5. Norman Kreisman, interview with the author, September 26, 2004. He lived at 140 Verdun, which Rockwell rented for a month or two in 1930.
6. “To ‘California,’” clipping dated May 18, 1935; from Fred Hildebrandt’s papers; courtesy of Alexandra Hoy.
7. David Rakoff, e-mail to the author, March 15, 2012.
8. Tax return, July 31, 1937, NRM.
9. Charlie Schudy, interview with the author, November 14, 2003.
10. “Teacher Recalls Days as Rockwell’s Tom Sawyer,” The Pittsburgh Press, February 6, 1985, p. N6.
11. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876; New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1994), p. 89.
13. HELLO LIFE (FALL 1936 TO 1938)
1. “The Press: Lorimer Out,” Time, September 7, 1936.
2. F. Scott Fitzgerald, letter to Zelda, April 18, 1940, published in several letter collections.
3. My Adventures, p. 334.
4. Wes Stout, letter to NR, December 4, 1936, NRM.
5. Alan Brinkley, The Publisher: Henry Luce and His American Century (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), p. 219.
6. Ibid., p. 215.
7. Magazine Circulation and Rate Trends, 1937–1955 (New York: Audit Bureau of Circulation, 1956), p. 13; courtesy of the American Society of Magazine Editors.
8. Brinkley, The Publisher, p. 208.
9. Ibid., p. 214.
10. Clive James, “Somewhere Becoming Rain,” The New Yorker, July 17, 1989, p. 88.
11. Mead Schaeffer, unpublished interview with Susan Meyer, September 30, 1980, cassette tape, NRM.
12. Fred Hildebrandt, journal entry, April 15, 1936; courtesy of his daughter, Alexandra Hoy.
13. Unsigned item (by Franklin P. Adams and Harold Ross), “Came/Went,” The New Yorker, July 17, 1937, p. 12.
14. “Mostly, Pet Dog, Is Very Much Lost,” The Daily Argus (Mt. Vernon), August 28, 1937, p. 4.
15. Florence Emily Currie, New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957. The family traveled first cabin while she traveled tourist class, or third cabin; see www.ancestry.com.
16. They left on March 29, 1938, according to immigration records at www.ancestry.com.
17. Morton Kutner, letter to NR, April 5, 1938, NRM.
18. Cynthia Rockwell, the artist’s daughter-in-law, e-mail to the author, September 26, 2002.
19. Receipt, New Rochelle Book Store, September 1, 1938, NRM.
20. The Saturday Evening Post cover, October 8, 1938.
21. He was Richard Wryley Birch.
22. My Adventures, p. 315.
23. Kay Ross, “County Artists Paint and Pose for Covers,” The Herald Statesman (Yonkers), September 7, 1935.
24. NR, undated letter to Nancy Barstow, probably March 1939, judging from internal evidence and reference to Al Barstow’s upcoming marriage, in April 1939.
25. Ibid.
26. Quoted in Andrew Marr, “What the Eye Didn’t See…,” The Observer (London), October 6, 2001, p. 5.
27. Richard Gregory, interview with the author, November 14, 2003.
14. ARLINGTON, VERMONT (NOVEMBER 1938 TO SUMMER 1942)
1. Mead Schaeffer, unpublished interview with Susan Meyer, September 30, 1980, cassette tape, NRM.
2. June 10, 1939, land deed, clerk’s office, Arlington, Vermont.
3. Thomas Rockwell, e-mail to the author, November 25, 2012.
4. Incidentally, on Friday, July 14, Rockwell had a small fire in his studio, perhaps when he and Fred were carousing; Vermont Mutual Fire Insurance Co., letter to Rockwell on July 22, 1939, NRM.
5. MR, letter to Nancy Barstow, July 10, 1939; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.
6. Fred Hildebrandt, “Our Guest Exhibitor,” Manor Club Bulletin (New Rochelle), October 1948.
7. Nanette Kutner, “If You Were Mrs. Norman Rockwell,” Good Housekeeping, February 1943, p. 31.
8. John Updike, “An Act of Seeing: Norman Rockwell,” Art & Antiques, December 1990, p. 96.
9. Lois Henderson Bayliss, “Artist Likes Rural Folks for Models,” Bennington Banner, October 13, 1939.
10. NR, letter to Clyde Forsythe, October 11, 1939; courtesy of Marianne Hart.
11. Bayliss, “Artist Likes Rural Folks for Models.”
12. “Art: U.S. Illustrators,” Time, May 1, 1939.
13. George Hughes, unpublished interview with Susan Meyer, November 17, 1980, cassette tape, NRM.
14. “Rockwell’s Studio: 25 Years in New Rochelle,” Standard Star (New Rochelle), February 7, 1963. The house was sold on June 19, 1945, to Sidney Gaston, who is interviewed in the article.
