Preston Blair Speaks

Comparisons of theatrical cartoons and TV cartoons are quite unfair, and I’ve tried to avoid making them on my two animation blogs. It’s indisputable that there was more time and money to make cartoons for theatres. Television also required a lot more content; a half-hour had to be filled, not seven minutes.

That didn’t stop Preston Blair from weighing in.

Blair had a lengthy career in the industry that we’ll get to in a minute. First, here are his comments to the Louisville Courier-Journal of Oct. 8, 1970. By then, Blair had been out of theatrical animation for more than 20 years. His unit at MGM (with Mike Lah) had been disbanded to save some money, and Blair decided to move to Connecticut where he had his own studio, took on work for his brother at Film Graphics (Rodney, 1950), and later worked for former MGM animator Jack Zander on TV commercials (frames below).

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 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 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 in the animators or of the people in the business." He said 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 it 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.

Blair returned to California, where he died in 1995. The Santa Cruz Sentinel of May 21 had an obituary.

Memorial services will be June 4 for award-winning Disney animator Preston Blair, who died April 19 of heart failure at Dominican Hospital. He was 86.
Born in Los Angeles, he and his late brother, Lee, worked on several Disney classics, including "Fantasia."
Mr. Blair went to Pomona College and then studied at the Otis Art Institute and then Chouinard Art Institute, now the California Institute of Arts.
He moved to Soquel in 1992.
Mr. Blair began his animation career by drawing Oswald the Rabbit for Walter Lantz at Universal Studios. He later worked at the Charles Mintz Studio drawing Krazy Kat animated cartoons. In 1937, he joined the Walt Disney Studio.
Mr. Blair's contribution to "Fantasia" included the animation of key scenes in the "Sorcerer's Apprentice" sequence, where Mickey Mouse falls asleep and dreams of directing the ocean waves, and "The Dance of the which featured the tutu-wearing Hyacinth Hippo.
He also worked on Disney's "Pinocchio" and "Bambi."
His brother's wife, the late Mary Blair, was also a Disney artist.
Mr. Blair saved many of his original sketches, which were among 156 of his drawings displayed in a 1981 exhibition on Disney animation at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York.
During World War II, he moved from Disney to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he worked with legendary animation director Tex Avery. He animated "Red Hot Riding Hood."
Mr. Blair wrote two books, "Cartoon Animation" and "How to Animate Film Cartoons" and they sold more than 1 million copies. A third book compiling the texts of his earlier works, was published last year.
In 1949, he moved to Westport, and produced animated commercials and educational films. As an independent animator, he worked for Hanna-Barbera, creating episodes of "The Flintstones" series.
He returned to California in 1984, settling in Carmel and developing animated systems for teaching reading.
Mr. Blair held five patents on creations in interactive video technology.

The biography isn’t quite correct, according to the late Martha Sigall in her enjoyable book Living Life Inside Between the Lines. Her squib on Blair:

Preston Blair designed the character Red Hot Riding Hood. This character caused quite a sensation. Preston, his wife, and baby lived across the street from where my family and I lived on Fernwood Avenue in Hollywood. Although I worked at Schlesinger’s and he worked at MGM, we would always talk about the cartoon business and what was happening at each of the studios. He was a wonderfully talented animator and a great friend. I felt so bad when the state of California bought his home to make way for the Hollywood Freeway. I was happy to see him again when I was added to the MGM staff. After his leaving MGM, it was many years later, in 1985, that I saw him again upon his being honored by the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists for his fifty years in animation. By the way, Preston got his start in animation at the Romer Grey studio, and he, like Ken Harris, had to pay Romer a weekly sum of money to be able to work in the studio to learn how to animate.

About the dancing scenes in Red Hot Riding Hood, Tex Avery told Joe Adamson in that great book Tex Avery, King of Cartoons:

Preston Blair did the whole thing; he was very clever on anatomy and dances. He wouldn’t let anyone else touch her! He did all the girl sequences. He’d gained a lot of experience on FANTASIA, he did a lot of the dancing of the crocodiles and the elephants. He had a touch for dancing. And he couldn’t dance worth his tail —big, lumbering guy! But, boy, he could really make em dainty.

Blair recalled a "contract dancer" was brought in for the Red follow-up cartoon The Shooting of Dan McGoo. He told historian Mike Barrier he used footage of her for "bits and pieces" of his animation. As for some of his work in the Avery unit, he recalled, "I would use a lot of Claude Smith's [character layouts] just verbatim [as animation drawings]; there was no sense in doing anything [else] with them."

One day, I hope to be able to read Mr. Barrier’s entire interview with Blair (and many others).

Blair did attempt to get a TV cartoon series on the air. Little is known about it, but an animated Honeymooners series was one of the projects of his company. It’s a shame the idea never got picked up. Unlike Blair’s opinion of Saturday morning series, I don’t think this would have been a case of “wasted talent.”