The critics who attended the premiere saw a thin melodrama, unremarkable musical numbers, a few minutes of spoken dialogue, and dismissed it as a forgettable novelty.

However, the audience saw a different movie. They saw the future of motion pictures. The New York audience was electrified. They responded with delight to the dialogue, which occupied only a fourth of the movie and was improvised during filming. Some remember that people actually cheered when Jolson delivered his first line of dialogue, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain’t heard nothin’ yet.”

He was inserting a plug for a song he had written, entitled “You ain’t heard nothing yet.” It wasn’t used in the movie, but Jolson thought using the title in a throw-away line was good advertising.

The words, themselves, were unimportant. What mattered was that the audience was hearing someone talk—a breakthrough in movies.

Sound was nothing remarkable. Ever since theater owners began exhibiting movies, sound accompanied the feature, usually from a piano, organ, or, in big cities, perhaps a symphony orchestra. Some theaters had even begun using sound-effects teams. When incorporated into a World War I movie, Post writer Jerome Beatty reported, “the newspaper critics sniffed at the sound effects. Some were out of register, they said, and the whole thing was artificial and ineffective. But the crowds fought to get in and the people who saw the show told their friends to see it.”

The Sound Investmentby Jerome BeattyMarch 9, 1929.

The popularity of The Jazz Singer surpassed any of these cosmetic additions of sound because it captured sound and image on the same film. The audio couldn’t stray from the video, as it might on a short phonograph record. The Vitaphone process used in The Jazz Singer enabled spoken dialogue and opened a new dimension in movie-making.

Many movie studios saw the wave of the future and dove in. “Pictures … with even a few minutes of talking in them, made at a cost of less than $50,000, were grossing more than [movies that cost] $1,000,000 … all-talking pictures were paying their entire production cost with the rental received from New York and Brooklyn first-run engagements alone. Theaters that had been operating at a loss installed sound equipment and jumped their receipts 50 to 100 percent.”

One year after The Jazz Singer premiered, over 1,000 theaters were using its Vitaphone system. “By the end of [1929],” Beatty reported, “if present plans are carried out, there will be 3,500 wired theaters in the United States and Canada, and at least 600 abroad.”

Movie critics continued to disparage the new “talkies.” It appeared as if the public and critics were purposely heading in different directions. A theater manager in Dallas summed up the situation in a business telegram to his Los Angeles boss. “Criticism terrible. Business tremendous.”

Several studios worried that “talkies” would prove a short-lived fad. They played with the idea, adding varying amounts of sound to their movies. As a result, audiences never knew what to expect when they entered the theater. The industry began using an informal rating system.

“A picture With Sound is a picture that contains no talking, that has merely a synchronized score. A picture With Sound and Effects contains no talking, but has a score and cued noises. A Talking Picture has talking, music and effects, although the percentage of talking may be comparatively small. When you see An All-Talking Picture advertised, you may be sure that all lines are spoken.”

Sound added a new dimension to motion pictures. According to some historians, dialogue revived the industry just as the public was growing tired of the limitations of silent stories.

It took time, though, for movie companies to make natural sound. It took even longer for them to offer dialogue that was both believable and memorable.

Fortunately, though, early audiences weren’t expecting great dialogue. They also proved that hearing was less acute than vision, and sound effects didn’t have to be realistic if well-timed.

“Provided the volume is right, they [sound-effects engineers] find that exact imitation of noises is not necessary. The eye registers a revolver shot, for instance, and almost any sort of noise, from a bang to a plop, will make the spectator believe he has heard a shot. In recording music and effects for an airplane picture a company took great care to produce the exact and widely different sounds of a British plane, a German pursuit plane, and a German bomber … In an effort to learn whether it was worthwhile to be accurate, persons were questioned after they had seen the picture. Out of more than 100 who were questioned, only 11 had noticed any difference in the sounds, and 6 of those were aviators. These aviators [also] had high praise for the reproduction of the sounds of machine-gun fire which had been made by means of a whirling cogwheel and a barrel stave, after it was found that actual machine-gun fire was so rapid that it did not give the proper staccato effect.”

With the images and voices of actors presented simultaneously, movies seemed more realistic than ever, leading to some unrealistic expectations:

“On the stage … a play may be laid in a foreign land, but the actors speak to one another in English and nobody complains. But one motion-picture critic has complained of a lack of realism in a scene, which was taken from [such] a play and … never questioned. The unrealistic scene is one in which a French peasant speaks to a German. In the picture, as in the play, both talk in perfect English.”

Speaking a foreign language had not been a problem in silent movies. The inter-title card simply gave the original text and an English “translation.” Eventually, the industry adopted a standard that audiences soon learned: Whenever an actor starts delivering his line with a strong accent, we assume he has begun conversing in a foreign language.

Movie sound continued to improve over the decades. Studios added immense orchestral scores. Multiple microphones picked up every spoken word with a clarity better than life. Engineers added stereo, surround-sound, and digitally enhanced effects. None of these improvements, though, match the impact made 82 years ago by the voice of Al Jolson.

Click here to read “The Sound Investment” by Jerome Beatty, March 9, 1929.

“Criticism Terrible … Business Tremendous.” The Saturday Evening Post

The sparseness is still there in the old studio that has been on display for more than two decades. Hundreds of thousands of visitors have toured the one-room structure, seeing it pretty much as it looked at the time of the artist’s death in 1978. But beginning in May, visitors will have a new experience, one that Plunkett says will be more representative of “what Rockwell’s work life was really like.” Thanks to a cache of faded old negatives in the museum’s archives, the staff have been able to recast the studio as it looked nearly two decades earlier in October of 1960. That was the month when Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on a table at the United Nations in New York, and by coincidence, Rockwell was at work in his studio on a cover painting based on a United Nations scene, The Golden Rule.

An over zealous photographer hired by the artist at the time captured the unfinished painting on film as it sat on Rockwell’s easel. Not only did he take pictures of the painting, but of everything else in the room as well.

