Oral history interview with Milford Zornes, 1999 July 18 - Sept. 5

This transcript is in the public domain and may be used without permission. Quotes and excerpts must be cited as follows: Oral history interview with Milford Zornes, 1999 July 18 - Sept. 5, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview with Milford Zornes
Conducted by Susan Anderson
At the Artist's home in Claremont, California
July 18, 1999

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a tape-recorded interview with Milford Zornes on July 18, 1999. The interview was conducted at Milford Zornes' home studio in Claremont, CA by Susan Anderson for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.

Interview

MZ: MILFORD ZORNES
SA: SUSAN ANDERSON
PZ: PAT ZORNES

SA: This is the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. An interview with Milford Zornes on the 18th of July, 1999 at his studio home in Claremont, California. The interviewer is Susan Anderson. This is session one, tape one, side one. Well Mr. Zornes, today we’ll cover questions about your family background and early years. You were born in Camargo, Oklahoma on January 25, 1908. You lived there until you were about seven?

MZ: Yes.

SA: And what was Camargo like?

MZ: Well, actually, I was born between Camargo and Versa. But I was six seven miles from Camargo. Well, it was a small farming town. That part of Oklahoma was an area that was settled, mostly, during the land rush in the Oklahoma historic rush for land. My father and his father and brother came down out of Kansas and settled –- homesteaded there. My mother’s people came from Iowa. She came from Iowa and with an aunt and uncle. She homesteaded. They had a homestead, she, by building her house, of which they required an establishment as a home. She built it on their property so that there was a home compound and, yet, she was able to homestead that way. And she was a school teacher.

SA: Your mother?

MZ: Yes. She met my father because his two younger brothers were students of hers in the country school. My father had to take care of affairs. He was not able to be in her school and I think he probably had only a third grade education, if that. And I think my mother, more or less, educated him after they were married. He wasn’t an educated man, but he was fairly well-read. Or, at least, in my childhood I had the impression, or he always gave the impression, of being fairly worldly through reading or keeping track of the newspapers or something.

SA: And what was he -– what were your parents like?

MZ: Well, my mother was . . . they say that a man always marries a woman like his mother and maybe that’s true. I could, maybe, pick characteristics of my wife. A little caustic, a little fussy. Strong in character enough to identify themselves very definitely as a full partner in the marriage. There was never any idea that there was any domination. And I think that’s true with us and I think it’s very true of my mother. And my father was an intelligent man. In fact, though, as I’ve said, he wasn’t an educated man but, to this day even, I’m sure that when it comes to judgments relative to the principles involved or anything having to do with business ethics or anything of that kind, something of my father’s thinking is with me, you see. And he was very capable. Physically, too. He was not a heavy-set man, he was more my build and not quite as tall but he could handle horses and he could handle cattle and he could handle any situation physically. The interesting thing was that while he was a rancher, I think he was glad to get away from the handling of animals. He was very capable with horses but never took the attitude of a horseman. You know, he was a working man. It was just to handle stock and to handle horses. It was just part of the working day life, that was all.

SA: So your father was a rancher?

MZ: Yes. We, the people who settled there, had to live in dug outs and sod houses. Do you know the writing of Mari Sandoz who wrote about the early days in Nebraska?

SA: No.

MZ: Well her writing reminded me so much of my childhood memories because of the -– well, we would say primitive ways of living, now, of course. But they used what they had and I well recall my grandfather had the blacksmith shop. I don’t think he was necessarily intended to be a blacksmith but in that country where blacksmithing was required, my father said it was one way of collecting a little money because usually business is done in a matter of trading. And, I suppose, he was a blacksmith because he could do it and blacksmithing was needed. I remember the old blacksmith shop in a dugout with the big bellows and the typical shop . . . and the smell of it and the idea of it still. I still have it in my memory.

SA: Wonderful. And -– so your mother was a teacher then?

MZ: Yes.

SA: Did she continue to teach?

MZ: No, after she was married. And she wasn’t, I suppose, she wasn’t equipped to teach in modern schools at all. Her education was in a kind of an academy for teachers in a private school. And then when she came to Oklahoma, I think she had to pass what they call a normal test for the local requirements. I don’t know what they were, how they would compare to modern demands. I don’t know. I know it was a one-room schoolhouse. And that I went to a one-room schoolhouse, too.

SA: And – right there in –- was it in Camargo?

MZ: No. That was interesting, too, that we did go to country school but the school year was sketchy. Maybe they could afford to have it four months, maybe five months and my father -– this is another key to his character -– he was, again, I keep referring to the fact that he wasn’t an educated man but he had great ambitions for his family and he wanted them to be educated. I look back upon it as a little naive now. So he had to have us move to town during the school year so we could go to the school in Camargo. A bigger school. It was something that his neighbors -– the regular people of the neighborhood thought he was being a little uppity or high-browed that he had to take his kids to town and go to school when the rest of them went to the country school. But it was his determination. And I’ll tell you another story –- maybe it won’t come up in your questioning. As a young cowboy or young man, the way of marketing cattle was to bring them to Woodward. Yes, you brought them to Woodward, Oklahoma, where they were loaded on cattle cars and taken to Kansas City for marketing and usually someone had to go along with the particular shipment of cattle. And so he was in Kansas City –- I don’t know how many times but for some reason, somehow, he heard a violinist play and I have no idea of whether it was a street player or just in a local entertainment or what it was but some way or another the young man –- he had the kind of a grand idea that if he ever had a son, he’d love to have him be a violinist. So when I was old enough to play -– to hold a three-quarter violin, I had to take violin lessons and my first teacher was a barber in Camargo and then it wasn’t long after that, that we moved to Idaho. I had to go on each Saturday to a Catholic girl’s school in Boise where one of the sisters was a fine violinist and a teacher. But it was amusing that she had to announce -- when I was 12 years old -– she had to announce to my family they can no longer have me come to this school. I was evidently a man by that time.

SA: Oh my.

MZ: And finally my father had me with a man who was evidently a skilled professional violinist. He had part of a music school in Boise, Idaho and this man would question me quite closely. I worked hard at the violin but he would question me and he found out that I was interested in drawing and I’m pretty sure he decided that while I might be earnestly trying I wasn’t talented -– wasn’t talented as a violinist so he brought my father in for a conference and explained to him he probably shouldn’t force me to carry on too much longer because he thought I was slated to do something else.

SA: And did you feel that way, too?

MZ: Well, I did. It was a relief to me but my father, I think, was sort of disappointed.

SA: I bet so. Well, before we go on to Utah, tell me a little bit about what Camargo was like.

MZ: Well, I keep telling stories on the side . . . Camargo finally had a railroad. The railroad came in when I was a child there. It was a small trading town. Let me see, how would I compare it? Just a small town where farmers, ranchers went on horseback and by wagon, usually on Saturday. It was a very, very busy place. Horses tied in front along the street. Wagons in yards and people doing business in local stores and on the roads going into town you’d meet your neighbors and so on. That was the sad thing about going back now it’s –- those places are dead –- they’re empty. And I’m taken back to the time when they were very busy towns and I suppose Camargo had 500 residents but the story about the railroad . . . the railroad came down from Woodward to Elk City. Elk City is on the main highway through southern Oklahoma and I well remember, I could not have been more than five years old, but I remember that we drove west a couple of miles to see the first train come down on this railroad. In about 1962 or 3 I was invited to go to Oklahoma City to teach in the Oklahoma Museum of Art for 10 days. We were there for 10 days and we had a spell of three or four days so I took Pat into western Oklahoma where I was born and we went to Camargo -– rather deserted now. We were having lunch at the only place in town where you could get lunch and some railroad men came in and I don’t know how I got into conversation with them but in some way I told them that I had seen the first train come down and one of these men in a striped cap and overalls – he leaned back and he said, “Well, my God.” And I said, “What’s the matter?” He said, “We brought the last train down today.”

SA: What a coincidence. That’s really something.

MZ: But any rate I bring that in so that you see that that was a remote place and when I was child Oklahoma City was as remote as New York would be for us now. It’s just something we knew was there someplace.

SA: Well would you mind me asking a little bit about where your family came from and about what time they arrived in that part of the country?

MZ: Well, let’s see, I, probably, I was born in 1908. They came when Oklahoma was still a territory. I think I escaped being born in the territory by three years. And I would say that my parents were probably married, then, it must’ve been three or four years, possibly three or four years before I was born. So that would put them there just about the time Oklahoma became a territory, which I believe was in 1903 or 6, I forget.

SA: But they had lived there and been raised there before that?

MZ: No. As I told you, my father, his two brothers and his father came down out of Kanses to settle on land and I imagine they came, either about 1900 or 1902. And then my mother came from Iowa to teach school and to take up a homestead. I think her homestead was a quarter of section, it’s called. A section is a square mile. The homesteads –- I think most of ‘em are a quarter suchen. Now my father and his –- let’s see, his father had a homestead and she had a homestead and at one time we lived on her homestead. They built a new house on her homestead when I was a child.

SA: And did that constitute the ranch, too, then?

MZ: Yes. Yes. It’s a little romantic to use the term “ranch,” at that time. I think they considered themselves farmers. They raised cattle and they shipped cattle but they raised grain, also. And shipped grain. But they thought of themselves as farmers. Nowadays I just naturally, for some reason, say I was born on a ranch in western Oklahoma but maybe that’s the aura of the west that I relate to or something.

SA: Perhaps, but also the fact that it was stock that they were raising.

MZ: Yeah. Yeah. In the west and California and the far west, I think that’s a habit to call it a ranch rather than a farm.

SA: Well, what is your ancestral background?

MZ: My father’s people, the name Zornes comes from Alsace in France. We were in Alsace two years ago and a great many people in the phone book in Severn are named Zorn, Z-O-R-N. He was French. His people migrated to this country too –- by way of Canada -– two or three generations before my father. And then on his mother’s side, I think it was primarily German.

On my mother’s side, she was Scotch, Irish and English on her father’s side and German on her mother’s side. Her father’s father fought on the northern side in the Civil War. No, they were German -– my mother’s. It was on my father’s side -– his father’s side was on southern. Her mother’s side fought in the northern army during the Civil War.

SA: Interesting. Was yours a religious family?

MZ: Yes, in that I think my father had too much religion because he wasn’t religious. It just seemed to me that he had too – had gotten too much regulated religion as a child and he rebelled against it. All my life I have shared his antipathy for religion.

SA: For organized religion and such?

MZ: Organized religion. And my mother -– I think it was a very ordinary or proscribed –- the church was more or less in her childhood but I don’t think they were particularly religious people.

SA: What part did nature play in your youth?

MZ: Well, as I think back upon it, I have determined that a painter naturally has -– or that is – let’s put it this way -– possibly he has benefitted by a country life and the chance in childhood to be free, to dream around without very much regulation. Now I had my chores and I had to work as a child. In fact, I feel it was a very good thing that I learned to work because to succeed as a artist, you have to work and I had that ingrained into me, certainly. But I also look back upon lots of free time and lots of just wandering around the canyons and the fields and, with dogs, and I must’ve had a lot of idle time or at least time when I wasn’t severely put to something.

