well, I fell down the rabbit hole, and went after a story, which had only been hinted at.
See, I found a nice ol piece of Americana, it was an ad for the Yellowstone Natl Park, and it was from the Union Pacific Railroad company, who had hired a guy by the name of Walter W Oehrle.
Well, they hired him, because he was talented, and they got him young, and cheap, while making a syndicated comic strip, and he needed a bit of now and then work for extra cash to get through the great depression, which he kept doing for years while to make real money. Then he went to work at Disney Productions, on the Donald Duck cartoons, and the Silly Symphonies.
Then he invented one of the top 10 most iconic and recognizable marketing mascots there ever was, and he was the artist that blew Mickey Mouse out of the top ten. Seriously. Mickey was nice if you were at the Disney park in Anaheim, but if not, well, you weren't seeing him much.
Anyway, he changed his last name to Early... so, his later work is signed Walter Early, and he got busy doing paintings for advertisements, just like Norman Rockwell, who he was in competition with for the Mobilgas account for ads in the Saturday Evening Post, and Colliers.
I think if you've been reading along for the past couple of years, you'll know I greatly admire and respect Norman Rockwell, and Disney animators and cartoonists. By jove, I think they sorta created the whole apple pie and fourth of July feeling about America that the midwest really loved in the late 30's through the mid 50s.
Anyway, so I had learned of Walter W Oehrle, now I just type WWO for short, and found that there was nothing about him online, and I don't like that at all. When I find something I respect and admire, god damn it there better be something online to share with other people that like artists and inventors, and if not, well damn it, as John Wayne would say, I'll going to do something.
So I did. And it took up more time than any post has in years. And I was up til 5 am last night just putting on finishing touches, because around 3 am was when I found that he'd gotten some work for Mobilgas (you know, car stuff!) and that was because around 1am I learned about the last name getting changed, and around 2 am I learned that he'd definitely worked at Walt Disney, and as those things turn to another and I start getting somewhere, well, I just didn't give up
Then I learned that his big claim to fame, Elsie the Cow, had been made into nose art on a B-29 - well, shit. That's just more of the kind of thing that I dig (you know, some people were not happy i took a couple weeks to just post WW2 stuff and it was mostly nose art, which then became a source to get the best of and make a facebook page for)
Lastly, I learned that he'd become a painter that LIFE magazine went to for art.... now, how much more Americana does a person get? Other than John Wayne, and Hugh Hefner, and JFK I guess.
See, I found a nice ol piece of Americana, it was an ad for the Yellowstone Natl Park, and it was from the Union Pacific Railroad company, who had hired a guy by the name of Walter W Oehrle.
Well, they hired him, because he was talented, and they got him young, and cheap, while making a syndicated comic strip, and he needed a bit of now and then work for extra cash to get through the great depression, which he kept doing for years while to make real money. Then he went to work at Disney Productions, on the Donald Duck cartoons, and the Silly Symphonies.
Then he invented one of the top 10 most iconic and recognizable marketing mascots there ever was, and he was the artist that blew Mickey Mouse out of the top ten. Seriously. Mickey was nice if you were at the Disney park in Anaheim, but if not, well, you weren't seeing him much.
Anyway, he changed his last name to Early... so, his later work is signed Walter Early, and he got busy doing paintings for advertisements, just like Norman Rockwell, who he was in competition with for the Mobilgas account for ads in the Saturday Evening Post, and Colliers.
I think if you've been reading along for the past couple of years, you'll know I greatly admire and respect Norman Rockwell, and Disney animators and cartoonists. By jove, I think they sorta created the whole apple pie and fourth of July feeling about America that the midwest really loved in the late 30's through the mid 50s.
Anyway, so I had learned of Walter W Oehrle, now I just type WWO for short, and found that there was nothing about him online, and I don't like that at all. When I find something I respect and admire, god damn it there better be something online to share with other people that like artists and inventors, and if not, well damn it, as John Wayne would say, I'll going to do something.
So I did. And it took up more time than any post has in years. And I was up til 5 am last night just putting on finishing touches, because around 3 am was when I found that he'd gotten some work for Mobilgas (you know, car stuff!) and that was because around 1am I learned about the last name getting changed, and around 2 am I learned that he'd definitely worked at Walt Disney, and as those things turn to another and I start getting somewhere, well, I just didn't give up
Then I learned that his big claim to fame, Elsie the Cow, had been made into nose art on a B-29 - well, shit. That's just more of the kind of thing that I dig (you know, some people were not happy i took a couple weeks to just post WW2 stuff and it was mostly nose art, which then became a source to get the best of and make a facebook page for)
Lastly, I learned that he'd become a painter that LIFE magazine went to for art.... now, how much more Americana does a person get? Other than John Wayne, and Hugh Hefner, and JFK I guess.
Appreciate the info on WWO. Yes, I do believe all those guys did invent the Mom and Apple Pie thing. Whatever happened to the media playing to "good-guy" stuff instead of crap that is too often popularized today?
ReplyDeleteI think politics happened. The media was in love with JFK and Jackie, and the Camelot experience, but then reality reared it's ugly head, Walter Cronkite went off the air, Johnny Carson retired, and we were left with the ugly day to day politics.
DeleteWars had been events we could respect for we were the good guys, against the evil empires, and then Korea was a wash, and Nam was a damn lie, the pentagon papers finally outted the politicians as criminals we could no longer respect, instead, the news media could reasonably trash them for the crooks they are, and so, as the Norman Rockwell's and the Paul Harvey era drew to an end, the news just showed the ugly reality, instead of the dream we used to enjoy
DeleteYou done good, Sir, a service to we readers and more to Google so they can find condensed information of an important contributor to the American image.
ReplyDelete