For the past year, museum staff have been studying those photos and bringing all the pieces together to reinstall the studio exactly as it was. And the whole, as they say, is more engaging than the sum of its parts. Rockwell’s work life and personal life came together in his studio, and if you know what to look for, it can be seen in his finished works.

Rockwell finished his Golden Rule cover in November 1961, and it appeared on the April 1, 1961 issue of The Saturday Evening Post. In the upper right-hand corner, the artist inserted a portrait of his late wife, Mary, holding the grandson she never saw. After The Golden Rule appeared as a magazine cover, Rockwell was presented with the Interfaith Award from the National Conference of Christians and Jews, a citation that he treasured.

Visitors will now be able to view the unfinished painting that depicts the Biblical injunction: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (The Golden Rule painting eventually appeared on the April 1, 1961 cover of The Saturday Evening Post.) Around Rockwell’s easel viewers will see mounted some of the model photos and magazine pictures the artist was using for the people in the painting. Some faces were simply transferred from the original, unfinished U.N. drawing, which can be seen on the floor of the studio. Others, notes the curator of archival collections, Corry Kanzenberg, were modeled from Rockwell’s Stockbridge neighbors. “His assistant’s daughter was the model for the girl at the bottom of the painting with red hair, holding a rosary,” she says. The Rabbi with the big white beard at the center of the painting was actually Stockbridge’s retired postmaster. Rockwell added the beard and the religion; the man was actually a Catholic.

In the top right-hand corner of the painting, one can see Rockwell’s most personal touch, he has added the image of his late wife, Mary, who had died the previous year. She is holding their first grandson that she never lived to see.

Numerous mementos of Mary appear in the old photos, Kanzenberg says, including an abstract pastel painting she had created for an art course. The original no longer survives, but a local artist was hired to paint an exact replica from the single old faded color transparency that existed of the painting.

Other items that needed replacing, says Kanzenberg, included an old Philco radio and a large cylindrical tobacco can seen on a desk by the west wall. The staff located identical items on eBay. The old radio still worked.

Using the reference photo (standing in the window), Corry Kanzenberg, curator of archival collections, arranges the books on Rockwell

For an added touch of authenticity the exhibit now even features sound—a mock broadcast will play the favorite music the artist liked listening to on the radio as he worked perfecting his paintings—all opera.

“People who were there recall Rockwell listening to opera as he worked,” Kanzenberg says. “We have been having fun figuring out what opera he might have heard.” The program includes selections from Verdi’s Nabucco that premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in October of 1960 as well as recordings by Emmy Destinn and Enrico Caruso, performers Rockwell actually interacted with as a young art student when he worked part-time as an extra at the Met.

As they listen to the music, visitors will tread a new path through the studio over a hand-dyed rug, an exact reproduction by the same company that made the studio rug Rockwell used for years. “We are allowing visitors to move into the central part of the room, where before they were only able to walk along a straight path,” says Plunkett. “I think it’s going to be a lot of fun because they can really see interesting details, such as all of the materials that were on his desk where his secretary answered his fan mail. They can see the writing on the wall around his Princess telephone including his analyst’s phone number. It will be a more intimate experience.”

Fortieth Anniversary

The new studio exhibit, A Day in the Life: Norman Rockwell’s Stockbridge Studio, is one element of the Norman Rockwell Museum’s 40th anniversary celebration. In July, as part of the special year marking the museum’s founding in 1969, American Chronicles, a traveling major retrospective of Norman Rockwell’s life and work, will return to Stockbridge from July 4 through September 7 before continuing on around the country. Also in November, the museum will launch the “first wave” of its Project NORMAN online digitized archive, making 40,000 items from its 200,000-item collection of photographs, objects, and documents available to scholars and the public worldwide at the Museum’s Web site.

Norman Rockwell: Getting the Real Picture The Saturday Evening Post

Work! Some people claim to love it. Others vow they hate it. Some are notably better acquainted with it than others, but we won’t name names.

“What work I have done, I have done because it has been play. If it had been work, I shouldn’t have done it,” Mark Twain said.

Thomas Edison observed, “As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.”

The British humorist, Jerome K. Jerome, summed up many peoples’ view on the subject: “I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”

Which brings us to our famous cover artists. From a place of relative safety behind their easels, unfettered by nine-to-five jobs and the usual drudgery (except when their wives pulled them away to put up storm windows), they were free to sit back and observe the American “workscape” in all its glory, from window washers and sign painters to plumbers and construction workers.

They even turned a lady riveter into the most famous cover girl of all.

In keeping with the theme of this issue, we put our own shoulders to the task and created this tribute to the art of work. Now we’re going to take a break while you sit back and enjoy it.

The laurel wreaths in the corners tell the story. It was the working man who deserved the credit for making America great, as artist Joseph J. Gould made clear in his turn-of-the-century Post cover.

Rockwell knew Post readers would empathize with this pair of plumbers rather than with the uppity owner of the fancy boudoir. He hired two actual plumbers as models and asked them to bring their tools along.

How praise worthy is this lad who thinks first and last of his work, and only wants to make sure that all work and no play does not make Jack a dull boy? When called to comment on this painting, artist Dohanos wasn't home.

Artist Ski Weld captured the drama of real work in America in his 1930s and 40s Post cover paintings. Here he depicts the smoke and grit of a strip mine-somehow transforming it all into a work of beauty.

This isn't a self-portrait, but we are pretty sure artist Stevan Dohanos could identify with this fellow painter. Some jobs just seem designed to lull a guy to sleep, and all those subliminal messages don't help either.

Who, including der Fuehrer himself, would dare to mess with Norman Rockwell's Rosie the Riveter? Rockwell's model was 19-year-old Arlington, Vermont, telephone operator Mary Doyle. The artist later apologized to Mary for adding substantial weight to her slender figure.

Work can sometimes have its perks, as Norman Rockwell's "fresh" young window washer is well aware. We have to give the daring fellow credit, suspended as he is 10 stories up. Meanwhile, Miss Shapely may have missed a few lines of dictation, but her boss, J.J. Fuddy of Fuddy & Duddly, hasn't even noticed.