SA: So you really do look back on that with fond memories?

MZ: Yes, I do. I think I had a very natural, rather free, in some ways, a free childhood.

SA: And you have a sister?

MZ: Have one sister. Yes. She was three years younger than me.

SA: And what’s her name?

MZ: Her name was Virginia. She died this past year.

SA: And what are your parents’ names?

MZ: My father’s name was Frances –- James Frances Zornes and my name is actually James Milford Zornes. My mother’s name was Clara Delphine Lindsey. Her maiden name was Lindsey. Lindsey is a Scotch clan or is a minor clan identified with one of the larger clans, I think. There are the ruins of a Lindsey castle in Scotland. I’ve often intended to go there and paint watercolors of it. Maybe sell them to the Lindseys.

SA: You should do that. Well, so was it about at age seven, then, that you moved to Boise?

MZ: Yeah. Well, we moved to Idaho and we lived in the vicinity of Boise. If you know the area –- we lived up on the bench above the town –- a suburb of Boise.

SA: And you were about seven years old then?

MZ: Yes.

SA: What precipitated the move that time?

MZ: Well, life in Oklahoma wasn’t very -– the prospects were poor. Farming and ranching was difficult. It was dry farming and depending upon natural pasture lands for cattle. The story was that people gradually drifted away from there and my grandfather was identified by his stubbornness in staying. People would leave and he would buy their farms and that family still –- a half-sister still’s living there. They were land-poor people and I think during the last year and maybe even now they survive on oil lease funds. I know that just recently my sister and I, while she was still alive, and her son negotiated the thing, we gave over any claim that we had to any land there simply because our share amounted to so little, and it enabled other members of the family to take over and do something with the country. The land –- the country has deteriorated. Land has eroded and it certainly hasn’t anything like the prosperity it had when I was a child there.

I suppose if they ever find –- ever really get into that country to drill for oil, I suppose it’s there but it’s been years and years. The big companies will lease lands that have a potential for oil and they’ll pay a small amount to people living on it just to hold the right to drill someday. It doesn’t amount to much --It’s poor income but I think in recent years that family has depended a lot on just oil leases.

SA: Now, what did your father intend to do when he moved to Idaho, then?

MZ: Well, I don’t think he had very definite prospects. See –- what actually happened was that he, my father had a business all of his life, regardless of anything else he did, of buying property, improving ‘em and selling them. We lived in many different houses because he would buy run-down property. He was very capable of putting a place into a nice-looking spot. He’d tear down the outbuildings, take the lumber and build one good building. He would clean up and mow the land until he had a very pretty place and then he would sell it. And he did that up until he was 94 years old.

SA: And so he was planning on doing that, to some extent?

MZ: Well, I don’t think that was never a plan. It was just something that he was always doing. Now, he went to work, let’s see, what was his first job? I really can’t think what it was. He worked for the Boise city in the park. He worked in the park system doing caretaker work. So that was one job that he had. And then we had a smaller tract of land and we did truck gardening. I remember there was a small berry farm and I had a lot of the work to do on these -– in this because it was something that we did outside of his job. And I had to be responsible for a lot of that.

SA: I can imagine. Well, you started to go to school there, then, in Boise and what kind of schooling did you have?

MZ: Well, let’s see, it was the Franklin school and I went to grammar school. I think I must’ve -– I must’ve gone from the sixth grade into high school. Oh no, I did the first three years of high school in Idaho and then I came to California to finish my last year of high school.

SA: Well, did you have art instruction? At any point when you were growing up?

MZ: No.

SA: In either Oklahoma or Idaho?

MZ: Let’s see -– no, I didn’t. Oh, I started being an artist in Oklahoma. In fact, I won some kind of a school prize in painting when I was still in lower grammar school.

SA: When you were still a child, really, then?

MZ: Yes, my mother taught me to draw, actually. Being isolated in a big area with school years quite sketchy, she really taught me to read and write and to draw at home. More or less she taught me to read and write and to be interested in drawing simply because she was a busy ranch wife and working with possibly a couple of hired girls quite a bit of the time. In order to keep me quiet and busy it was one of the things that she did, so that when I did go to school, having the aura of being the kid who could draw or did draw, I was always sort of the artist even as a small school kid. But I didn’t have actual art training, other than some way or another I remember the visiting – what was it? My first school years in Idaho there would be a visiting art teacher. She’d come once a day or something like that. This is the way to draw an apple and put a stem on it, you know. And I remember very little of art training.

SA: Did you carry sketch books with you or anything like that . . .

MZ: Well, I think it was just like a kid. He’d sit down and do it and maybe . . . Oh yes, I remember one thing and I shouldn’t forget it because I often repeat it. I think this was in Idaho, too, or my last year in Oklahoma because I remember the teacher. It was on Friday and she told us to put our books aside and we were to stand up and say what we were going to do when we were grown. And I remember she wanted us to say that we were going to do this, too, or something like that. Well, I remember – and I joke about this – I was probably a dull, smart aleck kid and I got up and said that I was going to travel all over the world and paint pictures. And I always – this is my byline. I was canceled out by a little girl in back of me because she got up and said she was – “When I get big I’m going to have a baby and I think I will, too.” And the kids were saying they were going to be a policeman or a sheriff or something but I think just out of sheer show-off, I was going to be an artist and travel all over the world and I’ve often said this because it has come true. That’s exactly what I did.

SA: About how old would you have been then? Do you have any idea?

MZ: Oh, six, seven years old. I didn’t have any actual art training until I had work in high school, in San Fernando High School during the last year of high school when I got here.

SA: Well, what interests did you have as a child or in adolescence that you can remember other than drawing . . .

MZ: I think, actually, about the only interest I can recall was that I wanted to travel. Even now, if you go back to Oklahoma, western Oklahoma, it’s sorta rolling, flat country and if you stand on a relatively high place, the world gets to be a blue line in the distance and I somehow still have the . . .

[SESSION 1, TAPE 1, SIDE B]

MZ: . . . or one of the other big companies and things would come from big stores and you always looked forward to Christmas ‘cause watercolors and drawing things would usually be one of the presents that they got for me.

SA: That’s wonderful. And so she, your mother, probably helped you figure out how to use those.

MZ: Yes. I remember that she – when I was just a baby – they had taken a trip west and they had visited some of my father’s relatives in Washington and some of my mother’s relatives here in California and it seemed, and she often mentioned this, that there was a family of cousins, my father’s cousins, in Washington. And they were young and she was very proud of a little drawing that one of these cousins had made for her. It seemed that it was a family somewhat oriented toward painting and drawing. Possibly her telling me about them had something to do with my doing it.

SA: I’ve also heard you mention something about an uncle Charlie Zornes.

MZ: Yes. Charlie Zornes was one of those cousins. Later on I got to know him here in California. He had been one of the Wright brothers’ mechanics. And he’d gone back east because he was interested in airplanes and when they invented or made their flights, he was one of the first on hand to . . . and then he built airplanes. He was kind of a grizzled man and crippled up quite a bit ‘cause he’d been hurt in a couple of falls in the airplanes. Out here and years later when I was taking newsreel pictures I covered a story on him. He had a set up out in Victorville where he was building a powered glider. I’ll tell about that a little later in sequence. But he was the artist, inventor, actor, jack-of-all-trades and the joke was that when I showed too much interest in drawing there was some danger of my becoming an Uncle Charlie. And the truth was I admired Uncle Charlie.

SA: You would’ve loved to become like Uncle Charlie. Who wouldn’t? He sounds like a very colorful character. Well, were there any other important role models or mentors in those early years?

MZ: Yes. Of course I had great affection for my grandfather on my mother’s side. He had a great way with kids. And one of her brothers (this is amusing, too) when I was a child, he was the great fellow. He knew how to talk to us and had all kinds of ideas. Uncle Herb was the one we always hung around. Years later when I was teaching at Pomona College, I got a new Mercury car one spring just as the term ended. We got in the car and drove to Idaho where he was a rancher and I’ll never forget – he had become very religious. We arrived at their ranch on a Sunday afternoon and here he was in his blue serge suit and the deacon of the church was there for dinner and everything was very solemn and he was no longer the happy uncle Herb that I had known when he was a -– no, Allen. That was uncle Allen when I was a child. My grandfather had this habit, isolated as it was, things came to us through traveling salesmen. And if a book salesman or a phonograph salesman or a large picture or portrait salesman arrived he would always buy it because his attitude was maybe it’s something that the family needs. But that was one of the choice benefits I had as child was to be in the attic in my grandmother’s place poring over many books that were stacked up there. And I think it engendered a love for books. I well remember the big sale that was made when they left the country. You know what a big farm sale is? Everything is put together and there’s a big day, a big lunch prepared and a professional auctioneer comes and all the people come and they buy the cattle and the horses and everything and I remember when the books came up for sale, lots of them, just piled in lots, and it was a blow to me. I couldn’t understand. I could hardly stand the idea that all the books were going.

SA: So would that sale have been when you left . . .

MZ: When we left Oklahoma. ‘Cause my mother’s people and my father, let’s see, the two families left just about the same time. Because one of her brothers had gone to Idaho and had taken up land -– bought land and I think my grandfather had bought land with him. That was independent of my father. My father was not the first favorite with his in-laws ‘cause he was a Socialist.

SA: Oh, really?

MZ: And my grandfather was a Democrat but he was a very conservative one and quite fiercely conservative. And he had three son-in-laws. I heard him tell a man once that he had three son-in-laws. One was a horse trader, one was a Socialist, and the other was a damn fool. I heard him say that.

SA: Better to be the Socialist than to be the damn fool.

MZ: Well, my father didn’t back down and I remember lots of arguments. My father, he never was a card-carrying Socialist because they weren’t that well organized but I well remember that he was very . . . There seemed to be a newspaper called Appeal to Reason and W.E.B. DuBois was quite a hero in those days, a Socialist leader. I thought of her name the other day because my grandfather would say this name with great scorn. It was a woman. Socialist. But at any rate, because of that, it’s funny –- I’ve been very non-political most of my life ‘cause I’ve been busy being an artist and gradually I’ve developed a feeling that it’s kind of a lost cause to spend too much time being politically oriented. But I’ve always had liberal leanings simply because . . . I’m sure you’re either born into a family in one category or the other and there’s a . . . what do they call it? What is the term? It’s a screen that you’re caught with and it’s hard to get through that screen. And I was screened to be a, more or less, to be a liberal in my thinking because of my father’s influence.

SA: Well, that’s very interesting. You moved from Boise to San Fernando, I think, when you were around 17. Does that sound about right? Because you had your last year of high school in California.

MZ: I believe I was 19 before I graduated.

SA: We can check on the date later so . . .