15. “Norman Rockwell ‘Rests’ in Alhambra, Snowed Under with Job of Painting,” Los Angeles Times, November 28, 1941, p. 14.
16. Mauldin’s Willie made his debut in the Oklahoma City Times on October 14, 1941.
17. Stewart Robinson, “He Paints the Town,” Family Circle, March 6, 1942, p. 20.
18. MR, letter to her sister, November 11, 1941, NRM.
19. J. Michael Barrier, The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007), p. 134.
20. Walt Disney, unpublished letter to NR, December 31, 1941; courtesy of the Disney Archives, Burbank, CA.
21. NR, letter to Clyde Forsythe, March 23, 1942; courtesy of Marianne Hart.
22. It appeared in the issue of March 28, 1942.
23. “Wesley W. Stout Resigns,” The New York Times, March 13, 1942, p. 21.
24. Ben Hibbs, “The Saturday Evening Post reaffirms a policy,” advertisement, The New York Times, April 15, 1942, p. 17; The Saturday Evening Post, May 16, 1942, p. 18.
15. THE FOUR FREEDOMS (MAY 1942 TO MAY 1943)
1. Donald Hyde, War Department, Ordnance, letter to NR, May 23, 1942, NRM.
2. “Biography of A Poster,” The New York Times Magazine, August 14, 1942, p. SM16.
3. Mabry letter, quoted and discussed in Maureen Hart Hennessey, “The Four Freedoms,” in Hennessy and Anne Knutson, Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2000), p. 96.
4. According to Bill Budde, Arlington town historian, the Arlington Memorial School burned on November 9, 1940. Construction began in 1941 on a fireproof building to replace it.
5. Rufus Jarman, “Profiles: U.S. Artist,” The New Yorker, March 17, 1945, pp. 38–45 (part 1); March 24, 1945, pp. 36–47 (part 2).
6. My Adventures, p. 341.
7. MacLeish had also been Librarian of Congress and head of the short-lived Office of Facts and Figures.
8. Thomas Mallon, “A Career Careerist,” Los Angeles Times, June 28, 1992, p. BR2.
9. MacLeish to Kuniyoshi, dated June 24, 1942; Kuniyoshi papers, Archives of American Art; cited in ShiPu Wang’s dissertation on Kuniyoshi, University of California, Santa Barbara, 2000.
10. “Artists’ War Work Centralized in OWI,” The New York Times, August 9, 1942, p. 42.
11. James Yates to Norman Rockwell, June 26, 1942, NRM; quoted in Virginia M. Mecklenburg, Telling Stories: Norman Rockwell from the Collections of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2010), pp. 106–7.
12. Leo Burnett, letter to NR, July 22, 1942, NRM.
13. Joseph F. Sinneen, “Inside Boston,” The Boston Globe, June 24, 1932, p. 9.
14. Tom Burton, “A Model American,” The Orlando Sentinel, August 17, 1997.
15. Robert Hughes, “The Rembrandt of Punkin Crick,” obituary, Time, November 20, 1978, p. 110.
16. Jarman, The New Yorker, part one, p. 38.
17. Quoted in Stuart Murray and James McCabe, Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms (New York: Gramercy Books, 1998), p. 60.
18. Ibid.
19. Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux), p. 85.
20. “Freedom from Fear,” Bennington Banner, August 5, 1943, p. 1.
21. J. M. Schoenwald, secretary to H. C. Bloomingdale, letter to NR, December 12, 1944, NRM.
22. The Saturday Evening Post, March 13, 1943, p. 10.
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23. Murray and McCabe, Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms, p. 78.
24. John Morton Blum, Roosevelt and Morgenthau (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1972), p. 428.
25. Hecht’s, various display advertisements, The Washington Post, 1942.
26. “Norman Rockwell to be Honor Guest at Reception,” The Washington Post, April 21, 1943, p. B7.
27. The Washington Post, April 27, 1943, p. 1.
28. “Four Freedoms Artist to Get Bond Citation,” The Washington Post, April 26, 1943, p. 8.
29. Thomas Rockwell, interview with the author, December 17, 1999.
30. Samuel Beckett, interview with Tom Driver, Columbia University Forum, summer 1961.
31. William Clark, “Norman Rockwell Sometimes Jumps Out of Bed to Sketch,” The Boston Globe, May 30, 1943, p. D3.
32. Later accounts say that Rockwell drove to get help, but the initial newspaper coverage reports that Thaddeus Wheaton was the one who went to get help from the Squiers family.
33. Clark, The Boston Globe.
34. Jarman, The New Yorker, part one, p. 44.
35. NR, letter to Clyde Forsythe, postmarked April 18, 1944; courtesy of Marianne Hart.
36. The Saturday Evening Post, November 13, 1943.
16. “SLOWLY FELL THE PICKET FENCE” (JUNE 1943 TO SUMMER 1947)
1. By Christmas of 1942, the sheet music for “Rosie the Riveter” was selling well enough on the West Coast to slide into last place (number 15) on Billboard magazine’s bestselling sheet-music list.
