Neysa McMein

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Neysa Moran McMein (born Marjorie Frances McMein; January 24, 1888 – May 12, 1949) was an American illustrator and portrait painter who studied at The School of The Art Institute of Chicago and Art Students League of New York. She began her career as an illustrator and during World War I, she traveled across France entertaining military troops with Anita P. Wilcox and Jane Bulley and made posters to support the war effort. She was made an honorary non-commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps for her contributions to the war effort.

McMein was a successful illustrator of magazine covers, advertisements, and magazine articles for national publications, like McClure's, McCall's, The Saturday Evening Post, and Collier's. McMein created the portrait of a fictional housewife "Betty Crocker" for General Mills. She was also a successful portrait painter who painted the portraits of presidents, actors, and writers.

Algonquin Round Table members were entertained at her West 57th Street studio, where she was known for her active parties. Life magazine wrote an article about adult party games, which featured stories about McMein's parties. She had an open marriage to John G. Baragwanath, during which she had affairs with Charlie Chaplin and George Abbott. Baragwanath described their marriage as a successful one based upon a deep friendship.

She was inducted into the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame in 1984, 35 years after her death. McMein was one of 20 Society of Illustrators' artists to have their work published on a United States Postal Service Collectible Stamp sheet in 2001.

Early life and education

Marjorie Frances McMeinTemplate:Efn was born in Quincy, Illinois[1]Template:R/superscript on January 24, 1888.[2]Template:R/superscript She was the daughter of Harry Moran and Isabelle Parker McMein.[3]Template:R/superscript Harry McMein was a reporter before he worked for the McMein Publishing Company, a family business. Due to his alcoholism, his relationship with his wife was strained.[4]Template:R/superscript

McMein had musical, acting, and artistic talent. After graduating with honors in 1907 from the Quincy High School,[3]Template:R/superscript she attended The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. McMein worked at a large millinery firm, where she became lead designer.[3]Template:R/superscript In 1911[3]Template:R/superscript or 1913, she went to New York City[5]Template:R/superscript[4]Template:R/superscript and after a brief stint as an actress [1]Template:R/superscript in several of Paul Armstrong's plays,[6]Template:R/superscript she turned to commercial art. On the advice of a numerologist, she adopted the name Neysa.[1]Template:R/superscript John Baragwanath, her husband, stated that she chose the name Neysa after meeting one of Homer Davenport's fillies at his stables. Whatever the original impetus for the change, McMein thought that the name Neysa "had a commercial value" above that of her birth name.[3]Template:R/superscript McMein studied at the Art Students League of New York[7]Template:R/superscript[5]Template:R/superscript in 1914.[4]Template:R/superscript

Career

File:Neysa McMein, Misinformation, May 8, 1915, Puck (magazine).jpg
Neysa McMein, Misinformation, May 8, 1915, Puck (magazine)

McMein sold her first drawing to the Boston Star in 1914.[4]Template:R/superscript However, an earlier illustration by McMein was used in 1912 by Associated Sunday Magazines, dated November 10, 1912. It was used as the cover art in both the St Louis Republic and the Buffalo Courier on that date. She created Harry Horowitz's portrait in 1915 before he was executed for Herman Rosenthal's murder.[4]Template:R/superscript That year, she sold an illustration for the cover of The Saturday Evening Post[4]Template:R/superscript and her Misinformation illustration appeared on the May 8, 1915, cover of Puck magazine.[8]Template:R/superscript She became known for her portrayal of "All American Girls."[3]Template:R/superscript

McMein made posters for French and United States governments during World War I, as did Thelma Cudlipp, Helen Hyde[7]Template:R/superscript and Mary Brewster Hazelton.[9]Template:R/superscript Posters that she made also were used by the American Red Cross in its fund-raising campaigns.[3]Template:R/superscript

File:Neysa McMein - One of the thousand Y.M.C.A. girls in France (cropped).jpg
Neysa McMein, One of the thousand Y.M.C.A. girls in France, recruiting poster, 1918