MZ: No, I was in my junior year in this country high school playing football. I got hurt, and I was hit in the eye and for a time I was cross-eyed vertica and I had my eye pulled out of kilter –- the muscles or tendons were pulled. My father took me to doctors in Boise and I have him to thank for this, too. He went to two or three eye specialists and they all said that I’d have to have heavy lenses to pull these things back. Well, somehow he didn’t like that idea and he finally found a chiropractor who did six months massaging of my eyes until it finally worked away. This pulling. Well now I’m not sure whether time did or he did it, but I still have it. If I look this way or this way, my eyes pull out of . . . But it has never been a problem. Even now with my . . .

SA: Isn’t that wonderful.

MZ: . . . eye problems, the doctors tell me that has nothing to do with it. But at any rate -– let’s see, where were we?

SA: I was asking you about the move to California.

MZ: Oh, yes. All right. My father (it was primarily our own situation) he was a working man. It was a hard life. We owned a little property but I suppose California beckoned for more jobs, better life, some way or another. And a lot of people were interested in coming to California and my father was determined to come to California and he did go away in the spring –- or no, he went away in the fall. We had a truck and he had done, among other things, odd jobs with this truck and I carried on. I was a pretty husky kid by that time. 17. And I was able to, if things came along, haul something. And I well remember some pretty difficult things in the winter there. Managing a truck on frozen streets and things like that. But at any rate, I was quite capable so he came to California and got work and got started down here, leaving us to come along in the spring. My parents came, my mother and sister came down, and I lied about my age. Oh, I was 17, I can remember distinctly now because I lied about my age because I had to be 19 to get on a government survey job. A friend of mine who was working on what’s known as the –- what is it called? That survey called? General Land Office Survey. This kid had worked on this survey one season and he told me something about it. I wanted to do it and I was knocked out of school that spring because of this eye business. So it looked like I would have to lose school – year of schooling and you had to be 19 to qualify. I was tall and he introduced me to the surveyor in Boise who’s crew I went out on and we told him I was 19 years old and I got on and I worked that summer. We were sectionalizing townships along the boundary west of Yellowstone so my family had come down in the spring and I didn’t come down until the fall. Well, that put me two months late for my senior year and I hadn’t been an outstanding student in school but we lived in San Fernando at that time and I wanted to graduate, I talked with the teacher and I well remember the old lady who taught chemistry. And I went and talked to her. She said, “No. You could never catch up in chemistry in order to graduate.” And as I walked out, the old lady yelled back at me, she said, “Will you work?” And I said, “Yes, I’d work.” She said, “Well, we’ll work and maybe you can do it.” And I became, strangely enough, having been an indifferent school student, because I had to graduate and was in this strange, big school, which was entirely new to me, I was so intent upon graduating –- I was second in scholarship for my class.

SA: Isn’t that something?

MZ: There was a Mexican boy, I remember, by the name of Jesus something or other. He was from Mexico, he was a Mexican immigrant –- he was the top in scholarship and I was from Idaho and I was second.

SA: Isn’t that something? You were up to the challenge it sounds like.

MZ: Yeah. And, also, in athletics I’d never been a good – they did nothing but play ball it seemed. I wasn’t a good ball player. I seemed to have poor coordination and, possibly, poor eyesight then –- or that is for acuteness in making ball plays but any rate I had toughened up during the summer of surveying so that I went out for the mile and I was the -– I got my letter in running the mile and I held that for two years after I graduated –- the big San Fernando -- you know, Hollywood, San Fernando League. Held that for two years and to have any credit as an athlete was such a boon to me that I even went all out for that. So it just shows that if a kid is motivated enough he can probably do it.

SA: Well, did that move affect you in any way? It sounds positive.

MZ: Oh, yes. Of course, that was during the Depression and to get out of high school and to try and get a job, that was really a rough situation. The result was –- and I hope I’m not wandering too much here.

SA: No.

MZ: But, when I got out of high school in San Fernando, I really had gotten involved in hack writing. How did I get going on that? I was very ambitious. I thought of being a journalist. I don’t know whether it was that well-defined but I was hack writing and I would sell photographs and some captions to Scientific American and Popular Science. They would buy photographs and captions and then the old Popular Mechanics –- it no longer exists, I guess. But after I had submitted to them several times, they would send me assignments. And one time, because I had worked on this survey during the summer and had this experience, I proposed writing an article about the public surveys. It had to do with the logistics of packing. And they wrote back and suggested that I write an article on public lands and they even loaned me photographs and told me where to get photographs and so one of the first articles I ever wrote was for Popular Mechanics.

SA: Now, this was right out of high school?

MZ: Right after high school. And it happened that I was in San Fernando. There was a cactus farm. A fellow had approximately five acres of huge cactus and he was harvesting these cactus apples and in writing the article I found out that those cactus apples were shipped to New York to make cactus candy. Well, I was sitting, writing some notes and the old man was sitting on a bench nearby and he asked me questions. Asked me what I was doing or something and I told him I was writing an article about this cactus farm and he got to asking me where I was in school and then he asked where I was going to college. Well I hadn’t thought of going to college. And the old man said, “Well surely, if you plan to be a journalist, you’d go to college.” Well, it was a short conversation but I decided right then and there that’s what I would do. I didn’t have the best scholastic record except for that last year so a friend of mine who was a doctor’s son in San Fernando (he wasn’t a very good student either and he had gone up to Santa Maria Junior College) and I headed up there and went to junior college the first year. Then later I came back and my father had bought an orange grove south of Pomona College and so I went up and had the audacity to apply for entry into Pomona College.

SA: So you just decided you wanted to go there and applied?

MZ: I just applied and I knew so little about what was required and one of the old professors told me – no, it was the president of the college –- his daughter was in my class, it turned out. And she told me years later that she was not a good student and I admitted that I hadn’t been and she said, “We got in -– we got to go to Pomona because they needed bodies.” That was during the Depression and they did, they grabbed me. I went in with a rating of Sophomore in Pomona College.

SA: Now, wasn’t it a fairly expensive private school? Even then?

MZ: Well, I don’t know how expensive. I know it’s become very expensive since. But they gave me a scholarship. Because I could claim my training in high school and because I was really determined now that I wanted . . . I’m getting tangled here . . . When I came off these surveys, I went to Otis Art Institute for a while.

SA: Right. That’s what I thought.

MZ: Then I came out and could live at home, and because I was going to art school and because I wanted to continue an art education they gave me Sophomore rating and they gave me a scholarship.

SA: Let’s see. You went up to Santa Maria Junior College right after high school.

MZ: And then I wasn’t satisfied or really oriented to the idea of continuing to go to college so I went to San Francisco and I enrolled in Heel’s Engineering School.

SA: Now what made you decide to go to engineering school?

MZ: Well, it was just an idea and I think . . . oh, I know now. In the junior college in Santa Maria I did some work for and lived in the home of one of the art teachers and I took one drawing class from the man of the family. They were both teachers. And because it was a very good drawing, they got all excited that I should be studying art. Well, I still was not convinced that I wanted to be an artist as a profession. I kept skirting all around it. So then it occurred to me that I wanted to be involved in architecture. So I went up to San Francisco and, first of all, I had to find a way to live before I could enroll in the school and the first thing I did was find a place where I could work for my food and lodging in a boarding house. This woman kept several boarders. And then I enrolled in the school. I remember I’d ride downtown on the cable car. I think I had the idea I wanted to stay in San Francisco so I was looking for a job, too and that was hard at that time. I pounded the pavement in any spare time I had. At any rate I finally got settled and went to the engineering school and I got along fine with the drawing. I wasn’t good at math. I remember the math teacher was a whiz at giving us all kinds of shortcuts. Bypassing all the prescribed courses and yet it was a little too much for me and I had this longing to travel so I decided I’d get work on a ship. And I even thought of stowing away on the Lurline. I think that was the ship that went out to Hawaii at that time. And I lost my nerve and didn’t stay. I went onboard and I was going to hide and have them find me when we were in mid Pacific but I didn’t do it. I’ve often regretted it. Would’ve been an adventure. But I finally gave up the idea that I could ship out of San Francisco. During the Depression every man that had ever gone to sea went back to look for a job on a ship. So then I hitchhiked to . . .

SA: Probably times were already hard.

MZ: Yeah. And I came down by a little coastline ship to my folk’s place and I didn’t want to stay at home because without a job I didn’t want to be hangin’ on my parents. So then I hitchhiked to San Diego and I gave up the idea of shipping out of there and I started from San Diego and hitchhiked across the United States and there were a few incidents. I remember in Galveston I tried to get a ship and one of the amusing things that happened there –- you -– the way you got a job is to sit in the shipping office and they would call out, “We need so many able seamen.” I mean, “We need a Coal Passer. We need an ordinary seaman.” Whatever. And so the system was to go up and show discharges from other jobs on ships, and if it was a contest between two or three, it’d be the one who had the most discharges that would get the job. Well, I wasn’t getting a job and there was another old man, a sea-faring man, he was quite elderly. He told me it was ‘cause he was too old, reason why he wasn’t getting a job. But any rate we buddied a little bit and one afternoon he said, “Well, let’s go eat.” And I said, “Where we going to go eat?” I didn’t have any money and he didn’t seem to have any either. And I was gettin’ pretty desperate and so we just went onboard a ship, a tanker and we said we’ll wait a while ‘til the crew comes out. They were in the mess –- in the galley having mess and pretty soon they all got up and we just walked in and sat down and the people just brought us some food and I was surprised at this, you know. And then he explained to me, he said, “It’s customary if you’re a seaman and you’re looking for a job and you can’t eat, well, they’ll let you on the ships.” He said they all know what the situation is. So I was there for possibly a week tryin’ to get work on a ship and that’s the way we were –- you didn’t fool ‘em more than once a day.

[SESSION 1, TAPE 2, SIDE A ]

SA: This is the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. An interview with Milford Zornes on the 18th of July 1999 at his studio home in Claremont, California. The interviewer is Susan Anderson. This is session one, tape two, side A.