The Art of Work The Saturday Evening Post

Country women, mostly from New England and the maritime provinces of Canada, began weaving (hooking) strips of tattered wool blankets and clothing into the burlap from feed sacks in the mid-18th century. Unlike the more affluent city folk, they couldn’t afford to buy rugs, so they sought inspiration from their surroundings—roosters, horses, and flowers —and crafted a new rug while sitting by the fire each winter.

Hooked rugs were mostly a way to cover the cold floors, according to Sally Van Nuys, owner of Amherst Folk Art & Rug Hooking in Amherst, Ohio. They were also used for warmth on the bed and were called bed rugs.

Eventually, craftswomen progressed from making do with available scraps to dyeing their own wools. Today’s crafters and artisans create rugs working from digital images they’ve transferred to the cloth they hook on.

“If you look back over the years, you can really see the evolution,” says Virginia P. Stimmel, editor of Rug Hooking Magazine.

The early rugs were primitive. By the late 1920s, Pearl McGown began designing and selling patterns, according to the National Guild of the Pearl McGown Hookcrafters Web site. In 1930, she began designing patterns and eventually developed more than 1,000 patterns sold around the country.

McGown began offering courses in dyeing wool in the 1930s, so that crafters had more control over their palette. And in 1940, she brought teachers together in Concord, Massachusetts, to share techniques and display their rugs.

By then, rug hooking had become an established hobby across the United States, with florals and nursery rhyme rugs particularly popular.

In the 1940s, artist Molly Nye Tobey broadened the craft, notes Kory Rogers, associate curator of Shelburne Museum in Shelburne, Vermont. Tobey learned to hook rugs from her grandmothers and began selling state-themed hooked rugs from her Rhode Island antiques store. Each rug had a color scheme based on something a state was known for, such as the sandy colors of oat fields in Oklahoma. She then depicted each state’s claim to fame. For example, the Vermont rug showcased cheese and maple sugar.

By the 1960s, the interest in hooked rugs had waned when the “modern” look of shag carpet and clean lines took hold.

But over the past two decades, crafters and designers have become increasingly creative so that there are now literally thousands of design choices to meet every possible taste. Some hook in the traditional Early American-style or in contemporary geometrics. Other designers, like Claire Murray, look to the sea for inspiration and go beyond the early sailboat motifs to include shells, starfish, mermaids, lighthouses, underwater scenes, and nautical ropes. And some artists transfer photos from the computer onto a pattern and hook rugs depicting their grandchildren’s faces.

Wool sells for $20 to $40 per yard, and the kits to make a 2-by-3-foot rug sell for more than $100. While the craft has evolved into a hobby for more affluent people, there are still rug hookers who shop at Goodwill for wool clothing they can cut up and use for hooked rugs. Those involved in online hooked rug discussion forums love to talk about their great deals, like the rug hooker who bought a size 24 skirt for $3. It’s even better if it’s white or camel-colored wool that can be dyed.

In the six years Stimmel has edited Rug Hooking Magazine, she has noticed an increase in the level of sophistication in the dyeing process. Six years ago, most hookers at shows were using strips the size of spaghetti noodles. It can take years to hook a room-size rug with pieces that small. Artisans are now using slightly wider strips and dyeing them in order to get the gradation of color they’re seeking.

“Some women and men are hooking rugs today that are unbelievable,” Van Nuys says. “A lot of them look like paintings.”

For people who don’t have the time or inclination to hook a rug, there are dozens of online retailers and stores selling hand-hooked rugs. Consumers who want high-quality, durable hand-hooked rugs should stick with 100 percent wool rugs since, according to experts, wool is naturally stain resistant and easier to clean. Synthetic fibers and cotton offer cheaper price tags, but do not last as long.

Machine-made hooked rugs can also be made well and generally sell for less than handmade rugs, according to Alex Peykar, president of Nourison Rugs, a worldwide rug manufacturer. “When it comes to machine-made, we don’t refer to them as ‘hooked’ anymore. They’re called ‘looped,’” he points out.

To spot a quality rug, Peykar suggests looking for dense loops that don’t allow any light through when you hold the rug up to light, adding “The more densely hooked and the more detail in design, the higher the quality.”

Consumers should expect to pay $1,000 for a very good quality 8-by-10-foot hand-hooked wool rug and $700 to $800 for one of good quality; machine-made wool rugs cost less.

If you’re just looking for a small novelty rug, Peykar says synthetic fibers would be fine since you can throw the small rugs in the washing machine. (Wash them in cold water on the gentle cycle.)

For those who like to change their décor every few years, machine-made rugs made with synthetic fibers last about two to four years, says Georgia Hare, marketing manager for rugs and art at StudentMarket.com , Inc. Consumers buying online are encouraged to ask for swatches or call the company to ask about colors, quality, materials, and production methods.

Those concerned about buying a rug made with child labor may shop for rugs made in the USA or look for certified designations such as “Rug-Mark” that indicate an adult manufactured the rug.
Hooked Rug Care: Tips From Experts

With a little care, hand-hooked rugs can last for generations. But by their very nature, they are more delicate than standard broadloom rugs, so require special attention.

If the rug is an heirloom or one-of-a-kind created rug, the owner should contact a textile conservator to examine the rug and determine what cleaning technique would be safest and most effective. According to conservators at the Shelburne Museum, some rugs can be washed, some can be dry-cleaned, some cannot be washed or dry-cleaned. The one thing that owners can usually do safely is vacuum the rug carefully and thoroughly on both sides using the floor attachment for rugs in good condition or the brush attachment for rugs in fair or poor condition. The beater bar should not be used on hooked rugs as they are easy to catch and pull.

Water washing is not recommended because even previously tested dyes can bleed. This is also true of spot cleaning. The spot should be tested first using the cleaning solution on a white cloth. During cleaning, check the cloth to make sure that dye does not transfer.

