1960—MODEL CARS
In 1960, I began my involvement with AMT/SPC 1/25 scale models. These had two price points--$1.49 and $2.00. I never received an allowance, but every Friday evening my father would drive to our grandparents’ house in Jefferson Park, and take his three sons with him. When we would leave, grandma Lottie (Dad’s Mom, whose real name was Mary Ann, as I found out after she died in 1989) would press a dollar bill into each of our hands. That dollar, along with bits of sofa-cushion spare change, would usually finance exactly one AMT $1.49 annual model. In ’60, I hadn’t yet acquired the patience to save up for two weeks to buy a $2.00 model.
My very first SMP (AMT) annual model was a ’60 Imperial convertible. Of course, like many kids my age, I glued every possible part onto the body shell. I painted it with a brush in two gawdawful colors—bright blue and bright green. The finished product looked nothing like any car anyone had ever seen…
This kit now sells to collectors in the $$200.00+ range. Nostalgia can be expensive. Model car guys can be strange. I know; I’m one. My favourite snack is pickled herring. Thanks for asking!
(ABOVE) The 1960 AMT Ford Pickup Truck kit in 1/25 scale. My first truck build.
I was finally beginning to get my stuff together on building techniques with this one.
I built three “Trophy” line kits that year—a ’40 Ford Coupe kit, and a ’36 Ford and ’32 Ford. The ’32 was my first tasteful color scheme, and the source of the inspiration for it was contained entirely in my 13-year-old brain. When it was finished, I had discovered a couple of tricks, and when I stood back and viewed in for the first time, I don’t know why, but it looked just right.
Here's what I did, so unbox your imagination and try to visualize it:
I painted the body and fenders a very pale blue (a favorite color since then; I have a number of Rickenbacker guitars that I refinished in this color; RIC calls it “Blue Boy”). The interior upholstery was done in a deep maroon and I woodgrained the dash in paint. The kit-provided chrome wire wheels I painted flat black, but left the hubcaps and rims chrome. Anyway…
Imagine a powder blue ’32 Ford with wide whites, black wire wheels, and maroon upholstery. Not even close to accurate color-wise, but 80% of the way to stunning as a model. Now, how to bump it to100%? Well, I had been given a Rapidograph india ink pen set, which I used to make drawings on vellum. I got out the 00 pen (which I still, 64 years later, recall was color-coded with a yellow band. Some strange things stay with you through thick and thin. The 00 was VERY thin). Following the molded-in contours of the body trim, I pinstriped body and fenders in thin black india ink. This powder-blue/black detailing was exactly the thing to elevate my 13-year-old fantasies to their final concrete reality! I still smile thinking of that model.
I developed a new technique for painting vinyl model car tires this year. Prior to this, modellers had given their model cars whitewall tires using brushed-on white enamel or model plane dope. The enamel remained sticky, as the plasticisers in the paint inhibited drying. Dope dried OK, but would usually leech color out of the tire, turning the whitewall brown or pink. Unsatisfactory!
I had a quart of flat off-white latex wall paint that I found in the basement and I thought that I would try using this stuff to paint wide whitewalls on the kit vinyl tires. To my shock, they turned out gorgeous! (flat white latex paint is, in fact, a vinyl emulsion, so it was perfectly suited to this purpose.) Nobody else in my experience had tried this, and it turned out to be a little trick that I used until I graduated to full-sized cars. No inhibiting drying, or leaching with water-soluble latex paint! I wrote a letter to Rod and Custom magazine, which had a column and section devoted to model cars moderated by Don Emmons, describing this latex paint “discovery”, and it was published about eight weeks later. I got a real rush seeing my name in print for the first time in a national magazine, from California yet! The last sentence in my letter said, “it really works swell!” My best friend at the time, “Gil” (not his real name) gave me some static about that, with snide remarks and a nasty giggle. It must’ve felt bad, because I remember it to this day. Simple jealousy on his part.
(ABOVE) My favourite AMT Trophy kit—the 1932 Ford DeLuxe Roadster kit. I didn’t see the actual car in the flesh until 1964.
I had subconsciously developed a sort of philosophy on creativity: take it to over-the-top “bad taste”, and then simply back it up one notch. This worked nicely. It’s a pity that so many so-called “designers” never took that last step in the correct (reverse) direction; instead they kept pushing it one (or TEN) steps forward, beyond bad taste.