MZ: But I had enough in Virginia and across the south. You could get a room for 50 cents and I remember all the rooms were old. Southern mansions had become rooming houses. Four-poster beds and that sort of thing. And since I traveled and had the romantic idea of the south and all this -– these things all were exciting to me. I can’t remember what my first job was in New York but I got the job of a standby. Oh no, I went to the shipping office first. Somewhere in that area you could get a hamburger for a dime and you could get a room, a cold water room in Hoboken. It must’ve cost me so little that I could manage it but there wasn’t heat in the room. It was cold. And I was spending my time in shipping offices trying to get work on a ship and finally I got a job as standby on a Moore-McCormick ship. The Moore-McCormick line [unintelligible] between Scandinavia and New York. And it was cold and wintery weather and I had to go over to Hoboken. The ship was in Hoboken. And our job was to clean out the holds of this ship. Grain was rotted in the hold of the ship and we had to scoop this stuff up in buckets and pull it up and it could be dumped. I was a kid and these guys were taking advantage. Whenever they could they’d work down below. It was stinking and a nasty job but it was warm, at any rate. I was up on deck dumping this stuff in the cold, blistering wind and I worked at that a couple of days. Then we had come up at noon to have lunch. And I told the mate that I wasn’t going –- I wasn’t staying on deck. I was going below. I said, “I’ve been the one on deck all the way though.” And he said, “Well, you’re kind of a smart guy telling what you’re going to do and what you can’t do.” And he was kind of angry and he said, “What are you here for anyway? What are you doing here?” He said, “Are you a sailor?” And I said, “No, I wanted to get a job.” He said, “What kind of a job?” I said, “I wanted to get a ship –- I wanted to work my way to Europe or work my way someplace.” And he said, “Well, what’s the matter? Are you a seaman?” I said, “No.” And he said, “Then you have no discharges?” I said, “No.” He said, “I don’t want you around here. I’ll give you a hand full of ‘em.” So he took up where his office was on the bridge or someplace on the ship and he made out a whole handful of fake discharges. Said, “Take ‘em and get yourself a job.” He said, “You don’t belong here.” He said, “You don’t seem to like to work.” I said, “I like to work but I’m not going to take the brunt of it all the time.” And he said, and he kind of laughed, he said, “Well, you’re kind of a smart aleck. Get out of here.” And so then I went back to the shipping office and with some discharges I could shovel. And I remember a call came for four coal [unintelligible] and I started to take the job. And a little guy said, “Kid, you don’t want that job.” And I said, “I wanted to get out of here.” And he says, “Well,” said, “I don’t know how strong you are but they’ll kill you and it won’t do you any good and you won’t have any fun in Europe by the time you get there.” He says, “Stick around. You’ll get a job.” So I stayed. I turned it down and eventually they called for a ordinary seaman on a ship going to Copenhagen and so I went and got my stuff and got aboard and I’ll have to tell you about how I entered into my first trip to Europe. I worked on the ship.

SA: So that’s the so called, “Merchant Marines,” then?

MZ: Well, yes. The “Merchant Marines” seem to be a general term. If you’re working on merchant ships you were in the Merchant Marines.

SA: All right.

MZ: And I need to tell a little bit about the voyage itself. I went aboard. Oh yes, I went aboard and we were putting our stuff away in focsal. Focsal is a word for forecastle but on modern ships it’s usually aft. And then all these guys who had signed on started walking off and they said, “Kid, are you going to stay?” And I said, “Well, what’s the matter?” And he said, “The boatswain is coming on is a bum that nobody’s going sail with him. They said, “He’ll kill ya,” or something but any rate this big Brooklyn bum came aboard. He was the boatswain. And he -– these guys were leaving and he called ‘em all kind of names. He knew a lot of them. And it was quite a row and they had to bring on a whole new crew before we could sail but he – this guy turned around and he says, “Well, all right kid, you’re going, too?” And I said, “No, no, I’m not going.” He says, “You’re going to stay?” And then he started swearing at me and telling me what to do. When he thought I was going to stay he started treating me rough right off. But I stayed and it was a whole day before we sailed. I had to do all kinds of clean-up stuff. And then when we got out beyond the Statue of Liberty they started. They had collected garbage on deck the whole time they’d been in port. And when they got out beyond the Statue of Liberty I had to start shoveling this stuff overboard and there was wind and I’d get some of it back in my face. And it was sour garbage. And then I got seasick. And I thought, of course, I thought I was going to die. I had never been seasick before and this ailment was beyond my comprehension.

SA: Yes.

MZ: So I went to my bunk and in a few minutes he just literally came and set me on the deck manually. He asked, “What the so-and-so are you doing in your bunk? We’re sailing.” Okay. I told him I was sick. Well, that was too awfully bad. And he wasn’t limited in liquor and he says, “So, you’re sick? We’re sailing. You’re going to work.” So I had to work all that day and at noon or about around noon he came out of the mess and was handin’ me a half loaf of bread and I didn’t want any bread. I was sick. But, “Eat it. Eat it.” And the truth is that eating this bread would absorb, and I got to feeling better after eating this bread and so by the evening he said, “Well kid, you did pretty well.” And from then on I got along pretty well with him. He worked me like a dog but we got to be kind of buddies. So that when we got to Copenhagen there’s this sca- –- I never could keep it straight. There’s a scagarack and a catagate. I think the Scagarack is where you first go in past the Comburg Castle. You may know that the Comburg was the model that Shakespeare used for Hamlet. They later filmed Hamlet at that castle. So here we were sailing into Copenhagen harbor and here was the castle standing and the sailors were already beginning to get drunk. And he was half drunk already. Well, and I should say that the night before we got into Copenhagen -– a lot of these sailors were illiterate and they had me writing letters for them. They were going to get paid and they made me promise that I would take half of the pay and put it in these letters. They knew they’d get drunk and this was my first real lesson in integrity.

SA: Really. I can imagine.

MZ: Because I’ve lived a sheltered life with people who were always honest and to be with this rough bunch of sailors was, you know, very callow. But here was a guy telling me to write a letter to some hotel in Hong Kong and to put in some money to pay his bill. And these guys telling me to put in some money because they wanted to send half home to the family. The rest of it was going to get drunk. It was a prescribed procedure. So I wrote letters. Then the first night in Copenhagen we were settling in a inn past Comburg Castle. This lunkhead of a boatswain. He comes and he puts out his arm and he says, “Okay, kid. He comes over here to see the castles – the god damn castles. Well, here are your castles.” Speaking in Brooklynese, you know.

SA: Well, about how long were you in Europe total? That first trip?

MZ: Well, it couldn’t have been much more than a month or so because I jumped ship. And what you do is you’re in port. You’re supposed to draw half your pay, get what liberty you can, but stay on the job and stay on the ship. But if you jump ship, then it’s desertion. And some ports -– they put you in jail. As soon as the police catch up with you, you go to jail. And then they find your ship and they put you back on it. Some ports have no concern about where a sailor’s supposed to be and it happened that in Copenhagen, as soon as I got my half pay, I got out of there and I had enough money take a ferry from Jutland to Cosuer. And I had the connection.

SA: All right. Where did you go then? You jumped ship and you left Copenhagen and you went to -– was it Germany?

MZ: I got to the German border and I saw the German consul there and he was loath to take a sailor’s passport but . . . he looked like Von Hindenburg and he was severe with me but he indicated that a sailor didn’t have any sense anyway. So he gave me a document giving me three weeks in Germany.

MZ: He said, “And in the end if the police pick you up well then you’ve got no protection.” And so I got out of Germany. I had time to ride a bicycle across Germany. I should’ve said -– in Cosuer there was a Danish man had a weaving, spinning mill and I had met him through a Danish family -– a friend in a Danish family when he visited in the United States so I took the opportunity to see him and he helped -– he sent an attendant out to help me buy a bicycle. I had enough money to buy a bicycle. And then I rode down to the German border.

SA: And so, basically, what you did is travel around Europe for short periods of time. Do you think you were there for a few months or was it . . .

MZ: No, it couldn’t have been any more than a month. I got to the –- I got into Luxembourg and was there a day or so and then I traveled. I had to sell my bicycle when I was in France ‘cause it was a lot of money. And I just simply walked the rest of the way to Paris. The New York Times had their offices in Paris and I tried to act like I could write a story about my trip on the ship and so forth but it was kind of a feeble attempt and they didn’t want it.

SA: Well, I think by this point, it is the Depression now?

MZ: Well, yes, it definitely was. And I don’t think you can put such close parameters on the Depression.

SA: It didn’t really necessarily start with the crash?

MZ: No. I think you’d have to say that there were a lot of things leading up to the crash.

SA: So this trip to Europe this time was not really about the culture, about the art. It was really about adventure.

MZ: . . . just adventure. I was just a kid. I had very little idea of art. I had no background in it really other than that my mother had taught me to draw. I had only a high school education. I wasn’t very much oriented to anything other than trying to decide . . . and when you’re a kid that age and you haven’t a family background of being oriented to the arts or, you know, I am amazed how little I knew or how dumb I could be or whatever.

SA: Like most of us at that age, I think.

MZ: Yeah. Yeah. When I find myself being critical of kids nowadays all I have to do is just think what did I know at that age? You know.

SA: It’s true. Well, did you get a chance at all to see any museums or did you . . .

MZ: Yes. Oh yes. I should -– at least -– I shouldn’t do myself too much discredit because I got in to the Louvre. I did see pictures in the Louvre but that’s strange, too, that for some reason there isn’t much that rubbed off. I can’t remember being particularly impressed or whatever. It’s probably just lack of remembering but . . .

SA: Well, maybe also hunger . . .

MZ: Well, I did go into the art galleries some. Then I finally found an American Sailor’s Relief Society and they made arrangements for me to ship home. I came back on the Berengeria.

SA: And so -– it just seemed to you that it was going to be too much of a struggle to try to . . .

MZ: Yeah. I was confused. I was kind of disoriented or disenchanted with this adventure idea. And -– yes and if you don’t know how to get work and – probably nowadays it would be a lot easier if you could know your way around, but I certainly didn’t and about the only thing I could think of was to get back on a ship. That was about the only thing -– so I went –- let’s see, what’s the French port? Le Havre. They sent me out to Le Havre and that’s where I went onto the Berengeria. And I really didn’t work coming home. It was more or less being sent home by the Sailor’s Relief Society.

SA: Well thank goodness for them. So you got to go back to New York, then?

MZ: I got back to New York and I decided I would hitchhike back to California. And I went to Hoboken. I got a job on a ship again and I hitchhiked down there and I went to shipping offices and got a ship coming through the canal.

SA: And that was on the SS Marian Otis Chandler?

MZ: Yeah.

SA: Now, I believe you did visit the Metropolitan in New York.

MZ: Yes, I did.

SA: It looks like you got your ship out of Baltimore and that you traveled around the east coast for a little while before you went back?

MZ: Well, I hitchhiked –- I traveled on the east coast by simply hitchhiking down from New York to Baltimore and then shipping out of Baltimore. Let’s see, what is the river? Then we sailed on the east coast and we went into this port in Florida. And then we sailed from there around through the canal. The process of going through the canal is interesting, in fact, I did have this experience. I was an ordinary seaman but they put me at the wheel. The seaman is at the wheel but he takes immediate, constant instruction from the mate in charge. And so here I had a hold of the wheel going down -– what is the name of the river? It’s an important river where you dock in Florida. And here are ships coming. We were going around the curve in the river and it looked like ships were running right ahead of us and this guy was telling how many turns to take on the wheel. And I don’t know why he didn’t take the wheel but that’s the way they do it. They instruct a seaman to do it. And I was beside myself. I was scared stiff. I was scared I’d make the wrong move. I remember once sailing out across the Atlantic -– I was at the wheel one day. They gave me a chance. The sailors humored me a little bit so they wanted me to have experience. I went up on the bridge when one of the able seamen was on watch. He had me take the wheel and he let me steer. Oh no, I remember. I was coming up the West Coast that this happened. They let me take the wheel and I remember this Scandinavian guy says, “Slim, look at the lake.” And I looked back and it was like this, you know. And the old Dutch boatswain, he wasn`t helping much. He said if this lake was straightened out, we`d be in San Pedro two days early. But any rate this other fella said, “You don`t steer a boat like a car.” Because you have to start drifting and when it drifts so far you have to start drifting back and keep your eye on the compass and see if you can’t keep somewhere in balance.