Machine-made rugs are usually backed with an adhesive, which can dry out if the rugs are dry-cleaned. Also, antique rugs that were hooked onto old feed sacks risk drying out because feed sacks were usually made of jute, which can become brittle with sun exposure. To increase its longevity and prevent fading, place a pad under the rug and keep it out of direct sunlight. Unless the rugs are made with synthetic fibers, don’t clean them with household rug cleaners, which are too harsh for wool. If you want to wash a stain off the rug, mix one part dish soap and 10 parts water and gently dab it off. But if it’s an alcohol stain, such as wine, don’t use water. Try to get the stain out of the rug with rubbing alcohol. If you use water, you’ll set the stain. Club soda is safe to use on other stains (not on alcohol stains).

When selecting a rug-cleaning company, ask a local, reputable rug dealer to suggest a cleaning company. Before giving your hooked rug to someone to clean, ask questions to determine whether the company is knowledgeable and experienced with cleaning hooked rugs.

Hooked On Rugs The Saturday Evening Post

The Norman Rockwell: American Imagist exhibition, which ended April 11, 2009, featured nearly 50 oil paintings and all of the artist’s iconic Saturday Evening Post covers, 323 in all, created between 1916 and 1963.

Myra Janco Daniels—founder, chairman and CEO of the Philharmonic Center for the Arts (where the museum is housed)—believes the works elicited positive reactions from viewers.

“Nobody looks at a Rockwell without smiling,” she says. “Rockwell turns any wall alive. [His work] brings you back into memories that you might have forgotten.”

Daniels, who once had a complete collection of Saturday Evening Post covers, credits Rockwell’s enduring popularity to his eye for the everyday.

“Rockwell was able to capture people as they were and as they are,” Daniels says. “No one can beat Rockwell for Americana.”

This kind of cultural programming is exactly what Naples was lacking when Daniels relocated from Chicago in the 1980s.

“I knew that there was something missing in this Naples area,” she says. “Chicago was full of the arts. Why not start a center in Naples?”

Nine years later, the cultural complex opened its doors. The Phil (as it’s called by locals) has a resident orchestra, a main hall, a black box theater, an arts school, and the museum. The complex stages about 400 cultural events each year.

“It is not uncommon one night to see Liza [Minnelli], the next night to see Julio [Iglesias], or to see a comic or a dance company or an opera,” Daniels says.

For more information, visit www.thephil.org.

Norman in Naples The Saturday Evening Post

When I was ten years old, a skinny kid with a long neck and narrow shoulders, I wanted to be a weight lifter. So I began a program of exercises to strengthen myself. Every morning I would do pushups, deep knee bends, jumping jacks, and the like before my bedroom mirror. After a month or so, unable to detect any improvement, I gave up. Instead of becoming a weight lifter, I decided to fall back on what seemed to be my only talent — drawing. And here I am, 56 years later, still drawing.

Every so often, usually when I’m having trouble with a picture, I spread on my studio floor reproductions of the 306 Post covers I have painted since 1916, walk around them, and try to decide whether my work has progressed through all those years. If it hasn’t, I say to myself, I’m washed up.

I never seem able to decide whether my work has improved, because my memories keep intruding. Looking at all those covers, I recall their history: the models I used, the trouble I had getting the original idea, how the public reacted. Everything I have ever seen or done has gone into my pictures in one way or another. The story of my life is really the story of my pictures and how I made them.

There was my uncle, Gil Waughlum, for example, a well-to-do elderly gentleman, who in his youth had been something of a scientist and inventor. It was always told with pride in my family that Uncle Gil, in the course of one of his experiments, had flown the great Gil Waughlum kite from a tower on Washington Square in New York. I don’t know what the experiment proved — something to do with Benjamin Franklin and electricity, I believe — but it was important, for in their day Gil Waughlum and the great Gil Waughlum kite were well known.

When I knew him he had given up science. A stout old gentleman with pink cheeks and a bald head, he was always giggling and nudging my brother Jarvis and me to make sure we were properly merry. Whenever I think of him, I’m reminded of Mister Dick, the kindly, gay simpleton who was Betsey Trotwood’s companion in Dickens’ David Copperfield. I don’t mean that Uncle Gil was a simpleton. He wasn’t. But he had one eccentricity — he got holidays mixed up.

On Christmas Day, with snow on the ground, Uncle Gil would bring firecrackers to celebrate the Fourth of July. On Easter he would bring us Christmas gifts; on Thanksgiving, chocolate rabbits. The next year we had firecrackers on my birthday and chocolate rabbits for Christmas. We never knew what to expect. I always wondered where he got firecrackers in December or Christmas cards in April. But I guess the merchants in Yonkers, his hometown, understood his problem.

He always sneaked into the house and hid our gifts — under pillows, behind the couch in the parlor, in dresser drawers — so that we might have the fun of a treasure hunt. I remember him shouting, “Warm. Norman, warm!” as I approached a hidden present, and “Hurrah!” when I found it. In 1936, when I painted a Post cover of a small boy searching the pockets of his grandfather’s overcoat for a gift, I was really painting Uncle Gil.

Of course, I don’t claim to have put on canvas 66 years’ worth of people, places, and events. Rather, I store up things in my mind, and when I need something for a picture—a feeling, a character, a wry smile—there it is. And I draw it out and paint it.

Whenever I want embarrassment, I think of the time I tried, and for several agonizing minutes failed, to lift a 250-pound soprano during a performance at the Metropolitan Opera. For rackety-bang confusion, I recall my early days as an illustrator, when my models were surly dogs, rambunctious children, and a cheerful duck. Whenever I want despair, I remember the time I was swindled out of $10,000. For chagrin I remember my flops — the affair of me and the seven movie stars; the United Nations picture I couldn’t bring off.

And for a mixture of embarrassment, confusion, despair, and chagrin I recall my dinner at the White House. Come to think of it, that dinner embraces vanity, exuberance, fright, and a wonderful, warm personality. It’s too complex to paint; it wouldn’t fit inside a frame.

