Norman Rockwell (65 page)

16: No Solution in Sight

“What was missing”  William Graebner, “Norman Rockwell and American Mass Culture,” 326.

But what else would we expect  Ibid., 327.

“the surface of things”  
MAI,
355.

“She paced”  DR interview, Feb. 2000.

“as I really feel Norman’s”  MR letter to her parents, Nov. 1933.

“everyone in Providence”  MR letter to her parents, Nov. 28, 1933.

“I recall that I posed”  Betty Parmelee (Aaronson) interview, June 5, 2000.

“[Provincetown] is an artists’ colony”  MR letter to her parents, spring 1934.

“blowing right in our faces”  NR personal diary, Sept. 4–12, 1934, NRM archives, Stockbridge, Mass. All subsequent quotes concerning the camping trip come from this source.

“Recently admitted patients”  S. B. Sutton,
Crossroads in Psychiatry: A History of the McLean Hospital,
45.

“His assertions”  TR interview, Sept. 1999.

“that pretty girl”  Susan Merrill interview, Oct. 2000.

“For the first time unsure”  John Tebbel,
George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post,
203.

“At the moment”  MR letter to her parents, n.d.

17: Reconfiguring

“Just once”  PR interview, July 2000.

“Although some may say”  
The Heritage Sandglass,
Number 4D, 1938.

“He has excellent technique”  George Grosz, quoted in
The New Yorker,
Mar. 24, 1945, 44.

“He told me that”  NR, quoted in Arthur Guptill,
Norman Rockwell: Illustrator
(New York, 1946), 107.

“nothing but contempt”  Edward Hopper, quoted in Gail Levin,
Edward Hopper: An Intimate Biography,
95.

“Last year”  F. T. Russell letter to NR, Jan. 10, 1939.

“You have”  John Tebbel,
George Horace Lorimer and the Saturday Evening Post,
116.

“For many years”  Ibid., 293.

“He was a man”  Ibid., 304–6.

One of the last editorial decisions  Ibid., 160.

18: Plotting Escapes

it was a nightmare  Jarvis, Tom, and Peter Rockwell have all repeated this story to me several times; the event was, they all believe, traumatic to the entire family.

“I recall random things”  JR interview, June 2000.

One of Tom’s  TR interview, Sept. 1999.

“He was just bubbling”  JR interview, June 2000.

“grappling in search”  “Levine Boy Shot in Head, Squire Believes,”
New Rochelle Standard-Star,
June 2, 1938, 1.

“as a group”  Ibid.

“Somehow, at age seven”  JR interview, Jan. 22, 2000.

“Dad’s fame”  Sue Erikson Bloland, “Fame: The Power and Cost of a Fantasy,” 34.

Yes, responds  JR interview, Feb. 2000.

“I wanted to connect”  JR repeated this in various interviews and phone calls.

“even though . . . girls instead”  MAO interview, Apr. 2, 2000.

“I beg you”  George Macy letter to NR, Apr. 6, 1939.

“You should see the swimmin’ hole”  MR letter to NB, July 1939.

“We are not staying”  MR letter to NB, Oct. 31, 1939.

“She thought nothing”  JR interview, Jan. 22, 2000.

“Now I’m painting”  NR letter to NB, fall 1939.

“democratic history painting”  Dave Hickey, “The Kids Are All Right,” in Maureen Hart-Hennessey and Anne Knutson, eds.,
Pictures for the American People,
125.

“win us back”  Charles Dickens,
The Pickwick Papers,
414–17 (first published as serial 1836–37).

PART II: NEW ENGLAND

19: New Roots in Old Vermont

The letter she wrote  MR letter to NB, Jan. 25, 1940.

“I don’t see how”  Jack Atherton, quoted in Susan E. Meyer,
Norman Rockwell’s People,
89.

“For three months”  JR interview, Jan. 4, 2000.

“full color reprint”  Niblets corn advertisement,
Family Circle,
Mar. 22, 1940.

“I have tried to be pleasant”  George Macy letter to NR, Apr. 1, 1940.

“Your changing”  Ibid.

“Cruikshank, Abbey”  “Norman Rockwell, Painter for America’s Millions,”
American Artist,
May 1940, 11.

“supplementary aids”  Ibid., 12.

“girls in back”  Mead Schaeffer audio interview conducted by Susan E. Meyer, Sept. 30, 1980.

20: Another War to Paint

“propaganda, sentimental trash”  Susan E. Meyer,
America’s Great Illustrators,
89.

“A Will Rogers”  Susan E. Meyer,
Norman Rockwell’s People,
76.

  “although you’ve been acquainted”  “He Paints the Town,”
Family Circle,
Mar. 1941, 20–21.

“My father would suddenly”  PR interview, June 2000.

“Rockwell’s paintings”  “He Paints the Town,”
Family Circle,
20–21.

During a summer  Celia Mendelsohn,
American Artist,
Aug. 22, 1941.

