Douglass Crockwell (1904-1968) was a St. Louis native. As with many of his contemporaries, he studied art in Chicago and St. Louis, and even went abroad to Europe for fellowships. He returned to the United States and began illustrating commercially. He soon created his first cover for The Saturday Evening Post. In the little spare time he had, he experimented with animated movies. He was awarded three Art Directors Medals for his efforts. Illustrations and films were not his only creations, however; shortly after Crockwell began illustrating commercially, he did murals in northeastern states as well as Mississippi.

As with Rockwell, Crockwell paid a lot of attention to detail. It was hard enough to compete with an artist of Rockwell’s stature, but with the last name Crockwell, it was doubly challenging. Poor Douglass Crockwell took to signing his work simply “Douglass”.