SA: Well that’s great. You certainly did have that taste of adventure you were looking for. And it does sound like it had some effect on you, too.

MZ: Well, it did, of course. I think I’m amused with myself that I had a taste for adventure and I wasn’t a very brave adventurer. I’m not the kind of a guy who looks for –- or never have. I suppose I’ve always kept on the safe side of things. And I suppose I’ve survived because of that. I was wiry and strong but I wasn’t one of the most robust people and I never had very much of a background in rough living. But here I was always sticking my nose into the idea of doing these things and getting myself into . . .

SA: Well, you were probably a little naive.

MZ: Oh she’s got it. Yes, I think that was true. And yet there was always the idea more of travel. I was going to go anyway. Whatever the odds were.

SA: Exactly. Whatever it took. Well this might be a good place to end today because I know when you come back it’s really when you start your art career, in a certain sense. You enroll at Otis Art Institute soon after you come back, I believe?

MZ: I think there’s one thing we might add here.

SA: Okay.

MZ: Well, coming up the West Coast -– oh, by the way, on this ship out of the east, I was the lowest of the low because I was a wiper in the engine room title.

SA: Oh.

MZ: And when you’re a wiper in the engine room your job is to keep the engine room spic and span. Keep things picked up. And the oil spills and everything. And one thing I’d do, I had to go down under the fireboxes and scrape some old paint off and it was hot as blazes, of course. And I was actually below all the heat and could bear it but it was one of the hottest, dirtiest jobs you could imagine. Scraping on a hot area. The paint would just flake off and you’d have to scrape it off so it could be repainted and so forth. But I’d look out from down under these fireboxes and I’d look up into the engine room and I remember there’d usually be three or four men on watch in the engine room and they usually had their shirts off on account of the fire from the engines glistening on their naked bodies and something so dramatic. I think it was then and there that I just had a terrific urge to be a painter ‘cause this is –- it just seemed like it was so dramatic that that’s what I wanted to get. I don’t think I’ve ever painted a picture of an engine room.

SA: So you really wished you could have captured that moment?

MZ: Yeah. And the first thing I did when I got on the boat in Hoboken I was right on the side of the engine room. And when we sailed I decided I wouldn’t sleep to the West Coast because a steering engine is intermittent, you know, turn the wheel and it’ll start the engine. Turn the wheel and start the engine. But you got so used to that, that the first night in San Pedro with a silent engine, I couldn’t sleep. ‘Cause I didn’t hear the rattle of the engine. But I stayed all night that night because it was late and then the next day I got my pay and I went home to parents living in San Fernando. By then I was determined I was going to art school.

SA: You just made that decision?

MZ: The prophetic thing, interesting thing, I think, was that the Mary Otis Chandler was named after the Chandler family who owned the Times.

SA: Right.

MZ: And who gave their home for Otis Art Institute.

SA: Right.

MZ: That is their family home. And so I enrolled at Otis and the thrill was –- it was real art school. Typical art school.

[SESSION 2, TAPE 1, SIDE A]

SA: This is the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. An interview with Milford Zornes on the 7th of August, 1999 at his studio home in Claremont, California. The interviewer is Susan Anderson. This is Session 2, Tape 1, Side A. Okay. Well, let’s begin. Mr. Zornes, today we’re going to talk about your art education and development as an artist. But before we do that I would like to backtrack just a little bit. For the record, I think it would be a good idea to briefly clarify some of the things we talked about in our last interview and we talked about this just a minute ago. You were born and raised on a ranch in the farmland outside of Camargo until you were seven.

MZ: Yeah.

SA: Maybe I should ask you here –- what were you like as a child? I didn’t think to ask you that last time.

MZ: I suppose that would be the hardest thing to answer except that there was just my sister and myself and she was three years younger than I was, and so I was more or less a loner and I think that’s been one of my characteristics all my life, really. Not to be too much involved with other people and certainly as a child. And I think when I look back upon it it seems like one of the valuable things that came from my early childhood living in the country was that you spent a lot of time to yourself dreaming, imagining, exploring your immediate area. Somehow I believe that possibly could have been one of the . . . things by reason that I became somewhat introspective, and an artist, possibly.

SA: That sounds like it makes a lot of sense. Okay. Well, then you lived in Camargo, probably until about 1914 or so when you would’ve moved to Boise, Idaho and you would’ve been about seven. And then you lived there for about 10 years. Then, you think it was in about 1924 that your family moved to the San Fernando Valley.

MZ: Yes. As I had explained on the other tape, I believe, I worked on a government survey that summer. My parents came to California in the fall, I joined them in the . . .

SA: Okay. And you were working as a Lineman, right? On a survey crew?

MZ: Yes.

SA: For the U.S. General Land Office Survey?

MZ: Survey Service. Yeah.

SA: Okay. So in the fall of 1924 you joined your family in southern California?

MZ: Yes.

SA: Do you recall your first impressions of California?

MZ: Well, I certainly remember this experience. Coming from a more or less northern part of the United States and the atmosphere tropical, semi-tropical California. And I think the thing that impressed me more than anything else was the, even at that time, the sprawling southern California situation. Just seemed that you were in a urban situation everywhere you could go. Of course, it’s filled in a great deal more and it’s amazing that I thought it was that crowded at that time but coming from a wide-open country like Idaho it was quite an experience. I think the one impression that I remember more than anything else was my first view of the ocean.

SA: Why?

MZ: Because as a child, of course, reading adventure stories and reading of the sea I was so curious and excited about seeing the ocean and my first view of the ocean was from the Palisades of Santa Monica. And that made a lasting impression and I suppose though I had been fascinated by the sea, I’ve been in love with the sea ever since.

SA: Wonderful. So when you got here, to you, it seemed like Southern California was already rapidly developing then?

MZ: It seemed that if you drove from Pomona to San Fernando you were in some kind of an urban situation all the way through and actually, compared to what it is now, there was quite a bit of open space.

SA: I bet so. Well, did the move affect you in any significant way?

MZ: Well, it was a completely new ride for me. I had been only an indifferent student in my growing up but coming to California I had missed about two months of what could’ve been my senior year and I was intent upon graduating, if I could. And I well remember my interviews with my teachers when I entered San Fernando High School. I remember that lady who taught chemistry. She told me that I couldn’t graduate because I couldn’t pass chemistry with that loss of time but as I walked out the door she called and she said, “Will you work?” And I said I’d work so she took pains to coach me and for some reason this determination to graduate and falling in with teachers who really were willing to work with me, it turned out I was, I think, second in scholastic standing in my class. There was one little Mexican fellow, Jesus someone, who was only recently from Mexico who outdid me. He was top. He was the top in academic prowess.

SA: Well that’s really something. What about your family? Did the move affect your family in any significant way? Did they have a feeling of starting over or . . .

MZ: Oh, I think so. My father, of course, had been a rancher and in Idaho he worked at various jobs. He worked for the city for awhile in the park service. He was a working man and it was a -– we were a working family. It’s just one of those cases where you get a job that you can get ‘cause he was a very strong, very able man and he always made good at any job that he did. But in California he became quite well known for his ability to build and supervise big rock and gravel plants. Now, he wasn’t educated. He wasn’t an engineer. He wasn’t even a builder but his know-how was such that he built several of those larger plants and directed them and supervised them. And we prospered as a family. We prospered financially in California. Coming from the country and not having money it was quite an experience for us to know that the family was financially very stable because of his good earnings and I look back upon it as a kind of a very pleasant time and the heyday of building in California, too. Building homes.

SA: Now, this wouldn’t have been when he first came out, though, would it?

MZ: Well, no, well . . . his first jobs had to do with . . . He had a brother who was involved in the care of orange groves. There were spray crews and fumigating crews and he worked at various jobs before he was established here.

SA: Well, I’m going to move forward somewhat quickly now and kind of skip ahead. I would like to talk to you about your return to Southern California after your experience in the Merchant Marine. It looks like you returned to Los Angeles in 1929.

MZ: Yes.

SA: And that was the year of the actual stock market crash. You would’ve been about 21 years old.

MZ: Yes. Yes.

SA: At that point what was it like for you and your family? When you came back from the Merchant Marines.

MZ: Yes. Well, my father was pretty well established in his work in the rock and gravel business. And actually I don’t think we had any sense of problems as a family. Of course as a young man who’s trying to get a job and to get going it was a problem for me. But my parents were quite well situated.

SA: Okay. That’s interesting because they were almost better situated here in California in spite of the fact that the Depression was really taking . . .

MZ: They were. My father did prosper by coming to California. He later had losses because he invested in orange groves out in this Pomona Valley and that was a bad time to get into that.

SA: Okay. So did you enroll at Otis Art Institute soon after you arrived back in Southern California?

MZ: As I recall, and I think this may be reviewing something that we talked about the other day. During my travels in New York and Europe, I started looking at pictures and in galleries. That’s one thing I could do. I could get into art galleries. And those impressions along with the boys on the ships around through the canal, the experience of men on the ships and the sea, I came back with a pretty well established idea that I did want to be a painter or it may have been a little on the vague side but it certainly was something that I wanted to venture into. The idea of being a painter. And so my first thought was to go to an art school and the interesting almost paradox was the ship I came around on through the canal was named the Marian Otis Chandler. Named after the Chandler family in California and they are the ones who established or gave their home for the Otis Art Institute.

SA: Did that influence your decision to go there rather than Chouinard Art . . .?

MZ: Oh no. I don’t think I was aware of that at all at that time.

SA: Okay. Well what were your reasons for going there? If you remember.

MZ: I suppose it was simply because it was the first, the only art school I knew of. I’m just not sure that Mrs. Chouinard had organized Chouinard Art School when I first went there.

SA: I think she had. Unless we’ve got the dates wrong again.

MZ: Well, I suppose so but at least I wasn’t aware of it. And I simply went because that was the art school that I knew of and it seemed the logical choice.

SA: Was there any person in particular there that you wanted to work with or that you did work with?

MZ: No, I wasn’t aware enough of what was going on in art. Everything having to do with painting and art was such a vague thing for me. It’s possibly hard to realize if you’ve grown up with some kind of ordered education and direction you possibly have influences from your parents or friends but for me this was completely a nebulus idea. You just had very little background. You possibly have very little thought of what you’re going to do and, as I’ve explained before, I toyed with architecture. I toyed with the idea of going to sea. It was simply a young person feeling that he possibly has some value for something but he doesn’t know what it is.

SA: Well, who did you study with? Is this who you studied with? Was it E. Roscoe Schrader?

MZ: E. Roscoe Schrader. [Unintelligible].

SA: And F. Tolles Chamberlain? Did you study with F. Tolles Chamberlain, too?