2. Bennington Banner, June 3, 1943, p. 1.
3. David Mamet, Bambi vs. Godzilla: On the Nature, Purpose, and Practice of the Movie Business (New York: Random House Digital, 2008), p. 7.
4. Buddy Edgerton, interview with the author, October 2005.
5. MR, letter to her sister, March 1944, NRM.
6. NR, letter to Clyde Forsythe, April 18, 1944; courtesy of Marianne Hart.
7. Mary (Atherton) Varchaver, interview with the author, July 4, 2012.
8. Julien Levy, Memoir of an Art Gallery (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1977), p. 254.
9. Maxine Atherton, unpublished interview with Susan Meyer, December 8, 1980, cassette tape, NRM.
10. Ibid.
11. NR, letter to Clyde Forsythe, April 18, 1944; courtesy of Marianne Hart.
12. Willliam Hillcourt, Norman Rockwell’s World of Scouting (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977), p. 150.
13. Ibid.
14. James A. “Buddy” Edgerton and Nan O’Brien, The Unknown Rockwell: A Portrait of Two American Families (Essex Junction, VT: Battenkill River Press, 2009), p. 77.
15. Mead Schaeffer, interview with Susan Meyer, September 30, 1980, cassette tape, NRM.
16. Land deed, October 24, 1944, clerk’s office, Arlington, Vermont. Rockwell sold the house on March 16, 1946.
17. Rufus Jarman, The New Yorker, March 24, 1945, part 2, p. 37.
18. In 1936 the two illustrators first lamented their problem in an amusing pair of essays in the literary magazine Colophon.
19. “Famed Artist Working at Studio in Alhambra,” Los Angeles Times, February 15, 1945, p. A7.
20. “Magazine Shows Artist’s Picture of Scene in Troy,” Troy (NY) Record, May 23, 1945, p. 2.
21. “Mr. Rockwell Scores Again,” Bennington Banner, May 13, 1945, p. 1.
22. Arthur L. Guptill, letter to NR, May 16, 1947, NRM.
23. Nancy Rockwell, letter to MR, February 26, 1946, NRM.
24. Nancy Rockwell to Ida Hill, August 19, 1946, Cooper papers, NRM.
25. Edgerton and O’Brien, The Unknown Rockwell, p. 205.
26. “West Arlington,” Bennington Banner, February 7, 1947.
27. MR, letter to Nancy Barstow, undated letter; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.
28. State of Massachusetts, report, July 6, 1947, NRM.
29. “Norman Rockwell Won’t Be Able to Talk for Awhile,” Bennington Banner, July 19, 1947, p. 1.
30. The models for the husband and wife (John and Gladys Cross) were actually married; the stony grandmother was an Edgerton (Elva); and Billy Brown is the boy hanging out the window.
17. “WE’RE LOOKING FOR PEOPLE WHO LIKE TO DRAW” (OCTOBER 1948)
1. “13 Top-Flight Artists Prove They Have a Heart and Launch a School,” Bridgeport Post, September 18, 1948, p. 27; “Art Institute Opens,” Bridgeport Post, October 5, 1948, p. 30; advertisement in The New Yorker, December 4, 1948, p. 100.
2. Steven Heller, in his online “Daily Heller,” February 2, 2011.
3. In the July 1970 issue of The Atlantic Monthly, Jessica Mitford published “Let Us Now Appraise Famous Writers,” in which she accused the Famous Writers School of false advertising and unethical business practices. Her article did not take aim at the Famous Artists School, but left it tainted by association.
4. J. D. Salinger, “De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period,” in Nine Stories (New York: Signet Books, 1954), p. 117.
5. Owen Kampen, “Today’s Inspiration,” on Leif Peng’s blog about illustration, January 9, 2010.
6. In 1961 the school became publicly owned and listed on the stock exchange as FAS. In 1965 it was sold to Crowell-Collier & Macmillan, at which point Rockwell sold his shares and ended his involvement.
7. Al Dorne, letter to NR, August 24, 1950, NRM.
8. Elliott Caplin, Al Capp Remembered (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1994), p. 86.
9. See David Apatoff, Albert Dorne: Master Illustrator, with a foreword by Jack Davis and an introduction by Howard Munce (San Francisco: Auad Publishing, 2013).
10. Dorne’s admirers at Mad included Jack Davis and Will Elder.
11. Walt Reed, conversation with the author, January 22, 2013.
12. NR, letter to Al Parker, dated February 25, no year. He said he admired the illustration on page 34 of “the current” issue of Ladies’ Home Journal, probably the March 1949 issue, in which Parker illustrated the story “Under the Quiet Water.”