An early example of my developing eye for taste was my first impression of the Bobby Darin/Andy DiDia “dream car”, which in 1961 was said to cost $93,647.29 to build and was featured in hundreds of newspapers and magazines. Bobby reportedly paid DiDia $150,000 to buy it, the equivalent of circa $1,000,000 today. It still exists, and was recently restored for the second time. Though nobody can criticise the quality of the workmanship on this vehicle, good quality and high price do not necessarily translate into good taste, and this vehicle taught me an important design lesson.
(ABOVE) Lesson in dubious taste—The Darin/DiDia “Dream Car”, built from 1953-1960. Darin bought it from its builder, Andy DiDia, and drove his then-wife, Sandra Dee, to the 1961 Oscars in downtown Los Angeles. He had his driver follow them in his limousine. He was not told that the engine was cooled by two electric fans that had to be manually switched on. The car arrived at the Oscars with clouds of steam billowing from the front end. Magazines erroneously reported that the car was “on fire”. It cooled down, Darin found the FAN ON switch, and he finally drove it home without incident. He subsequently used it for public appearances, and donated it in 1970 to the National Motor Museum, where it resides today.
1961— THE BEGINNING OF MY FINE ART ATTRACTION
Unaware, I was about to widen my horizons. My seventh-grade class at St. Veronica School had a contest to make a poster-sized drawing of the American Bald Eagle, as seen on many patriotic graphics. I found a small illustration of this, and was given by my grandmother some goldenrod paper which came from a relative’s sheet film box; this paper was used to separate the individual 12” X 16” sheets of film. One piece of this paper, and a #2 pencil, was all I needed to turn myself loose. It took me 5 weekday evenings to make the drawing, and although it wasn’t 100% anatomically-correct, it was a bold statement and my first foray into illustration and two-dimensional graphic representations. It was also the first time my work was ever seen “in public”. Later, when I attended The University of Illinois with a Fine Art major, I was quite comfortable making my class presentations, because I had plenty of practice at ages 13-15!
The project (an “extra credit” assignment) was due on a Monday, and that Sunday night I ran it through my head for hours, as you might expect.
Monday morning rolled around, and I pinned the drawing to the corkboard at the front of the classroom, alongside my classmates’ efforts. My hands were not shaking, as were others’, though. I couldn’t believe my eyes—there was zero doubt that my drawing was the best of the lot. I had no reference point, so as I was drawing, I was under the impression that everyone’s attempts would be roughly equivalent in terms of technical skills. I was wrong.
(ABOVE) My first attempt at original art—a 12” X 14” pencil drawing of an American Bald Eagle.
I was a transfer student, in my second month at a new school, and very quiet and shy. All of my classmates, on the other hand, had gone together to St. Veronica’s since kindergarten. It was tough to break the ice. This drawing got me noticed (though that was really not my goal). Results were polarized. Some students got closer and a few ended up hating me. But, it seemed that everyone noticed me for the first time. And I began to think that maybe I had some “art talent”.
My friend Gil, who had been the top student and “best artist” until I arrived, found himself outclassed and apparently was not happy with this. Although over that school year, we became fast friends and the friendship lasted a decade until we both married and moved away, in retrospect I realized that his attitude toward me was reserved and, indeed, cynical. Also, there evolved an undercurrent of competition that became obvious in his behavior toward me, his “best friend”, for much of our lives. (He will pop up in every year from 1962, to 1972, and again in 1994. See these years, below.)
I continued with my model car hobby, building and rebuilding AMT kits because I seldom had the money to purchase new stock until my college years, and by then it was full-sized cars that held my interest.
For my birthday in 1961, my grandmother Helen (Mom’s Mom) gifted me with a small set of Grumbacher oil paints, several 10” X 14” canvas boards, a Walter Thompson book on oil painting. and a portable hardwood easel. I immediately took up painting in oils. My first painting, a copy of one of the how-to book lessons, was of a Swiss mountain scene. It turned out well, to my surprise. Grandma Helen was thrilled when I gave it to her, my sponsor and financier for my painting hobby. She took it to Marshall Field’s and had it professionally framed. It had place of privilege in her living room until she passed away in 1984. It then passed on to my Mom, and I think my brother Gary is its caretaker now.
That year, and the following year, I produced an even dozen oil paintings in 10” X 14” and 12” X 16” sizes. In 2014, while going through my parents’ things after they both passed away, I found the American Eagle pencil drawing and two of my oil paintings. Maybe I’ll frame these, too, and pass them on to my daughter Juliana.
(ABOVE) Early 1961. I was 12 years old when I painted this. This was NOT the “Swiss mountain scene” described above in my text, but a later attempt that I thought, in my infinite 1966 wisdom, inferior, and so I never completely finished. Perhaps my third landscape oil painting. Not painted from life, nor from a photo. I made it up out of my head.