MZ: Not at that time.

SA: Okay. So it was E. Roscoe Schrader?

MZ: Schrader was the one teacher I remember most definitely. Who was the other old teacher at Otis? Holmes. Ralph Holmes. I didn’t work with him but I knew him quite well and I remember him because Pat, my wife, studied with him later on. He was an oil painter.

SA: Okay.

MZ: In fact, I don’t know that there’s anyone who would have been designated as a watercolorist. Truth is I don’t think there was anyone, at that time. I think most of the painters at that time were involved either with oil painting or they worked in both mediums with equal interest or, perhaps in many cases, watercolor was simply their sketching medium. Now, in the case of F. Tolles Chamberlain, he felt that large watercolors was a barbaric practice and he assumed that watercolor painting was studied for oil painting or a sketching medium.

SA: But now at this time you hadn’t quite met him yet. Well, what was Otis like in those days?

MZ: Well, for an outsider -– a rugged kid who’s worked on surveys and on ships -- it was a sort of a kiddish place as far as I was concerned. I felt a little, how would I put it? It was a little bit of too, not a feminine attitude but too soft an attitude to be [unintelligible].

SA: Was it too frivolous for you?

MZ: I was a pretty rugged kid and, in fact, that was one of the reasons that I almost drifted away at that time because I remember I got a chance to go on a survey in Arizona and I grabbed it because it was kind of good to get out in the open and get away from the art school atmosphere. Later on, of course, I began to know what painting was and what the problems were and the disciplines were and I began to have more respect and became involved and at home in an art study atmosphere. But at that time you were young, you had kind of been around with more men than young guys, young kids, and it just was a foreign atmosphere.

SA: Um-hmm.

MZ: It’s a little hard to explain, I expect.

SA: No, I think it makes sense. Well, did you go there for very long?

MZ: No, not very long. I went for a few months and then I went off on this survey to Arizona and I’m trying to recall, then, how I came back into the situation. My next experience in school was Pomona College.

SA: Was it Glendale Junior College, maybe? Did you go there?

MZ: Yes. Yes. There again, I remember a friend of mine and I worked at a cannery in San Fernando. We got quite a little bit of money together and he went off to Moscow, Idaho and eventually went to the university there and I went directly from that job to live in Glendale and to go to Glendale Junior College.

SA: But you didn’t stay there very long, right?

MZ: No.

SA: I think you did go to Pomona College soon after that.

MZ: Yes, after this business of barnstorming around and working at this job and that job and trying that school, this school and my parents had bought an orange grove just down the road from Pomona College. I came home and there seemed to be such a definite opportunity. I was a little naive about it and sometimes it’s worthwhile to be naive because you do things that you wouldn’t do otherwise and I had the temerity to literally go up to Pomona College and seek entrance. And it turned out, as I learned later on, that they needed bodies at that time. And having had some schooling at Santa Maria Junior College and then at Glendale Junior College, I think in all truth, I think the registrar simply lumped this together and decided that I was good for sophomore. I went into Pomona College as a sophomore.

SA: Now, were you a little bit older than the other students?

MZ: Yes, I was because I had at least lost two years out of the ordinary time schedule that young people have for getting out of high school and going to college.

SA: Well do you think you were about 21?

MZ: Yes, I would have to be just about that.

SA: When you decided to go to Pomona College were you still deciding that you were going to be studying art there or . . .

MZ: Yes, I was interested in the art department. Definitely. And, as it turned out, as I explained, my work was accomplished enough that I won an art scholarship and it was, I think, the following semester because of my getting acquainted with Tom Craig. Tom had had somewhat the same experience that I had had. Now Tom’s brothers and one of his sisters were doctors and he had a background of a family of educated people. I think that the expectation was that he was to be a doctor but about the time he entered Pomona College he contracted TB and they had to live down on the desert. He had gotten acquainted with a lady painter down there and he got excited about painting so when he came back to Pomona – he and I were in just about the same situation. He was about two years late and both of us interested in painting and we became buddies for that reason.

SA: What was Tom Craig like?

MZ: Well, Tom Craig was a big burly fella. A gentle fella and he was a very alive, sensitive guy. He was excited about so many things. And, of course, he was very mentally alert. To me he was a very exciting guy and I was impressed, of course, because in my acquaintances with him I got acquainted with his brothers and his sister was a famous doctor around here. She was known as Doctor Craig. She was a famous Pediatrician.

SA: Isn’t that something?

MZ: And his mother was an impressive lady and my association with Tom and meeting people of his family and, of course, he was involved in botany. One of the first college vacations he wanted to write his -– I don’t know whether it was a doctor’s application for working for a degree, an upper-level degree. At any rate, it was incumbent upon him that he publish something and he was interested in a family of plants known as the gilias. It’s a branch of the ficus family. So he and I went on a hitchhiking trip. We carried our art materials and we carried blotter packs and we collected plants and painted. And hitchhiked and the amusing thing was when we were at Stanford or at Palo Alto we got a room in a motel so he could get dressed up and go to the botany department there and annotate their collection of the gilia family. So there was this amusing bumming around and at the same time painting and collecting and, of course, this was all quite new and exciting to me and I was just able to keep up. And then when we were back in school Tom handled his academic problem much better than I did because he was more of a trained scholar. But at least I can owe it to this keeping up with Tom was . . . it had a definite benefit in getting myself oriented into some kind of a realization of academic and artistic areas.

SA: Well do you think that you sort of really learned how to paint on those trips?

MZ: Oh yes. This has impressed me. As you know, you’ve been involved in this so-called California group. You’ve written about us and it turns out, what is it? about 25 of us are identified. Of course, there are a great many more artists who need, who deserve to be included in that, but I think one thing that has been of interest to me is the fact that the so-called Plein Air School, I believe, was made up more of trained artists who came out and painted the California scene. Then there was the advent of this young crowd pretty much headed by Millard Sheets. We were avidly, of course, we were going to art school. Millard was at Chouinard and certainly the thought of our training was uppermost but I think on the whole, wouldn’t you say with your experience, wouldn’t you say that we’ve been characterized by kind of a rough and ready learning to paint as we go?

SA: I think so.

MZ: And I think, frankly, I think that’s what gave us a lot of our vitality.

SA: And so was this experience of traveling around with Tom Craig your first time where you really got to practice being an artist and really practice your technique and that kind of thing?

MZ: Oh yes. We were painting and talking about painting and getting into shows when we could. I think the first things we ever showed was at the Mad Hatter Restaurant in Laguna Beach. Tom Lewis -– do you remember him? He was in Southern California at that time and for some reason Tom and I were sketching in Laguna and we met Tom Lewis and he’s the one who got us to show some pictures at the Mad Hatter. That was our first exhibiting experience.

SA: So at that point you were already meeting other artists of that school?

MZ: Well, yes, because we were at the college and I well remember Millard coming to lecture at Pomona College while I was a student there. I’ll never forget this young blonde guy. Mary was along and Owen was just a little baby and I remember Millard. I was quite impressed when Millard gave a talk and he showed some paintings. It wasn’t ‘til a year, about a year after that, that he actually came to Scripps to teach. But we did meet him at that time.

SA: And then did you actually take classes with him at Scripts then?

MZ: Oh yes. That’s quite an event here. Tom Craig and I were the first two students to demand the right to go from Pomona up to study with Millard and get credit for it. And I’m pretty, sure, that Millard found himself in the position he was teaching in a woman’s college -- and I think it possibly came as somewhat of a surprise. Here were some men students demanding the right to work with him and I think it gave him the idea, basically, to get involved in the Claremont College’s art center.

SA: I see.

MZ: I may be wrong. He may have had that idea from the beginning but I’ve always had the feeling that we had quite a bit to do with that.

SA: That could be. Would you talk a little bit more about Millard Sheets at this point?

MZ: Well, yes, of course. Millard Sheets has been very important to me and I suppose since this is an official record I’ll just be very frank about it. Millard, as you –- did you know Millard at all?

SA: I got to meet him . . .

MZ: He was a very strong personality. He had probably influenced Southern California art as much as anyone during his period. And, of course, coming under his influence, at that time, when he came to Scripps, he was sort of my mentor and I was fascinated by him because here was a young man and only a year older than I was who was already established as an artist. A very precocious fella. And I was impressed with everything that he did. Tom and I had quite a lot of contact with him because he was directing the shows at the L.A. County Fair. He did some famous exhibits during that time. And we acted as his assistants. And we discovered, of course, that Millard was always so busy that actually while he was holding down a teaching position, he wasn’t always there to teach but when he did teach it was an impressive thing. And I can’t recall any definite lesson that I got from him but his enthusiasm and his approach to painting that it was the real thing that it was not an arty thing. That it was real-life experience to paint and paint the world around you. So at that . . .

[SESSION 2, TAPE 1, SIDE B]

MZ: . . . due to satellites of Millard Sheets and it -– being naturally being young, eager to assist, one has to be a painter. I remember Tom and I discussing this with Millard one time. “What is this business where we’re getting to be known as your satellites painting?” And Millard mentioned –- what I’ve always remembered as a very intelligent response. He said, “Look, if I was not having some influence what would be the point of being with me?” And he said, “Remember that if you grow up in a home there’s influences in your home. Later on you’re going to get away from those.” And he said, “If you’re influenced by me and my way of painting you will get away from it because you’re both searching and you’re both hard at it –- truly approaching art as an exploration.” He said, “You’ll get away from any identification with me as time goes on.” He said, “I hope you won’t worry about it.” Well, I thought that was a good . . . and that’s what happened. As you know, in that school there’s a certain, the whole school painted with a certain attitude and approach but each one of us became individuals. But the unhappy thing was and something that had to happen, I’m sure. When I came back after the war and I was engaged to teach at Pomona College, Millard, being very aggressive and very ambitious for the art center, he more or less assumed because of our early associations that I would be his lieutenant at Pomona College. He had a strong idea that he wanted all of the art interest to be drawn to the center at Scripps. Well, by this time, I had a mind of my own, certainly, and I was adamant about holding the art department at Pomona College and I still believe that it was important to do it. So there was more or less a break there and the interesting thing about academic life is that it’s some kind of a contest going on and you’ll have so many people on this side and so many people on that side. So it was lots of fuss and Millard was an aggressive guy and if he wanted something he was going to have it and so he had his people who were working for his interest. There was a man by the name of [Kenneth] Foster who had come to Pomona College to teach art history and so forth. And Foster and I held out against Millard. We wanted to keep the art department and I’m glad that we held out because I think it would’ve disappeared. But at any rate there was a rift there and it never did quite resolve itself. I think Millard often felt that I was contesting his points of view and so forth and I did in many cases. It was just one of these cases. But I will say this and I believe that I can say this for myself that while I was openly critical of Millard in some cases, I never failed to give him an enormous amount of credit because I absolutely am sure that I would not have been able to identify myself as a painter had I not had this strong impact of a personality who stood for the things that I could understand about painting. You know as a young person, uneducated in art. Here’s a fella who goes out and paints barnyards and country scenes and you exhibit them and you find out there’s a world of art apart from the art. That art, traditions of art. There’s a whole open world for any active, alive person to simply enjoy the benefit of becoming equipped to draw and paint and put down his ideas in terms of every day experience and every day subject matter. And Millard gave that us here in Southern California and there are many –- he’s been accused of being an eclectic and I would accuse him of being eclectic in his work. He tends to copy [Thomas Hart] Benton and others. Draws so much from them but at the same time he was able to digest this and bring it to his own art in ways that was very creative, of course.