“contents of your”  Sidney Mendelsohn, editor of
American Artist,
letter to NR, Dec. 30, 1941.

“My grandfather”  JR interview, Apr. 26, 2000.

“It was clear”  PR interview, June 2000.

“And with her”  JR interview, Apr. 26, 2000.

“He wasn’t twenty”  Stephen E. Ambrose,
Band of Brothers: E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, from Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest,
239.

“about a Scotch boy”  MR quoted in N. R. Howard, “The Editor’s Column,”
Cleveland News,
Nov. 20, 1946.

21: “The Big Ideas”

“Those 4F’s”  NR memo to self, Aug. 1942.

“I just cannot express”  NR letter to Ben Hibbs and Jim Yates, Sept. 20, 1941.

“Time really is”  Ben Hibbs letter to NR, Nov. 16, 1942.

“there is something”  Arthur Danto letter to author, Dec. 6, 1999.

“He robs”  Ibid.

its likely source  Susan E. Meyer,
Norman Rockwell’s World War II,
88.

“is an extremely delicate”  Ibid.

“I’m not interested”  Todd Purdum, “Unsettling the Art World for a Living,”
New York Times,
Sept. 4, 1999, B7.

“They were received”  Rufus Jarman, “Profiles: U.S. Artists,”
New Yorker,
Mar. 17, 1945, 34.

22: Square Dancing on the Village Green

“Farming is a hard life”  Susan E. Meyer,
Norman Rockwell’s People,
106.

“One time”  Buddy Edgerton interview, July 2000.

“giving his son a baseball lesson”  “Norman Rockwell Sometimes Jumps,”
Boston Sunday Globe,
May 30, 1943.

“Jerry was more of a loner”  Buddy Edgerton interview, July 2000.

“That difference between us”  JR interview, Apr. 2000.

“The boys would own”  Buddy Edgerton interview, July 2000.

“I could no longer procrastinate”  Pete Helck letter to NR, May 30, 1944.

Whatever lessons  PR letter to author, Mar. 7, 2001.

“raised a small tempest”  “Controversy,”
Saturday Evening Post,
Sept. 7, 1940.

“no boy”  Ibid.

In late July  “The Arts Take a Holiday,”
Boston Daily Globe,
July 28, 1943.

“The general attitude”  JR interview, July 2000.

“sailed easily”  MR letter to NB, n.d. but probably Nov. 26, 1944.

“white birches”  MR letter to NB, Jan. 25, 1944.

“Rockwell defined”  Neil Harris, “The View from the City,” in Maureen Hart-Hennessey and Anne Knutson, eds.,
Pictures for the American People,
134.

“pull off any number”  As Susan E. Meyer points out in
America’s Great Illustrators,
67.

“I’d get a call”  Linda Pero, “Three Rockwell Photographers,” NR Museum, Stockbridge, April–June ’95.

“It was Christmas Day”  Gene Pelham interview, Dec. 1999.

“If your models feel”  Don Spaulding, audio interview conducted by Susan E. Meyer, Nov. 17, 1980.

He paid his models  Ibid., 68.

“Aunt Nancy wasn’t disturbed”  MAO interview, Mar. 2000.

23: As High as He Could Fly

“melancholy brown eyes”  Rufus Jarman, “Profiles: U.S. Artists,”
New Yorker,
Mar. 16, 1945.

“We didn’t even”  JR interview, July 2000.

“Between fourth”  PR interview, Nov. 1999.

“He loved costume parties”  George Hughes on Susan E. Meyer’s audiotaped interview, Sept. 1986.

“great pleasure”  Letter from John R. Fisher, Dorothy Canfield Fisher, NR, MR, to President Millis, June 3, 1948.

Rockwell corresponded  Stuart Murray and James McCabe,
Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms: Images That Inspire a Nation,
66.

“He purposefully makes”  Dorothy Canfield Fisher, quoted in Arthur Guptill,
Norman Rockwell: Illustrator,
xi.

Rockwell’s debt  Ibid., vii.

“great genre painters”  Vrest Orton,
Vermont Life,
Summer 1947, 20.

“the brilliant way”  Michel Witmer interview, July 18, 1999.

“what a country boy”  “The Editor’s Corner,”
Cleveland News,
Nov. 20, 1946.

“Any event was”  Mary Schafer, quoted in Susan E. Meyer,
Norman Rockwell’s People,
116.

what did he most like?  Ibid.

“My parents”  PR interview, June 22, 1999.

“it was the boy thing”  JR interview, Jan. 2000.

“way out beyond”  PR letter to the author, May 14, 2001.

“I can’t recall”  JR interview, Oct. 2000.

“See, George likes”  George Hughes, audio interview conducted by Susan E. Meyer, Nov. 17, 1980.

“Their presences made”  Ibid.

“communist initiated”  U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Information and Privacy, appeal no. 2305, July 24, 2000.

“teener”  Norman Rockwell, “When I Was a Teener,”
Newark Star-Ledger,
July 3, 1948, 11.