It all began one sunny day in May 1955, when I received a note from President Eisenhower, inviting me to a stag dinner at the White House. I had painted his portrait in 1952, but I had never expected an invitation to dinner. Overcome with delight and anxiety, I posted my acceptance and hurried to the attic to dig out my tuxedo. As I pulled it from a steamer trunk, a cloud of moths flew up. The sleeves were tattered, the seat ragged, the lapels threadbare. Hastening to a local haberdasher for a replacement, I was shown a midnight blue jacket with lapels dropping in a fat, glittering curve to the waist. I thought it looked cheap.

“You’re sure it’s fashionable?” I asked.

“Oh, yes,” said the clerk, “midnight blue, shawl collar — that’s the latest.” So, in spite of my misgivings, I bought it.

That wasn’t the end of my preparations. I expected to be nervous, even scared, at the dinner. Suppose my mouth dried up and I was unable to speak? What then? I thought. Why, you’ll be ashamed of yourself. (“Hello,” says the President — “Gargle,” say I.)

I visited the office of my friend, Dr. Donald Campbell. Could medical science help me? It could. Doctor Campbell handed me a tranquilizer pill. “Take it 20 minutes before you go to the White House,” he said, “and you won’t be afraid of a thing, Norman. It obliterates apprehension, tension, and dread.”

Armed with my pill (pea green) and my tuxedo (midnight blue) I went to Washington, confident that I was bulwarked against catastrophe. On arriving at my hotel I inquired how long it took to drive to the White House. Then I went to my room and worked out a schedule. At 6:30, exactly one hour before the dinner, I gave my tuxedo to the valet to press. At 7:00 he brought it back. As I fumbled for a tip, I noticed him looking at the tuxedo queerly.

“What’s the matter?” I asked.

“Nothing, sir, nothing,” he said, recovering the blank stare of valets waiting for a tip.

“The tux isn’t fashionable, is it?”

“Well, sir,” said the valet, “I might say that I have never seen that particular shade of blue before.”

When he had left, I stared morosely at my reflection in the shiny lapels of the tuxedo. Patting the pillbox in my coat pocket, I thought, At least you’ve got that; you may look like a fool, but you’ll feel like Grant at Appomattox.

I went into the bathroom, drew a glass of water, and shook the pill out of its box into my hand. It fell on its edge, rolled into the sink, and went down the drain.

“In 15 years,” I said out loud, “I’ll laugh at that.” Stunned, I went into the bedroom, put on my extraordinary tux, tied my tie, and went downstairs.

As I reached the taxi stand outside the hotel, a battered old cab chugged up, clanking and rattling. At the wheel was a stout, middle-aged woman with a chauffeur’s cap cocked over one eye. The doorman waved her away, but I signaled her to stop, feeling that we two, the cab and I, victims of adversity, should stick together.

“The White House,” I said.

“My land!” she exploded heartily. “You going to the White House? Whatta you going to do there?”

“I’m going to dinner,” I said, cheered by this onslaught of good nature.

“Wow!” she exclaimed. “I’ve never taken nobody to the White House before. I’ll get ya there in five minutes flat.” The cab leaped forward with a roar like a wounded rhinoceros.

“Wait!” I said. “I don’t want to be early. We’d better go to the White House and then drive back and forth in front of it until the dot of 7:30.”

“O.K., mister,” she said.

While we were cruising up and down Pennsylvania Avenue she asked, “What’s your name? You famous?”

“I do covers for The Saturday Evening Post,” I said. “My name’s Norman Rockwell.”

“Are you scared?”

“Yes,” I said, studying my watch. “Get ready now. It’s almost time…. Now!”

We turned into the White House gate and jolted to a stop. The guards checked my invitation. Continuing up the drive, we waited while a chauffeur helped a gentleman out of a limousine. A crowd of Secret Service men and other functionaries were standing at the entrance. I paid my fare and started up the steps. “Hey, Mr. Rockwell,” boomed a voice behind me. I turned around. The cab driver was waving at me. “Good luck, Mr. Rockwell!” she shouted. “Good luck!” The Secret Service men laughed. I waved back. “Thanks,” I called.
{mospagebreak}
Rockwell_Eisenhower.jpg

A secretary ushered me upstairs and into a sitting room. I almost panicked as I crossed the threshold, for all the tuxedoes were black, with dull lapels. A minute later President Eisenhower greeted me warmly, and I felt right at home.

Then the President, raising his voice a trifle, explained to all of us that his stag dinners are informal get-togethers; he hoped we would not talk to the press about the dinner. So I will only say that I had a fine, easy time and enjoyed myself very much.

After leaving the President, as we were standing on the steps of the White House, we sounded like a bunch of kids discussing the high school football hero. A secretary had told us that our evening had lasted one-half hour longer than any of the President’s other informal evenings. We were delighted and flattered, which shows how President Eisenhower affects people. You just can’t help liking him.

I have one dark confession to make. Before each place at the dinner table was a small jackknife, a gift from the President to each guest. There was no inscription on the knife, however, so I went to a jeweler’s in New York the next day and asked to have “From DDE to NR” engraved on the knife. During the next few months, whenever I took out my knife, always being careful to show the inscription, people would say, “DDE? Is that President Eisenhower? Where’d you get that knife?” So I’d get a chance to describe my evening at the White House. Ah, vanity, vanity, thy name is Norman!

I sometimes wonder why I was so nervous at the prospect of dining at the White House. After all, I’m no pink-cheeked innocent. Still, I have a rather simple view of life. To me, a President is an awe-inspiring figure. I can’t be as cool as a clam at the prospect of dining at the White House.

And then I have a mercurial temperament. When that pill rolled down the drain, my spirits followed. The same sort of thing happens with my work. When the art critics call me “cornball” and my work “kitsch,” which I’m told is a derogatory term for popular art, I begin to worry. But I always pick up my brushes and go back to work. For better or for worse, I’ll never be a fine arts painter or a modern artist. I’m an illustrator, which is very different.

The modern artist and the fine arts painter have only to satisfy themselves. The illustrator must satisfy his client as well as himself. He must express a specific idea so that everybody will understand it. He must meet deadlines. The proportions of the picture must always fit the proportions of the magazine.

