before collapsing in tears.

  She told her friend the sad story. Donovan had been experimenting with drugs in college and something had gone horribly wrong with his mind. The boy had needed to be hospitalized. Mary and Lee, with no health insurance, paid the steep hospital bill of thirty thousand dollars, and yet they were no closer to having an answer for what was wrong with him.

  Donovan was delusional, unable to express himself clearly, paranoid about those around him, and listless. He couldn’t take care of himself and yet ha
d grown so aggressive that it wasn’t safe for him to live at home either. He was in his late teens, the age when people who have schizophrenia often start showing symptoms, but in the 1960s, the disease was so stigmatized that there were few treatment options. Donovan would have to be institutionalized. Mary was overcome with grief. She hugged her friend and told her they’d be selling the house and moving back to California. Her life was becoming painfully contracted, and, sadly, her small world just kept shrinking.

  Chapter 16

  Up, Down, Touch the Ground

  “This studio will never allow a woman to be an animator,” Heidi Guedel was told by a coworker on her first day in the animation department. “I’m an assistant animator and that’s the farthest any woman has ever gotten here. The last girl who tried this training program left in tears.” Heidi nodded her head but then promptly closed her ears. She didn’t need to hear that becoming an animator at the Walt Disney Studios was difficult; she knew it already.

  Heidi was familiar with the trials of Hollywood. Her father was John Guedel, a producer known for his work on radio and television shows such as You Bet Your Life, hosted by Groucho Marx. Guedel and his wife, Beth, had adopted Heidi as a newborn in 1948 and brought her home to their grand white colonial on a palm tree–lined street in Beverly Hills. Despite the opulence of her surroundings, Heidi grew up deeply unhappy. There was no love in her home. Her father was frequently absent and her mother displayed a cold, emotionless façade, even while beating her daughter with the back of her high-heeled shoe. Heidi frequently wished she were a boy; her older brother could at least defend himself against their mother’s attacks.

  After graduating from Beverly Hills High School in 1966, Heidi applied for work at multiple animation studios, but even with her father’s extensive connections, she was rejected. Every letter said the same thing—she needed a degree from an art school first. So Heidi turned to the college that seemed most likely to get her the job she craved: CalArts. In 1972, with her bachelor of fine arts in hand, Heidi joined a long line of women who were hired at Walt Disney Studios after graduation.