Mary Blair Ad

I found this in my online travels today and simply had to share! What is better to see while flipping through the ads in a magazine than a two page spread of Mary Blair artistic gorgeousness?! I can’t think of anything!

This ad features one of the two The Spirit of Creative Energies Among Children murals Mary Blair designed for the 1967 New Tomorrowland. This mural was on the north side of Tomorrowland, covering the uppermost portion of the CircleVision-360 building.  I have left this ad LARGE so you can look at it all in all its glory. See below.

It reads:

“Welcome to the bright, new world of telephone communications!

This is the theme… and the promise… of the 88-foot-long mural that greets visitors to the new Bell System Exhibit in the new Tomorrowland at Disneyland, California.

The artist is Mary Blair, well-known illustrator of children’s books and a designer of the ‘it’s a small world’ exhibit at the New York World’s Fair and Disneyland. Miss Blair interpreted the promise of world-wide communications in a colorful tile mosaic of a children’s orchestra sending music to friends in other nations.

But the mural isn’t the only thing that’s new about the Bell System Exhibit. There’s a larger, expanded display area that shows you telephone communications of the future.

Feature of the Exhibit is a Walt Disney film, ‘America the Beautiful’, in CircleVision 360, the motion picture that surrounds you and puts you in the center of the most beautiful scenery in the world. This is the new year to discover America in person. If you and your family get to Disneyland, you’ll be warmly welcomed at our new building in Tomorrowland.”

From Life magazine dated July 7, 1967.

A Look Back: 1959 Family Films

I tried to find something Disney related that went with Halloween, but alas, I found nothing unusual enough to post. So I look to tomorrow, November 1st. I'm sure I'm not the only person out there who finds it insane that there are only two more months left of 2007. Craziness!! I don't know what 2008 holds for the Disney company, but one thing I do know... the films will not be as sweet as they were in 1959.

This beautiful, colorful, highly charming ad is from the December 1958 issue of Life magazine. It gives you a happy look ahead to what the Disney company had in store for everyone in the coming year. Does it get more fun than Sleeping Beauty and Darby O'Gill? I'm inclined to think not. The storytelling in the films from this general time period in Disney history is so spot on. It's rare to find anything of its kind in our modern times. And when I say storytelling, I mean it's as it is in a storybook. I'm not talking brilliant cinematic film writing here. I'm talking about that feeling you had as a kid reading your favorite tales. The charming, unforgettable, warm, inviting kind of storytelling. And who doesn't like a good shaggy man-dog story?!

Don't even get me started on the art, either. Eyvind Earle's fantastic and inspired background art in Sleeping Beauty is something in itself. Absolutely beautiful. Everything is so realism-driven now, even in animation. You don't see anything like this anymore.

And actors. Sean Connery in Darby O'Gill. Can I get an Amen, ladies out there?!?! (Do I even have female readers? If you're out there, yell. Sometimes I think men are the only ones who comment on my blog.) Okay, perhaps that's more eye candy than his most brilliant piece of acting, but it will do, and I will not complain.

Yeep, yep, yep. 1959 was a good year.

Happy November, everyone!

Life at Disneyland, 1958

Thank you to Major Pepperidge for snapping me out of my blog slackerdom! My apologies to everyone who stops by hoping to see an update. This summer has been a busy one, but I will do my utmost to wipe the paint off of my hands and update the blog at least once a week again!
We continue with this article/photo/thing from a special issue of Life magazine, December 22, 1958. It's a really timeless shot. It looks like it could be from any year. Timeless magic!