Ten or fifteen years ago a Bohemian art student — beard, long hair, sandals — kept hanging around a studio I had rented in Provincetown, Massachusetts. One day he interrupted my work on a painting of Johnny Appleseed — an old man with an iron kettle on his head and a burlap sack for a coat, striding across a hilltop, flinging out handfuls of seed.

“Whatta ya do it that way for?” the art student asked.

“What do you mean?”

“Whyn’t ya do it with more feeling?” he said. “Like this.” He pulled some colored chalk out of his pocket and outlined a tall rectangle on a big piece of paper. “Now,” he said, filling in with light-brown chalk a shape like a hawk’s beak, “that’s old Johnny’s body. It was browned by the wind and sun. O.K.?”

I nodded, startled,

“O.K.,” he said, and above the hawk’s beak, which projected from the lower right corner, he divided the rectangle into a red area and a white area, each roughly triangular. “He was kind of a religious fanatic,” he said. “Right?”

I nodded dumbly.

“So the white’s his spirit,” he said, “and the red’s the physical part of him, and they’re contending, the physical and the spiritual.” He rubbed blue chalk over the area below the hawk’s beak — “That’s nature.”— made the base of the rectangle dark brown —“That’s earth.”— and drew a hand casting a seed, the arm coming out of the hawk’s beak.

“But,” I said when he’d finished, “nobody knows it’s Johnny Appleseed. Only you know it’s Johnny Appleseed. Nobody else can tell who it is.”

“So? What difference does it make about anybody else? I know it’s old Johnny. I’m painting it for myself. Who cares about the unwashed masses?”

“Besides,” I said, “your picture won’t fit into the book it’s supposed to appear in. The proportions are wrong. You’ve got it too tall.”

“So make the book tall,” he said.

All of which demonstrates, I think, that a modern artist or fine arts painter doesn’t go at a picture the same way an illustrator does. I believe strongly that a painting should communicate something to large numbers of people. So, according to some critics, my work is old-fashioned, trite, banal. This criticism worries me now and then, especially when a picture I’m trying to finish is going badly, but I’ve learned that I can’t change. I’m not a modern artist and never will be. I don’t see things the way modernists do, even though I enjoy studying their work. I’ve been an illustrator since I was 16 years old. I’m not particularly satisfied with my work — at least I’m always trying to improve it — but I believe in it.

It’s not that painting Post covers is easy. I haven’t been doing it for 43 years just because it was the simplest way to earn a living. It’s been darned difficult at times. Once I couldn’t finish a picture for six months; I almost went under that time. And there is a recurring crisis when I seek Post cover ideas.

During my first years as an illustrator, when I’d sit down in the evening to think up a batch of new ideas I’d feel all washed out, blank, nothing in my head but a low buzzing noise. I’d stare at the wall and doodle. One day, after I’d been aimlessly sketching and crumpling up sheets of paper for hours, I said to myself, This has got to stop; I can’t sit here and muse all day. So I figured out a system and used it for 20 years or so.

When I had run out of ideas, I’d eat a light meal, sharpen 20 pencils, and lay out a dozen pads of paper on the dining room table. Then I’d draw a lamppost (after a while I got to be the best lamppost artist in America). Then I’d draw a drunken sailor leaning on the lamppost. I’d think about the sailor. Did his girl marry someone else while he was at sea? He’s stranded in a foreign port without money? No. I’d think of the sailor patching his clothes on shipboard. That would remind me of a mother darning her little boy’s pants. Well, what did she find in the pocket? A top. A knife handle. A turtle — I’d sketch a turtle slouching slowly along to —

Slowly. That would make me think of a kid going to school. No, it’s been done. How about the kid in school? Of course, he hates school. Gazes out the window at his dog. I’d sketch that. The dog runs after a cat. Cat climbs a tree. Dog ambles about, looking for trouble. Sees an old bum stealing a pie from a kitchen window. Dog latches onto the seat of his pants. I’d sketch that. Bum escapes. Eats the pie. Sheriff collars bum. I’d sketch that. Bum to jail….

I’d keep this up for three or four hours, the rough drawings piling up on the floor. Then, worn out, I’d arrive at the absolute conviction that I was dried up, through, finished. So I’d go to bed, completely discouraged.

The next morning I’d be desperate. After pawing at my breakfast eggs for a few minutes, I’d push them away and drag myself out to the studio. What was I going to do? No ideas. I’d kick my trash bucket and suddenly, as it rolled bumpety-bump across the floor, an idea would come to me like a flash of lightning. I’d given my brain such a beating the night before that it was in a sensitive state. Pretty soon I’d have a Post cover.

Nowadays I don’t think up ideas in exactly the same way, but the process is just as nerve-racking. You’d think that by this time I would have thought up a simple, efficient system, but I haven’t. A good idea for a Post cover is hard to come by. I have to work for it. But a picture is worth any amount of bother. I cling to this belief in spite of the trouble it’s got me into. Further on I’ll tell about how I bought almost all the old clothes in Hannibal, Missouri, because of it. And why I’d be embarrassed if I met Stan Musial, Van Johnson, Loretta Young, or Lassie on the street.

It’s a marvel to me the situations I’ve got into and out of during my life. When I was 15 years old, I taught French and athletics at a private school, though I couldn’t speak a word of French or play a slow game of tiddlywinks. Later on, my life was complicated by impostors who committed practical jokes — even swindles — in my name. Compounding confusion, my name is sometimes mistaken for that of Rockwell Kent, the noted artist, writer, and left wing sympathizer. But all these stories are for later telling. Right now, I guess, I’d better begin at the beginning.

I was born on February 3, 1894, in a shabby brownstone-front house on 103rd Street and Amsterdam Avenue in New York City. My mother was an Anglophile — I wore a black arm band for six weeks after Queen Victoria died — and she named me after Sir Norman Perceval, an English ancestor who reputedly kicked Guy Fawkes down the stairs of the Tower of London after he had tried to blow up the House of Lords. The line from Sir Norman to me is tortuous but unbroken, and my mother insisted that I always sign my name Norman Perceval Rockwell.