SA: So, do you remember him talking about people like Benton and the other Regionalists at that time?

MZ: Not a great deal. I remember he came back one time from New York and he had met –- who was this fella?

SA: Grant Wood?

MZ: I can’t think of who it was but he had, literally in one of the galleries in New York, this fella had given him some paintings. Told him he should study them and Millard had just studied, just painted these almost exactly like the painter and he didn’t talk much about ‘em. Millard didn’t want to have it known that he was being this much influenced. Millard had his quirks and you could stand on the side line and be critical but what you were doing was being critical of a very vigorous person who was doing things that you wish you were doing. I think I’m one person who can candidly look at his past experience with a crook and see all the flaws in it. I had made all the mistakes of lots of young painters who think they know so much that they could criticize their betters and find good reason ‘cause after all you’re looking at the egocentric things of active people. It’s awfully easy to be critical of things that in later years, these aren’t the things that mattered. They were just the idiosyncrasies that people had to have in order to have the vitality and the energy to do what they do.

SA: So when somebody like Barse Miller criticized Millard Sheets, how did that make you feel?

MZ: Well, at that time it angered me because I was a Millard fan, you see. And I think that Barse Miller had a little tendency to be sharp tongued about other artists. He was a very vital guy, too, but he was kind of excitable and not quite –- I don’t know how to put it. He was a good painter but some way or another -– I think Barse’s fault –- he was a child prodigy. Did you know that?

SA: No, I didn’t.

MZ: His mother was a painter and he was exhibiting when he was 12 years old. And he was sort of spoiled. He had the ability, he had a tendency to be critical of almost anyone else.

SA: Did you know him very well?

MZ: Not too well. I, of course, I was president of the California Watercolor Society in 1942 and we decided to, or I had conceived the idea of, opening the show in San Francisco because some of our members lived up there and we’d always opened the show in California. Well, he was on the jury and we had to travel to San Francisco as a group. I went up with the jury and on the trip he was quite critical of me for taking it upon myself to open the show up there and he was not the easiest fellow for me to get along with.

SA: Sounds like he was a vocal person.

MZ: What’s that?

SA: Sounds like he was vocal. That he pretty much said what he thought.

MZ: Well, yes. It was quite a bit of little cynical remarks.

SA: Well, by and large, though, didn’t the artists among that group get along pretty well?

MZ: Yes, I think it was a love/hate relationship. We were all so ambitious and so egotistical and so anxious to show off and yet we were excited about everyone else. The annual watercolor show was a big event and you went with all of the excitement of seeing what everybody had done and envious of whatever all the other artists had done. It was a very vigorous time when you thought as a group, and you contested one another, and you envied one another, and the interesting thing the war ended all of that. When we came back we were all going in different directions and there was never that feeling that we were a group the way it was before the war. But we were always interested and very excited to see what the other people had done during the year. It’s hard to explain but I suppose, you know, I admire the movement of French painters. I think that’s one of the most refreshing periods in all of history of art ‘cause they were the ones who took us outdoors and got us looking at seeing life on surfaces. And here was that group of artists, all differing, competing with one another. Very vigorously. Try working for identification. I really, maybe this is a little bit bigoted or taking a kind of an important attitude, but I think of our California group as being, somewhat, that same experience, as that group of French painters. ‘Cause here we were out here in California, somewhat isolated from the east in a country where you could be out-of-doors and paint out-of-doors and each one of us searching for the way to do it. I think I’ve gained vitality by having the feeling that we’ve been like the French painters.

SA: And what do you think held the group together? As you were saying, everybody was competing, in a certain sense, but you, also, were supporting each other, weren’t you?

MZ: Oh yeah. Of course. As I tried to explain, we definitely were very excited about what was being done and had a great deal of admiration for what others were doing along with the envy, you know?

SA: Do you think that the difficult conditions of the Depression helped make you feel like you were kind of all in it together?

MZ: Well, I suppose so. I’m sure that had something to do with it. I think there were all these factors. I talked about this quite a long time before it was generally spoken of that we were influenced by these things. First of all, we were isolated out west here. There was the Depression when you couldn’t get an art career, you couldn’t get a job and so what did you do? You concentrated on your painting and then the proximity of Mexico giving us vitality and color, and then the WPA coming in about that time, and then the influence of the studios. I think all of these factors conspired to give us a unique situation here. I used to argue the influence of Mexico a little more than others and then I found that other people were thinking of this as an influence, too, since we didn’t travel as much as we do now and Mexico, traveling in Mexico was our travel adventure, in most cases, as far as foreign travel was concerned. And then the Mexican muralists with their vitality. Strong color, bold patterns. I think this all conspired to make us. And then the fact that we could be outdoors painting the sea and the mountains and so forth when eastern artists had to get their sketches in the cold and go to their studios to do view their work, I think there’s quite a difference there.

SA: What do you think gave a sense of homogeneity to your work? Do you think that it had anything to do with, oh, the leadership of Sheets or . . .

MZ: Oh yes. I could have mentioned that. I think that was one of the contributions that Sheets made. That he was excited about art and he was in for almost anything going on with the big shows they had at the county fair. Exhibits and teaching in the college and exhibiting and, of course, being a leader, he was usually involved on committees and that sort of thing. Yes, I think Millard had a terrific influence in stirring up interest in painting.

SA: And do you think, also, in kind of bringing the group together?

MZ: Well, it’s like many movements. We had no idea that we were a movement of any kind. I think those things come automatically. It was, primarily, the competitive spirit had a lot to hold us together.

SA: All right. Aside from Sheets, who do you consider to be the other leaders in that group?

MZ: Well, Phil Dike, of course. Personally, Phil Dike, to me, has emerged, possibly, to me as one of the strongest of the whole group. This is my personal . . . He was very innovative and then, of course, there was Phil Dike, Millard, Phil Paradise, Lee Blair and many, several artists around Chouinard. And then the older artists, of course, had their influence. That’s an interesting aspect of it, too, because I remember serving on juries in Laguna Beach. Often I served on jury with Mr. Griffith and Hunt.

SA: William Griffith and Thomas Hunt?

MZ: I didn’t separate those people from so much at that time. Millard, I heard Millard speak about [William] Wendt and some of those as being, somewhat, of another ilk but as far as I was concerned it was just . . . it was just an experience of meeting another artist and I think some of these older artists were valuable to us because they were critical of us. They made remarks about the way we worked. Going out and painting two or three watercolors in a day and just to show off or . . . I think they thought we were showing off. But, I think their critical influence is valuable to us.

SA: Well, who among the artists, would you say, were your closest friends? Aside from -– you already talked a little bit about Tom.

MZ: Well, it was Tom Craig and Millard and as far as being close friends they were the closest . . .

SA: What about – did you know Phil Dike very well?

MZ: Well, I knew him but I wasn’t too well acquainted with him. I didn’t know Phil very well until he came to teach at Scripps later on.

SA: And that was when you were teaching at Pomona after the war?

MZ: Yes. Phil Dike and Phil Paradise always seemed to be together. They seemed to be . . . and I, of course, I admired those artists, but it often amused . . . all of a sudden Phil Paradise and Phil Dike got attitudes of one upmanship. I remember if you talked about something they’d already done it or something like that. And, of course, again, an ignorant, egotistical kid would react against that. But, there again and Phil always had such a . . . he was always so self contained. Couldn’t get around him. He had everything pinned down.

SA: Phil Dike?

MZ: Yeah. And Phil Paradise, too. They both had this attitude and it was kind of healthy because you were always amazed. Here are two guys who knew exactly what they were doing all the time. That always impressed me because I didn’t feel quite that secure, I’ll tell ya. But as time went on I began to appreciate their work and now, in retrospect, I see them very definitely top leaders in this thing.

SA: What was Phil Dike like as a person?

MZ: Well, he was a rather tight little guy, self contained, sure of himself and I don’t think I always felt too comfortable with him for that very reason.

SA: And Phil Paradise was the same?

MZ: Yeah . . .

SA: They seem different personality-wise, though.

MZ: Yeah, he was a little bit cocky. He always had things pinned down but he was kind of a cocky fellow. And he remained . . . I saw Phil during the month before he died and he was still . . . I did a workshop in Santa Barbara and we had a dinner and I wanted to invite Phil and made arrangements to pick him up at his hotel and he wouldn’t have it. He came in a taxi and he had a taxi pick him up. Phil wasn’t going to let anybody know that he wasn’t fully able to take care of himself. Even though he was really not able to get around very well. He always had a sure way about him.

SA: That’s interesting.

MZ: To me it’s a refreshing thing. Here, I look back upon the time when we were, as I keep saying, we were personalities, we were critical of one another. We looked askance of one another. We were envious of one another. And now I look back on it and it seems so satisfying that there was this group that you belonged to and there’s always something that I wanted to impress upon people. Now it’s true in my case and I think it’s probably true in the case of the others that I don’t think any of us would’ve, or at least not many of us, would have had that much identification had we had to gain it on our own. Being a member of the group and being identified with an attitude and a movement was the way by which we became identified personally. And I think if I had any wish for any young painter or any aspiring painter, it would be that he have some way of getting outside of himself to the extent that he belongs to something a little larger than his own experience.

SA: Well, now, I think we’ve sort of gotten on the subject of the California school and maybe we should just continue with some questions about that.

MZ: Yes.

SA: Would you describe the relationship that you think this group of artists had to the land?

MZ: Oh yes. I’m sure that we, as young artists going to the country where our subject matter . . . I think we all have a, how do I put it? -- a love affair with California in a way. Because we had, actually, the sea, and the mountains, and in those days, quite a bit of ranch life. Still is. There still is. And the cities. It offered so much in the way of subject matter. And the beautiful areas and the uniqueness of the country. I think this country, itself, had a lot to do with our building what we keep referring to as the “California idea.” And then, of course, the things that we’ve mentioned, the coming together in this way. I’ve been in all parts of the world. I’ve literally been all over the world during the years of my career and it seems that California has just something of almost any other place that you might visit in the world. That is, in terms of the sea, the mountains, even the high mountains. All in a very small area here. Now compared to the east, for instance, you have the big city and you have country life but you don’t have the dramatic aspects of the terrific mountains, sea and the proximity to a foreign country, Mexico. It’s unique. This country is really unique. Now I’m not clear about this. It is true that Robert Henri was out here?

SA: Yes.