She traveled across France to entertain the troops in 1918.[3]Template:R/superscript Of her time at the Western Front, McMein said, "Since I have lived through air bombing I never will be frightened by anything on earth. The terror of air raids cannot be imagined. They are heralded by the blowing of sirens and the ringing of church bells, and amid this din the lights are extinguished and then suddenly come the bombs, falling no one knows where. The noise they made is worse than that of the battles."[4]Template:R/superscript

McMein made portraits of some of the soldiers, drew cartoons, and colored the design of the Indian head insignia that was then used by the 93rd Bomb Squadron to denote the number of German planes that a given plane shot down by drawing a German black cross over one of the bear teeth in a necklace worn around the Indian head.[10]Template:R/superscriptTemplate:Efn She returned to the United States to care for her mother after her father died.[3]Template:R/superscript While in Quincy, she spoke at two fund-raising drives. "[McMein] was the main attraction. The theater was filled. She was an excellent speaker; very witty and clever," according to Sarah Carney.[3]Template:R/superscript For her efforts supporting the U.S. war effort, McMein was appointed an honorary non-commissioned officer in the United States Marine Corps, one of only three women to be so honored.[11]Template:R/superscript

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In 1917, noted poet Berton Braley wrote Front Page Stuff about her magazine cover art, the last portion of which is:[12]Template:R/superscript

Yes, Neysa, we're strong for your stuff,

Your girls who have sense and discretion;

Keep on for we can't get enough

Of maidens who give that impression.

Your vogue is far more than a fad

So gather the fame—and the tin;

Nope, there is no charge for this ad

Of covers by Neysa McMein.

—Berton Braley[12]Template:R/superscript

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Her illustrations appeared on the covers and within articles for McClure's magazine by 1919.[13]Template:R/superscriptTemplate:Efn By the 1920s, McMein and Jessie Willcox Smith were two of the major women magazine illustrators of their time. Together, they created hundreds of covers for McCall's and Good Housekeeping magazines.[14]Template:R/superscript Joseph Bernt, author of the article "The Girl on the Magazine Cover: The Origins of Visual Stereotypes in American Mass Media" found that both women and Norman Rockwell generally portrayed women in covers and illustrations as mothers, with scenes centered around children, during the 1920s and 1930s. Within the covers of the magazine were illustrations made by the three artists to sell consumer products, like Orange Crush, Ivory soap, Chesterfield cigarettes, and Holeproof Hosiery.[15]Template:R/superscript Following World War I, increased emphasis of family life was presented in mass media following a period when woman's suffrage and the New Woman were depicted in publications from the late 1800s according to Bernt.[15]Template:R/superscript Carolyn Kitch, author of the book The Girl on the Magazine Cover, finds, however, that McMein created illustrations of confident, modern New Women for her magazine covers,[16]Template:R/superscript while Jessie Wilcox Smith concentrated more steadily on children.[16]Template:R/superscript

File:Adams California Fruit Gum by Neysa McMein.jpg
Neysa McMein, Adams California Fruit Gum, advertisement, 1920, Motion Picture Classic magazine

From 1923 through 1937, McMein created all of McCall's covers.[16]Template:R/superscript She also supplied work to National Geographic, Woman's Home Companion,[3]Template:R/superscript Collier's, and Photoplay.[2]Template:R/superscript McMein earned up to $2,500 (estimated Expression error: Unrecognized punctuation character "[".)Template:Efn per cover illustration.[1]Template:R/superscript She created advertising graphics for Cadillac, Lucky Strike cigarettes and Palmolive soap.[2]Template:R/superscript[3]Template:R/superscript

Together with artists Howard Chandler Christy and Harrison Fisher, McMein constituted the jury for Motion Picture Classic magazine's "Fame and Fortune" contest of 1921/1922, which discovered the It girl Clara Bow.[17]Template:R/superscript Other promotional activities including judging Coney Island beauty contests or opening movie houses.[18]Template:R/superscript McMein designed silk textiles in the mid-1920s, three examples of which are in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.[19]Template:R/superscript In December 1929, she consulted with Studebaker's design department, with five other women artists and decorators.[20]Template:R/superscript