“You have a valiant heritage,” she said. “Never allow anyone to intimidate you or make you feel the least bit inferior. There has never been a tradesman in your family. You are descended from artists and gentlemen.”

But I had the notion that Perceval was a sissy name. I darn near died when a boy called me “Mercy Percy”; to my relief, the name didn’t stick. When I left home I dropped the Perceval immediately, despite my mother’s protestations.

Until I was nine or ten years old, my family spent every summer in the country at various farms, which took in boarders. The grown ups played croquet, or sat in high slat-backed rockers on the front porch. We kids were left to do just about anything we wanted. We helped with the milking, fished, swam, trapped birds, cats, turtles, and snakes, smoked corn silk behind the barn, fell off horses and out of lofts — did everything, in fact, that country boys do, except complain about the drudgery and boredom of farm life.

Those summers, as I look back on them now, more than 50 years later, have become a collection of random impressions outside of time, not connected with a specific place or event, and all together forming an image of sheer bliss. I remember throwing off my shoes and socks to wiggle my bare toes in the cool green grass on our first day in the country, then running off gingerly over gravel road and hay stubble for a swim in the river. I remember the hayrides, all the boarders singing as the horses trotted along the dark country lanes; the excitement of eating lunch with the threshing crew at long board tables; hunting bullfrogs with a scrap of red silk tied to the end of a pole; the turtles and frogs we carried back to the city in the fall, snuffling and crying on the train because summer was over.

During the summer I lived an idealized version of the life of a farm boy in the late nineteenth century, and my memories of those days had a lot to do with what I painted later on. Every artist has his own way of looking at life, and this view affects the treatment of his subject matter. Coles Phillips and I used to use the same girl as a model. She was attractive, almost beautiful. In his paintings Coles Phillips made her sexy, sophisticated, and wickedly beautiful. When I painted her, she became a nice, sensible girl, wholesome and rather drab.

This view of life I communicate in my pictures excludes the sordid and ugly. I paint life as I would like it to be. Somebody once said that I paint the kind of girls your mother would want you to marry.

In 1951, for the Thanksgiving issue of the Post, I painted a cover showing an old woman and a small boy saying grace in a shabby railroad restaurant. The people around them were staring, some surprised, some puzzled, some remembering their own childhood; but all were respectful. If you actually saw such a scene, some of the staring people would have been indifferent, some insulting and rude, and perhaps a few would have been angry. But I didn’t see it that way. I just naturally made the people respectful.

Frederic Remington painted the romantic, glamorous aspects of the West — cowboys sitting around a campfire, an attack on a stagecoach. Any old-timer can tell you that life in the wild West was often dull. But Remington, who was born and reared in upstate New York, didn’t find drudgery and boredom out West. In the same way I missed the dullness of farm life. I doubt that I would have idealized the country if I had grown up as a farm boy.

Maybe as I grew up and found that the world wasn’t the perfectly pleasant place I had thought it to be, I unconsciously decided to compensate. So I painted only the ideal aspects of life — pictures in which there were no drunken slatterns or self-centered mothers, in which, on the contrary, foxy grandpas played baseball with the kids and boys got up circuses in the back yard. If there were problems in this created world of mine, they were humorous problems. The people in my pictures aren’t mentally ill or deformed. The situations they get into are commonplace, everyday situations, not the agonizing crises and tangles of life.

The summers I spent in the country as a child became part of this idealized view of life. Of course, country people fit into my kind of picture better than city people. Their faces are more open and expressive, lacking the coldness of city faces. I guess I had a bad case of the American nostalgia for the clean, simple country life, as opposed to the complicated world of a city.

Then, I have other motives for painting as I do. For one thing, I have always wanted everybody to like my work, so I have painted pictures that I knew everyone would understand and like. I could never be satisfied with the approval of the critics; and, boy, I’ve certainly had to be satisfied without it.
Brush With Genius

While critics once dismissed Rockwell as merely an “illustrator,” art historians and collectors alike now celebrate his unique talents. The Post invited some well-known Rockwell collectors to share their thoughts about the artist’s universal appeal.

“Norman Rocwell was brilliant. He captured society’s ambitions and emotions and, more importantly, the cultural fantasy and the ideal of society during that particular time in American history. Through his illustrations, you get a sense of what Americans were thinking during those years, and of what was in their hearts.” — George Lucas

“Norman Rockwell’s work illustrated simple values, the pride of citizenship in the nation, in the community and in the home, and a truly American sense of ‘we’ll get through this’ in troubled times. From today’s point of view, you could claim that Rockwell idealized America and its citizens, but he also gave us images of poignant nostalgia and future promise.” — Steven Spielberg

“I first learned about Norman Rockwell while I was selling The Saturday Evening Post magazines door to door, when I was six years old. I admired his paintings of The Four Freedoms and A Scout Is Reverent. Years later I became interested in, and purchased his paintings of, the Homecoming Military Heroes at the end of World War II.

“My all-time favorite Norman Rockwell painting is Breaking Home Ties. This painting epitomizes the generation I grew up in, where parents made great sacrifices to see that their children were properly educated, by sending them to college.

“I had the privilege of meeting Mr. Rockwell and engaged him to paint a portrait of my son. Unfortunately, he passed away while the painting was still in progress. His staff sent me the unfinished copy of the painting.

“Norman Rockwell’s paintings truly capture the spirit of our country, including the very difficult times of the Depression and World War II.

“Prints and copies of his paintings are in my office, and I have the good fortune of viewing them every day.” — Ross Perot

Norman Rockwell: America’s Favorite Illustrator The Saturday Evening Post

We’ve seen her as Mary Poppins, descending from the heavens, feet pointed out, with one hand gripping a serviceable black umbrella. We’ve watched her as Maria, arms outstretched, filling the hills with the sound of music. More recently, we’ve heard her as Queen Lillian, mother-in-law to Shrek; and we’ve loved her as Queen Clarisse Renaldi, veddy refined grandmother to actress Anne Hathaway in the Princess Diaries films. But these days Julie Andrews is spending more time creating characters than portraying them.

