Animation has been a popular means of creating movies for generations, yet women remain underrepresented in their creation. Women who have been part of animation teams often had to prove themselves or be willing to take risks. Animator Mary Ellen Bute started experimenting with moving images just as painters and sculptors were doing with abstract art, and what she created in the early 1930s has been called “abstract animation.” While it may not be the most popular animation or movie style, it has had an impact on filmmaking today, and she is still considered among the most important animators of all time.
In part, Bute was able to achieve this because of her family background. Bute was born in Houston, Texas, on November 21, 1906, to a socially prominent family. Her father, James House Bute, was a former doctor turned oilman and cattle rancher while her mother, Claire Robinson Bute, was the daughter of another prestigious Houstonian family. Bute received a world-class education starting at age 16 when she earned a scholarship to the Pennsylvania Academy of Art, followed by studies at the Yale drama department (1925-26), and even at the Sorbonne. She traveled around the world meeting well-educated and cutting-edge individuals, learning in both formal and informal settings. When she moved to New York City, she turned her contacts into apprenticeships not only to artists, but to scientists and musicians such as Leon Theremin, creator of the theremin (an electronic musical instrument), and Thomas Wilfred, who created light art using the Clavilux (light organ) he invented.
Oskar Fischinger’s abstract films became an inspiration for her future work, but she pushed far beyond his boundaries, marrying filmmaking with light art and music to produce what would be labeled abstract animation. Abstract animation turned away from the traditional narrative forms of storytelling and relied upon images and music to convey meaning. Bute created visual music based on a mathematical understanding of the music. Today’s abstract animation is often judged on how well it is synchronized with the music, continuing the concept of visual music that Bute helped create.
Her co-creator, cinematographer Theodore Nemeth, became her husband in 1940, and the couple had two sons. While she continued making her own films, she also helped her husband in his studio with script work for the documentaries and commercials he made. However, Bute kept pushing the boundaries of what was done with film and ventured into electronically-generated imagery via oscilloscope in her 1952 short Abstronic and her 1953 short Mood Contrasts; while her publicity for these films claimed that she was the first to use that technique, at least two others, Norman McLaren and Hy Hirsh, had also used that device shortly before her. Unlike the previous oscilloscopic works, hers used other art forms such as her own paintings as well as more variety in colors and backgrounds.
Bute had to find ways to promote her work amid a sexist movie and animation culture that was still primarily studio-reliant. That she was able to find funding to make her work and have 14 short films shown in movie theaters around the United States between 1934 and 1953 is a testament to her determination, talent, and charisma. To help herself and others, she signed onto the Women’s Independent Film Exchange, created by Cecile Starr and Philip Norman in the early 1950s. This organization collected and promoted women in the film industry for four decades. Bute’s works and papers were left to Starr after her death but are now housed at Yale.
She also moved into some production work with the short The Boy Who Saw Through, Christopher Walken’s first leading film role, in 1956. Her 90-minute film, Passages From Finnegans Wake, won Best Debut of the Year at the 1965 Cannes Film Festival, but it never made back its budget. Her poor luck in the mainstream movie industry continued but she never stopped trying to put her vision onto the screen. Her attempt to make a movie out of The Skin of Our Teeth by Thornton Wilder wasn’t completed. When she died on October 17, 1983, she was still working as director, writer, and producer for an AFI-funded movie about poet Walt Whitman. She had devoted the last seven years of her life to that project before falling victim to heart failure and living near poverty in a Salvation Army shelter for women near Gramercy Park; every bit of money she earned had gone toward her final film.
Just six months before her death, her work was honored by a showing of her films and a special exhibit about her at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Critics do not universally praise her work, but she is respected nonetheless for her innovations in both black and white and color filmmaking.
Links to Bute Clips: