A Balanced Meal of Cartoons

In 1926, he was a student artist and journalist at Redlands High School, winning fifth prize for his Orange Show poster (it showed orange trees and a farmer holding a box of golden oranges against a background of mountains). He beat fellow Redlands student Elmer Plummer, who went on to work for Walt Disney.

In fact, he did, too, after graduating from Pomona College in 1933, getting additional training at the Otis Art Institute and animating Oswald the rabbit at Lantz/Universal and Krazy Kat and Mintz/Columbia.

A little labour unrest disrupted things at Disney, so he was among a number of animators who were hired at MGM. He’ll be remembered for animating the starring character in Red Hot Riding Hood.

By now, you should know we’re talking about Preston Blair.

Blair left California in 1949 and made a home in Connecticut. He made some animated industrial shorts for his brother Lee in New York and took on outside work, including animating at least one episode of The Flintstones (“The Social Climber,” November 17, 1961 according to Lew Gifford’s column of that day in Back Stage).

I suspect Hanna-Barbera’s Stone Age series wasn’t to his liking. He joined the “children must be educated by cartoons” crowd, as we read in this story in the Louisville Courier-Journal, published October 8, 1970.

Animator Is Critical of Cartoons
By IRENE NOLAN
Courier-Journal Staff Writer
Preston Blair, who is in the business of making cartoons, has some definite ideas about Saturday morning television fare. He thinks it leaves much to be desired.
Blair, an animator who was in Louisville yesterday for the dedication of WKPC-TV's new building, thinks one might compare what happens on Saturday morning television to turning a group of children loose in a supermarket and having a rating service analyze what they chose to eat. The result, he said, would be carbonated beverages, popsicles, ice cream and candy.
What Blair would like to see happen, and what he would like to help happen, is "not give the kids a diet of spinach and celery" but a balanced meal.
A balanced meal, he thinks, would include animated cartoons that are still entertaining, but that have an educational message.
Blair and his long-time friend, Allen Blankenbaker, director of film graphics for WKPC, would like to see the educational television get into the Saturday morning cartoon market and compete with commercial television for the child's attention.
Blair describes himself as "from the enemy camp." He has never done any work for educational television, but concentrated his efforts on commercial ventures. He is a former feature animator for the Walt Disney Studios, where he worked on sections of "Bambi," "Fantasia," and "Pinocchio." Among his other well-known works are several episodes of "The Flintstones." He now owns a production company in Connecticut, where he lives with his wife and son.
He thinks animating for the "Saturday morning shows" is "wasted talent."
Blankenbaker indicated that he has always been interested in educational cartoons for children and now plans to make use of the new equipment and Blair's knowledge of "what the children want to watch."
"This (the station's new building) should be a place that would serve as a springboard to do children's programming that is both entertaining and educational. Up to now such things have been done on a local level but now we can do it nationwide."
Blair said that the state of Saturday morning television is "not the fault of the animators or of the people in the business." He said the problem is "just that it is such a large business . . . backed by the toy companies who are afraid to sponsor anything but what the children demand."
Blair, who has a lively face with a twinkle in his eye, feels his most interesting work was the animation of the hippos in "Fantasia."
"The interesting thing about Disney animation is that it is all researched with live action. For the hippos we photographed heavy ballerinas in action to see what hippos dancing would look like."
(At this point Blair advised the writer that she might say that studying the live action of girls was often hazardous for animators. One animator studying a girl in the role of Snow White, "succumbed and married her, but no, I didn't marry one of the heavy ballerinas.")
Blair said that animating cartoons takes more time than most would expect. A half-hour episode of the Flintstones usually took three months to produce and most feature-length cartoons take three or four years.

The years ticked on and toy companies continued to find ways to market their wares, sometimes in syndicated half-hour shows that have gripped former kids with nostalgia. There were less-than-subtle “message” series. For Blair, cartoons became left in the past. He returned to California in 1984 and settled in Carmel, where he developed animated systems for teaching reading. He held five patents for video interactive video technology. Teaching seemed to be on Blair's mind, considering the how-to books on animation he wrote that are still recommended to students.

Blair died of heart failure on April 19, 1995 at the age of 86.