“a pose that”  “People,”
Time,
Sept. 6, 1948, 44.

“most exciting figure”  NR, quoted in
Los Angeles Times,
Dec. 10, 1948.

24: Signs of Stress

“We’d never seen”  JR interview, June 1999.

“My mother was sobbing”  PR interview, June 2000.

“I remember going”  Joy Edgerton interview, Sept. 2000.

Nancy Rockwell had started telling tales  MAO interview, Dec. 1999.

“She was always”  Gene Pelham interview, Nov. 1999.

“She wasn’t”  Ibid.

“I was twelve”  PR interview, June 2000.

“It wasn’t exactly”  Ibid.

“she was insubstantial”  JR interview, Nov. 1, 1999.

“I know that later doctors”  Nancy Barstow (Wynkoop) interview, Mar. 1999.

“I remember my grandfather”  PR interviews and letter to author, Mar. 5, 2001.

“I’m not sure”  JR interview, Apr. 2001.

“I took some painting lessons”  Ibid.

According to  Diane Disney Miller interview, Jan. 2001.

“I’ve wanted always”  MR, quoted by Mary Ann Callan, “Norman Rockwells Liked as Villagers,”
Los Angeles Times,
Aug. 21, 1949, 8–9.

“He’d invite people”  Quoted in Susan E. Meyer,
Norman Rockwell’s People,
70.

“My mother had always”  Leah Schaeffer (Goodfellow) interview, Feb. 2000.

“yields nothing”  As John Updike observes in “Art and Act,”
Hugging the Shore: Essays and Criticism,
770.

“eye for meticulously rendered”  NR, quoted in Robert Taylor, “Norman Rockwell and the Spirit of ’76,”
Boston Sunday Globe,
Jan. 3, 1971.

“20th century genre painting”  Ibid.

By 1950  Tom Wolfe, “America’s Great Illustrators,” in Art Weithas, ed.,
Illustrators XXX.

new schools  Steven Heller, “Rebelling Against Rockwell,” in Maureen Hart-Hennessey and Anne Knutson, eds.,
Norman Rockwell: Pictures for the American People,
178.

Just as Robert Frost  Peter Davison commenting on and quoting from Frost in “Farness and Depth: A Rumination on Robert Frost,”
Atlantic Monthly,
113–17 (this quote from 114).

“In this delightful setting”  “This Week’s Cover,”
Saturday Evening Post,
Apr. 29, 1950, contents page.

25: Putting One Foot in Front of the Other

“swallowing Maalox”  Bud Edgerton interview, Sept. 2000.

“I felt so bad”  DR interview, Dec. 5, 1999.

“Germany’s leading”  Bill Pierce, “Will McBride,”
Photography,
Sept. 1968.

“He never had to do a thing”  Don Spaulding, audio interview conducted by Susan E. Meyer, Oct. 2, 1980.

“talking about”  Ibid.

“Watching him paint”  Ibid.

“They’d often share jokes”  Don Spaulding, audio interview conducted by Susan E. Meyer, Oct. 2, 1980.

“All we knew was”  JR interview, Jan. 2001.

“Pop just wasn’t”  TR interview, April 1999.

the biological factors for depression  Dean Parmelee interview, Mar. 2000.

“found themselves”  Quoted in Lawrence S. Kubie,
The Riggs Story: The Development of the Austen Riggs Center for the Study and Treatment of the Neuroses,
82, 88.

Rockwell and Erikson shared  Sue Erikson Bloland interview, Sept. 2000.

“PLEASE”  NR notes for a letter to Ben Hibbs, n.d. but probably Sept. 1950.

influenced Hibbs’s willingness  Steve Pettigrew interview, Dec. 2000.

The championing  See Dave Hickey, “America’s Vermeer,”
Vanity Fair,
Nov. 1999, 172–80.

“stick figure”  JR interview, Nov. 16, 1999.

“as always”  JR interview, Sept. 2000.

26: On the Road Again

“That man was like no other”  Gene Pelham interview, Sept. 1999.

“He became the luminous”  Sue Erikson Bloland, “Fame: The Power and Cost of a Fantasy,”
Atlantic Monthly,
Nov. 1999.

“They really loved”  JR interview, Nov. 16, 1999.

“I remember my mother”  Jonathan Best letter to author, Nov. 16, 2000.

“all creeds”  Letter to NR from “Nation-Wide Church Attendance Crusade,” May 18, 1955.

“that he didn’t like”  Nancy Barstow (Wynkoop) interview, Apr. 9, 2000.

  “rich uncle”  Jarvis Waring Rockwell letter to NR, June 6, 1954.

“I think you know”  NR letter to Bob Orpen, June 2, 1954.

“I was disgusted”  JR interview, Nov. 16, 1999.

Erikson notes  Erik Erikson letter to Robert Knight, Aug. 4, 1954.

“are doing nicely”  MR letter to NB, Sept. 8, 1954.

“Dear Dr. Knight”  NR letter to Robert Knight, Jan. 13, 1955.