General Mills commissioned her to create the image of Betty Crocker, a fictional housewife in 1936. She created an official portrait of Betty Crocker by combining features of the home economists employed by the company, which helped reinforce that Crocker was a real person.[21]Template:R/superscript The image of the "ageless" 32-year-old was used in advertising and on packaging until 1955 when Hilda Taylor painted an updated Betty, who also wore bright red and white clothing.[22]Template:R/superscript Like the Betty Crocker image, "Miss McMein was herself a kind of American demigoddess: the most courted of commercial artists, hostess in her New York studio to all of the 'Algonquin wits'—Benchley, Parker, Franklin P. Adams—a wit herself. Sophistication lay rouge-deep upon the personalities of her cover girls; beneath lay reassuring testimonials to health and wholesomeness," wrote James Gray, author of Business Without Boundary: The Story of General Mills.[23]Template:R/superscript

In 1942, McMein collaborated with Alicia Patterson Guggenheim to create a comic strip, called "Deathless Deer." The strip starred a "deathless" Egyptian princess who awakens in modern New York City. McMein, while talented, was unfamiliar with comic strip drafting and conventions, and Guggenheim's writing suffered with the format. The strip was a commercial and critical failure; it was discontinued in 1943.[24]

In April 1938, McCall's Magazine did not renew McMein's contract to produce illustrations for the magazine. By then, magazines could cost-effectively publish color photographs using four-color machines.[4]Template:R/superscript McMein entered the field of portraiture, at first using pastels to depict Dorothy Parker, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Helen Hayes.[18]Template:R/superscript She painted portraits of presidents Herbert Hoover and Warren G. Harding, author Anne Morrow Lindbergh, and actors Charlie Chaplin and Beatrice Lillie.[2]Template:R/superscript McMein also painted Katharine Cornell,[25]Template:R/superscript Kay Francis,[26]Template:R/superscript Janet Flanner, Dorothy Thompson, Anatole France, Charles Evans Hughes and Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin.[4]Template:R/superscript She mentored photographer Lee Miller.[18]Template:R/superscript

Personal life

File:Neysa McMein, 1917.JPG
Neysa McMein carrying the flag at a suffrage parade, 1917.

Her father died in 1918 while McMein was overseas entertaining the troops. She moved her mother Belle from Quincy, Illinois to live with her in New York.[3]Template:R/superscript She was an "ardent supporter" of women's political, sexual, and economic rights.[4]Template:R/superscript By 1920, McMein had walked in suffrage parades, traveled overseas extensively, and had ridden in Count Zeppelin's dirigible.[6]Template:R/superscript She rode across an Arab desert with a woman journalist and friend and was proposed to by an Arab sheik in Algiers. McMein, who was a talented musician, had written an opera by that time, too.[6]Template:R/superscript In 1921, McMein was among the first to join the Lucy Stone League, an organization that fought for women to preserve their birth names after marriage in the manner of Lucy Stone.[5]Template:R/superscript[27]Template:R/superscript

File:Sally James Farnham, Neysa Moran McMein, 1920, sculpture.jpg
Sally James Farnham, Neysa Moran McMein, 1920, sculpture[28]Template:R/superscript

McMein—described as a tall, athletic, grave, and beautiful red-headTemplate:Efn—became a regular member of the Algonquin Round Table set,[29]Template:R/superscript[3]Template:R/superscript formed after the end of the war.[4]Template:R/superscript Her West 57th Street studio in New York City became an "outpost" to the Algonquin Hotel,[29]Template:R/superscript[3]Template:R/superscript which appealed to the "Bohemian" nature of its members,[1]Template:R/superscript which included Dorothy Parker, Alexander Woollcott, Edna Ferber, Irving Berlin, Robert Sherwood, Franklin Pierce Adams, Robert Benchley, Alice Duer Miller, Harpo Marx, and Jascha Heifetz.[29]Template:R/superscript She was prone to working in her smock at an easel as her guests enjoyed lively discussions and piano playing.[4]Template:R/superscript Berlin finished composing What'll I Do at McMein's piano during one of her Round Table parties.[30]Template:R/superscript McMein provided the cover illustration of Berlin's biography by Alexander Woollcott.[30]Template:R/superscript Walt Disney, Ethel Barrymore, Cole Porter,[3]Template:R/superscript George Gershwin, H. G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw were friends.[4]Template:R/superscript Dorothy Parker moved in with McMein in 1920 before renting an apartment in the same building.[4]Template:R/superscript