Collaborating with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, she has some fifteen picture books, novels, and Early Readers to her credit. Her memoir, Home, is her first “adult” effort and earned five-star reviews as it leapfrogged to the top of the bestseller list this summer.

“Writing has taken front and center,” Andrews says of the two careers that compete for her attention. “I write in the morning, certainly four hours a day, if not more. When I get toward the middle of a book, the story begins to assume its own momentum. At that point I write by day and edit by night. As an author you never let go of a story; it’s always in your head.”

At age seventy-three, she exudes enthusiasm as she talks about her passion for books and her belief that children should read more of them. She and Emma oversee The Julie Andrews Collection, a publishing program that includes high-quality works by established and emerging authors as well as “out-of-print gems worthy of resurrection.” She admits that the books featured in the collection might be a tad old-fashioned, but they emphasize virtues—integrity and creativity among them—that never go out of date.

“We’re not as edgy as some authors,” she admits, “but we believe in all the decent things that we hope will help children find their place in this world.”

Andrews recently took a break from her writing regimen to talk with the Post about Home, Whangdoodles, and a new fairy princess who is still in incubation.

Although you’ve been writing books since 1971, most people think of you primarily as a performer. Do you find that it’s harder to interpret someone else’s words as an actress or to create your own words as a writer?

Hmmmm, good question. This may sound odd, but I think it’s more difficult to create words as a writer because there’s always that feeling of insecurity. It’s true that I’ve been writing for more than thirty-five years, but those are my children’s books. Home is my first adult attempt, and I feel like I’m still learning. For me, writing is a joy, but it’s also hard work. There are days when I get horribly stuck. I’ve heard people say that writing is a lonely profession, but I never feel lonely when I’m working on my children’s books. I have companions the whole way because I’m creating things that I love, like the Whangdoodles. [Explanation: A whangdoodle is “a fanciful creature of undefined nature” and the subject of Andrews’ classic The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.]

In your memoir, Home, you manage to recall your early years very vividly. Did you keep a journal when you were growing up?

Yes, but somewhere along the line the very early diaries went missing. As Eliza Doolittle says, “Somebody pinched them!” So, I wrote Home in fits and starts—writing passages as the memories came back to me, then putting them all together later. I remember thinking that I wanted to write about the sights, sounds, and smells…the things that make a book seem very real. Of course, there is such a variety of smells in England, from the terrible railway trains to the beautiful spring lilacs.

How difficult was it to relive the past and confront some events that might have been painful? Did you learn anything about yourself that you hadn’t realized before?

It was an interesting experience and, yes, there were moments when it was painful. But much of what I write about happened fifty years ago, so I’ve had time to put it into perspective and then put it to bed. A lot of it was surprising to me…things that I discovered as I wrote. For example, I had always thought that I had a very happy childhood. I was an optimistic girl, and I had a lot of nice things happen to me. It wasn’t until I started writing that I said to Emma, “Gosh, this seems awfully depressing!” I had forgotten how dark it was at times.

Did you fear a negative response from fans who might prefer to believe you had a fairy-tale existence? Did you wonder how they might react to learning about your mother’s alcoholism and the fact that your biological father was someone other than the dad you adored?

The people who mattered were my family, and since I had never mentioned some things to my brothers and sisters, I first cleared the book with them. After all these years, we are brothers and sisters, whether I’m a half sister or a whole sister. The truth is, I cannot be absolutely certain that what I wrote is the truth. I only wrote what was handed down to me. I can’t prove it without taking DNA tests or whatever. So, the family and I talked about it, and in some ways that brought us even closer together because we realized that it doesn’t really matter…our bonds are so strong.

Since Home only takes us through 1962, can we assume a second book is in the works?

I don’t know if I could do it. The sad truth is that so many people I wrote about are no longer with us. They’ve passed away, so I felt I could write honestly but truthfully and not hurt anybody. We’ll see….

Your daughter, Emma, helped with Home and has been your collaborator on many of your children’s books. How did the partnership start?

My publisher asked if I had any book ideas for very small children. At the time Emma had a young son, so I said, “Emma, if you went to the library to find a book for Sam, what would you choose?” She said, “No contest, Mom! It would be about trucks.” She told me that the only truck books that she found were the very practical variety rather than the whimsical or family-oriented kind. “Well, shall we have a crack at trying to write one?” I asked her. That led to our first series about Dumpy the Dump Truck.

Every team has to have a leader. Who’s the boss, you or Emma?

[laughs] We’re both fairly bossy people, and so at first we wondered if we would be compatible. We discovered, to our delight, that we have an absolutely wonderful time. We laugh a lot, and when we talk, we even finish each other’s sentences. Still, we’re very different. I think she’s a better writer than I am; she’s very structured, whereas I’m given to flights of fantasy. We defer to each other when one of us feels passionately about an issue.

In spite of your busy performing career, you obviously instilled in Emma a true love for books. What advice would you offer parents who want their children to grow up with an appreciation of literature?

Reading to children, even before they’re verbal, is so important. Sit a child on your lap, hug her close, and read. Take a picture book or a magazine and trace the words with your fingers. Talk about what you see; discover together the wonders that are under our noses every day.

What new wonders are you working on now? What should we be looking for in the future?

We’re doing an anthology of some unusual poems, songs, and lullabies that I love. It’s been a joy to pull it together. Right now Emma is typing madly to meet our first deadline. We’ve also been asked if we could do something in the princess genre for young children. We came up with the title The Very Fairy Princess about a girl who is convinced that she’s a princess and that she can do anything. Everyone around her says, “No! You can’t be!” She proves that she just might be a princess if she looks at things in a certain way. We hope it will evolve into a series.

Do you anticipate your two careers intersecting at some point in the future?

It’s happening already. A number of our books are packaged with CDs containing songs, and now a couple of the stories—Simeon’s Gift and The Great American Mousical—are being adapted for family theater. When I began writing, I wanted to combine all the lovely things I used to treasure as a child…the written word, the spoken word, and fine quality artwork. I think to some degree, we’ve succeeded.

At Home with Julie Andrews The Saturday Evening Post