13. “Models, Props, and Photographs,” Famous Artists Course, introduction (Westport, CT: Famous Artists School, 1960), p. 16.
14. Mel Heimer, “My New York,” nationally syndicated column, various newspapers, October 3, 1948.
15. Ibid.
18. GRANDMA MOSES (1948 TO 1949)
1. “Talent Array to Firm—Hall Brothers Signs with Famed Artist Group,” Kansas City Star, February 15, 1948. Hall bought an art-card company founded by Harry N. Abrams, the future art-book publisher.
2. “Yule Cards to Display Great Art,” The Washington Post, February 22, 1948, p. L2.
3. Joyce C. Hall, When You Care Enough: The Story of Hallmark Cards and Its Founder (Kansas City, MO: Hallmark, 1992), p. 77.
4. Grandma Moses and Otto Kallir, My Life’s History (New York: Harper, 1951), p. 135.
5. “Rockwell Is Baker for Grandma Moses,” Bennington Banner, September 7, 1948, p. 1.
6. Photo caption, Bennington Banner, September 15, 1948.
7. See Bruce Bliven, Jr., “Grandma Moses Has a Birthday,” Life, October 25, 1948, p. 77.
8. “Grandmother Who Gained Fame,” The New York Times, September 8, 1948, p. 31.
9. Nanette Kutner, “Norman Rockwell Talks About His Neighbor Grandma Moses,” McCall’s, October 1949, p. 82.
10. Ibid.
11. The Saturday Evening Post, October 16, 1948, cover.
12. “Norm’s ‘Butch’ Fox Trap Victim,” Bennington Evening Banner, November 1, 1948, p. 1.
13. “Norman Rockwell Stops to Visit 15 Minutes,” Salt Lake Tribune, November 15, 1948, p. 17.
14. Grace Barstow, letter to MB, November 16, 1948; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.
15. The school was then named the Los Angeles County Art Institute.
16. NR, “Contemporary American Illustration” (lecture), Art Center School, Pasadena, California, February 24, 1949; introduced by Arthur Millier; cassette tape, NRM.
17. Ibid.
18. Joseph B. Shane, letter to MR, D
ecember 10, 1948; by permission of the Oakwood School.
19. MR, letter to Joseph B. Shane, December 1948 (dated Thursday); by permission of the Oakwood School.
20. “Son of Famous Artist Dies After Heart Attack,” Troy (NY) Record, February 11, 1949, p. 19; see also Moses, My Life’s History, p. 136.
21. Police report, August 5, 1949, NRM.
22. The Saturday Evening Post, July 9, 1949.
23. NR, letter to Ken Stuart, May 31, 1949, NRM.
24. The Saturday Evening Post, November 5, 1949.
25. Ken Stuart to NR, August 18, 1949, NRM.
26. NR, letter to Ken Stuart, July 13, 1949, NRM.
27. Stuart to NR, August 18, 1949, NRM.
28. “Grandma Moses 89 Today,” The New York Times, September 7, 1949, p. 27.
29. John Currin, conversation with the author, October 10, 2003.
30. NR, Art Center lecture, 1949, cassette tape, NRM.
19. SHUFFLETON’S BARBERSHOP (1950 TO 1953)
1. Bennington Banner, February 8, 1950.
2. Jim Shuffleton, e-mail to the author, June 8, 2012.
3. Emilie Jungschaffer (the barber’s granddaughter), conversation with the author, June 9, 2012.
4. John Updike, “An Act of Seeing: Norman Rockwell,” Art & Antiques, December 1990, p. 96. He also praised Shuffleton’s Barbershop in “Tote That Quill,” The New Yorker, August 14, 1978.
5. “Rob’s Barber Shop Makes Post Cover,” Bennington Banner, April 26, 1950, p. 1. Shuffleton, by the way, was also a “news dealer,” who sold magazines at his barbershop.
6. House sold on June 3, 1950; town clerk, Arlington, VT.
7. Dr. Robert Knight’s appointment book; courtesy of his widow, Adele Boyd.
8. Adele Boyd, interview with the author, August 25, 2008.
9. Thomas Rockwell, interview with the author, December 17, 1999.
10. Peter Rockwell, interview with author, June 22, 2000.
11. Dr. Knight’s appointment book indicates that he met with Rockwell on March 1, March 3, April 23, May 14, and May 29, 1951; courtesy of Adele Boyd.
12. Dr. Knight, letter to NR, March 9, 1951; courtesy of Thomas Rockwell.
13. Ibid.
14. Peter Rockwell, interview with the author, June 22, 2000.
15. Warren Blair (art director of Smith, Kline), letter to to NR, November 9, 1951, NRM.
16. Dr. Russell Twiss, letter to NR, May 21, 1951, NRM.
American Mirror: The Life and Art of Norman Rockwell Page 50