McMein's mother died in 1923.[3]Template:R/superscript The same year, McMein married Template:Interlanguage link, a mining engineer and author,[3]Template:R/superscript whom she met at a party given by Irene Castle. Baragwanth was interested in the striking, fine-featured woman playing the piano while others danced and sang around her.[4]Template:R/superscript McMein and Baragwanath had a daughter Joan[3]Template:R/superscript in 1924.[4]Template:R/superscript

Theirs was an open marriage, and though the proprieties generally were observed, there were exceptions. In his memoirs, the lyricist and publicist Howard Dietz recalled hearing that on one occasion, when Neysa noticed that her model for the day was impatient to leave, she asked: "Have you got a heavy date?" Model: "Yes, with a great guy, Jack Baragwanath."[31]Template:R/superscript Meanwhile, Neysa was involved for several years with the Broadway director George Abbott, leading Alexander Woollcott to say that "we now call Neysa’s place in Port Washington the 'Abbottoir.'"[32]Template:R/superscript She also had affairs with Robert Benchley,[4]Template:R/superscript Charlie Chaplin,[1]Template:R/superscript who had a house near her cottage in Port Washington,[18]Template:R/superscript and a platonic relationship with Irving Berlin.[1]Template:R/superscript This occurred during a period when "[w]omen are for the first time demanding to live the forbidden experience directly and draw conclusions on this basis," according to Beatrice Hinkle in an article for The Nation.[4]Template:R/superscript

McMein lived a varied life in search of fun. She interspersed her life as an artist with riding on the back of an elephant in a parade, taking a swim on a whim, and enjoying parties.[18]Template:R/superscript She hosted parties with games for adults to entertain artists, writers, actors and other celebrities. Her guests—like Bing Crosby, Anne Shirley, Robert Young, and Bennett Cerf—engaged in games like a quickfire, multiple team version of charades called "The Game", that is sometimes attributed to McMein.[33]Template:R/superscript The spelling game, where each person on a team wore a sign with one letter and played against another team so see who could arrange themselves the fastest in the proper order to spell a word, was played at her parties. McMein and the games that she employed at her parties were featured in a Life magazine article in 1946.[33]Template:R/superscript McMein also entertained at the house she bought with Baragwanath on the North Shore of Long Island in Sands Point.[4]Template:R/superscript

In 1942, she broke her back by falling downstairs during a sleepwalking episode. McMein was then required to have surgery to graft part of her hip to her spine.[4]Template:R/superscript

Death

McMein died of cancer on May 12, 1949,[2]Template:R/superscript[4]Template:R/superscript in New York City[5]Template:R/superscript and was survived by daughter Joan and her husband John Baragwanath.

In her will, McMein bequeathed monies to purchase works of arts annually by the Whitney Museum of American Art. The museum bought 72 purchases from 1956, none of which were McMein's works. Like other illustrators' works, her illustrations were not considered fine art.[34]Template:R/superscript In 1984, McMein was inducted into the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame.[35]Template:R/superscript

The United States Post Office released a 20-stamp collection in February 2001 that are based upon works created by 20 Society of Illustrators' artists, including McMein, Rockwell Kent, Al Parker, Howard Pyle, Jessie Smith, and Joseph Leyendecker.[36]Template:R/superscript[37]Template:R/superscript

Collections

Published works

Illustrator
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Author
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In popular culture

McMein was portrayed by actress Rebecca Miller in the film Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle (1994).[44]Template:R/superscript

Notes

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See also

References

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  15. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
  16. ↑ a b c Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  17. ↑ Motion Picture Classics, magazine, January issue, 1922
  18. ↑ a b c d e Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  19. ↑ a b c d Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  20. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  22. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  28. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  29. ↑ a b c Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  30. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  31. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  32. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  33. ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  34. ↑ Script error: No such module "Citation/CS1".
  35. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  36. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  37. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  38. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  40. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  41. ↑ a b c Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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  43. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
  44. ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".

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Further reading

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External links

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Template:Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame Script error: No such module "Authority control".

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