This just in thanks to Garry Apgar and Robert Neuman:
[
Canteen Muralized
New York’s
successful Stage Door Canteen has set off echoes in cities from coast to coast.
The latest is the Hollywood Canteen, in which glittering motion picture stars
administer to the recreational needs of servicemen stationed in the vicinity.
To brighten
the Canteen, the sponsors called in the Screen Cartoonist’s Guild, which in
turn assigned Elmer Plummer and Mary Blair, shown above, to design and supervise the
painting of a mural. The Guildmen worked nights and in five working periods
turned out a bright, gay pictorialization of a cowboy’s dream of heaven. Beer,
blondes, cards, gold dust, horses (some starry-eyed from inhalations of
schnapps), and blowzy red-nosed semi-angels lend gaiety and sparkle to the
walls.
Calcimine color, Plummer reports,
“was used to get the most brilliant effect. For instance, the skin tones varied
from magentas to greens on the characters; cloud colors ran true to fantasy,
etc. Plenty wild, eh?” In a postscript to the DIGEST Plummer added, “Oh yes – and
we also had to add clothes to our plump nudes (old stuff).”
The artists, besides their work as
screen cartoonists with the Disney studios, are serious painters, their work
appearing in major museum exhibitions throughout the country. Assisting in the
execution of the four-paneled, 336-square-foot mural, were Lee Blair, Marc
Davis, Earl Murphy, Retta Scott and Virginia Plummer.
The Art Digest, June 1, 1942, p. 18. ]