MZ: There again, because we were isolated, I think we were very conscious of the so-called Ashcan approach. I think that possibly inspired artists to know that you could just go paint anything and find design in it. So, in that sense I think we were touching back to the spirit that was developing in the east. As I understand it, Robert Henri was the founder of the Art Student’s League in New York. He was the first to exhibit French painting in this country. He taught from the point of view of understanding your world and your own experience. And that was the spirit that was developing back there so, again, I don’t think we can say that we had done it all. We were certainly in touch with the spirit of growth that was more American than just Californian. But just the same, I think that our situation is such that we interpret it and these approaches in terms of California and the Western scene.

SA: Certainly. I mean, because if you look at the outcome of the Robert Henri approach here in California, it was completely different, wasn’t it?

MZ: Yes, it was.

SA: It was really completely different.

MZ: Around here people were painting the back side of Los Angeles and getting at some of the same things. Of course, there again, I know that Millard was very much influenced by [George] Bellows. In fact, he almost emulated Bellows with that beautiful street scene that he did. I’ve heard him talk about that, that that picture influenced him so much. It was one of Bellows that shows the street scene in New York.

SA: With the wash hanging?

MZ: Yeah. Yeah.

SA: It’s at the L.A. County Museum?

MZ: And Millard did a great painting. It was almost the same idea. So we were certainly influenced by the east, too.

SA: Well, now, were you, yourself, aware of people like Thomas Hart Benton and Grant Wood when you were just . . .

MZ: Well, yes, by the . . .

SA: . . .starting out, for example?

MZ: . . . by the time Tom and I were here at Pomona College, of course, two young guys talking about art all the time. Talking about pictures all the time. And, of course, then we were very sensitive to and looking at the work of anyone, of course. That was the beginning, or it was during that period that we began to think of the, how did they characterize it? The thought of John Steuart Curry in the east, and of Thomas Benton in the middle west.

SA: They called them Regionalists. Is that what you’re thinking of? Or American Scene?

MZ: It was American Scene. I remember there was quite a bit of discussion, quite a bit of argument as to contrasting between regional art and universal art. I think there were those who shied from the idea that we should be so regional in our approach. And I reacted to that in this way. That all art has always been regional. Look at the influences in Italy. The different cities, states and each one a region developing in certain ways. That’s always gone on. I don’t see that there’s any argument there at all. It seems that if it’s art, it’s art, and if it’s an expression of human concerns then it has to start from –- if it’s going to have the impact of honest, from the roots up –- it has to start someplace in the region. But . . .

SA: Oh. And so you were actually having those kinds of discussions back then?

MZ: Oh yes. It just seemed like all of us were just . . . that’s another reason I compare us to the French. When you think of the French painters sitting around cafés and talking and talking and talking. We probably didn’t do that but we were doing an awful lot of talking. All of us. You couldn’t imagine anyone getting together but there were discussions about painting in that way. Tom and I were interested in [Wassily] Kandinsky. We were interested in John Steuart Curry. We were interested in all the –- lots of excitement about painting.

SA: And did your knowledge of all of those people come mostly from being at Pomona College or was it more than that?

MZ: Well, I think when you speak of knowledge, it is probably better to characterize it as rumor and supposition. I think we talked about a lot of things that excited us of . . .

[SESSION 2, TAPE 2, SIDE A]

SA: . . . Two, Side A, an interview with Milford Zornes.

MZ: In fact, I still feel I have a very uneducated view of art history. I’m fascinated by it and every once in a while I would read but it’s more like just a casual interest in art history like you’d be interested in your neighbors or friends. You don’t take time to make a study of it. You just respond to the influences of it and the feeling of it. I think the exciting thing for an artist, eventually, is to reach a point where he may not be all taken with himself but at least he reaches a point where he says, “I have something in common with artists all the way down the line from the beginning.” I’m just as capable of, and probably think and feel and respond very much as artists of all this, and this gives you the feeling that you belong to a stream of influence rather than to just feel that you always have to be beholding or looking up to. Of course, it’s a matter of great respect and appreciation for what people do but you still make yourself a part of it and that gives your ego, that does something for your ego, turns your ego into strength rather than merely an attitude.

SA: Well, were you reading art magazines, for example? At that time?

MZ: Oh yes, I can well recall being excited about articles. I remember very definitely. Do you know the publication, a French publication, L’Illustrasion? It was a very fine magazine. Beautifully printed and so forth and it dealt with all kinds of art. Oriental art and all fields of art and I remember poring over copies of that. That was a wonderful source of inspiration for me. And then, of course, as we began to get acquainted with the current magazines, like American Artist and so forth, we followed those.

SA: And Art News, did you read that?

MZ: What’d you say?

SA: Art News?

MZ: I don’t remember whether that was out at that time or not. But any rate, we did watch what other artists were doing and then it seemed that the magazines didn’t seem to have quite the same quality that they had early on.

SA: Do you know when that change came about?

MZ: No, I can’t say and I can’t identity what that change was so much, but it always just seemed that . . .

SA: It’s a feeling you had, huh?

MZ: Yeah.

SA: Were you interested in reading what Arthur Millier had to say?

MZ: Oh yes. Arthur Millier or Millier, he was a real influence. You know, I read the criticism pages now and they don’t seem to mean much anymore. Arthur went to the shows. He was a reporter, he would be critical, but he also went to the trouble to visit the shows, say where they were or what they consisted of or who was doing what. And then, of course, the important thing was for young painters, we took him very seriously and if he gave us a dig we felt it and if we got praise we profited by it one way. So, I think of Arthur Millier as the one critic I’ve known in my life -– art critic, so-called art critic -- that I would say was the real thing.

SA: And did you know him personally?

MZ: Yes. I knew him very quite well. And that’s it, everybody did know him personally. And he was right with us all the time and he had . . .

SA: Was he much older than you?

MZ: Well, yes. Not a great deal. Let’s see, I was –- I’d say he was in his 40's when I was in my late 20's. He was born in England. He didn’t have many of the characteristics of an Englishman but no, he was just a really sound reporter of what was going on and he was willing to give his opinion and you could disagree or not but you certainly paid attention. I think we all profited so much whereas it seems to me that it’s hardly worth picking up the paper and reading these things nowadays because you feel that the writers are not concerned about art, they’re interested in art, in writing. And they’ve chosen art as a subject by which they will kind of express their egos and I discount the importance of critics nowadays. But then that’s probably a personal attitude. You don’t like to be criticized.

SA: Well, in terms of other people on the L.A. art scene, maybe it’s a good time to ask you. What about the art dealers at the time? Who did you know well?

MZ: Well, I knew, who was it that used to be in the big hotel? Millard was with him.

SA: [Dalzell] Hatfield?

MZ: Hatfield. Of course, he was best known, I think, and [Earl] Stendahl. Did you know Stendahl? They’re about the only ones I knew. I knew the, who was the fellow in San Francisco? He had a French name. I have a funny story to tell about that but I’ll wait for a time for it. [Lucien Labaudt]

SA: Okay. And you knew Zeitlin, did you? Did you know Jake Zeitlin?

MZ: Oh yes. Jake Zeitlin. He handled my pictures some. Had quite a bit of experience with Jake.

SA: What was he like?

MZ: Well, he was a very nice guy and a very interesting guy. He was interested primarily in books but he handled prints and small watercolors. He handled my things quite a little bit. After the war I knew him well enough that when I’d come down from Northern California I would, possibly, stay overnight at his house and then after they moved out to the big barn out in Hollywood there I didn’t see them quite so much after that. I will say it was through Jake that I met Thomas Benton. I came in – it was a summer evening. It was after the war and I was living, I had bought a place up near Santa Maria, and I had hoped to live in the country but it turned out I had to get to work and make a living. But any rate, I came in and Jake said, “Well, put on a clean shirt and get ready ‘cause I want you to go to a party out in Hollywood and meet Thomas Benton.” So, I got dressed and went out there and it was a summer evening. It was at some big bungalow house in Hollywood and I well remember going. As I went up the door to go in, Arthur Millier was standing there talking to Benton and Millier greeted me and introduced me to Thomas Benton. I was surprised he’s such a little man. Did you know he was a little fellow?

SA: No, I didn’t.

MZ: I thought he was a big, burly guy. I had envisioned that he would be, his murals and everything. He was quite small, actually. Remarkably small guy. But the amusing story, I don’t know whether you want to take time with this but . . .

SA: Yes. Yes.

MZ: While we were talking a very beautiful girl came up, beautifully dressed, and greeted Thomas, threw her arms around Thomas Benton and then they talked for a little bit and then she said, “Well, I better go in and see what the party’s about.” There was this big open bungalow and we watched her as she walked away, walking very nicely. I think she must’ve been an actress. She was so well dressed and stylish. And Thomas Benton just followed, really watching this gal and he said, “You know, early on I wouldn’t have women in my classes but she came along and I was teaching in Kansas City,” I think he said. “And I decided then that if they decorated the place, I’d have ‘em in my classes. And I think she decorates any place.” And that was his attitude toward –- but it was so funny. And he did it in such a cute way. And then he dominated or, this party deteriorated as time went on and he had a lot of his students there and they were reminiscing and the gusto . . . He and his little group of students had been drinking quite a little bit and they’d gotten into a group by themselves and they –- that was their party. The rest of it was going on elsewhere.

SA: Do you remember why he was in Hollywood?

MZ: What’s that?

SA: Do you remember why he was in Hollywood? Benton?

MZ: No, I don’t remember why, exactly. I guess he was just visiting out there. I remember, one of his students, he was chiding him about, you remember his painting, what’s her name and the elders?

SA: Suzanna and the Elders?

MZ: Suzanna and the Elders. And he was accusing this fella, he said, “You made the ground, you prepared the ground for that painting and it flaked off on me.” And he was accusing this kid and he said, “You almost wrecked it.” He said, “That was supposed to be my daughter’s education.” He said, “I had to get $12,000 out of it ‘cause it’s costing me $3,000 each year –- her college.” He said, “And it started pulling off the canvas and I had to patch it up.” But he was kidding, or digging at his students and things like that. They were bringing up all kinds of little comments, inside experiences.

SA: I wonder what all those students were doing out here in L.A.

MZ: Well, I don’t know. I guess they were just people who had eventually come out here or . . .

SA: Maybe they were working in the film industry or something.

MZ: Could be. And I don’t think that I knew, that’s very interesting, too. That while I did know a good many of the artists around here, I don’t remember that group including anyone that I knew very well. But at any rate, my meeting with Benton -– he was amusing, and he was a little caustic, and he was a very small man.

SA: Did you admire his work?

MZ: I’ve admired his work a great deal. I often talk about his work in teaching. Now, one thing that I have to get at my students about is if they’re not willing to work hard enough. They will try a picture and say, “Well, I’m not making watercolor work,” or “I can’t handle watercolor,” or , “I can’t do this, can’t do that.” And I remind ‘em that people like Thomas Benton, for instance, would make a shallow box and he would model a whole picture in clay or plasticene. And then I cited Robert Wood who would make a model for his boat pictures and so forth. I’d point these things out to people that, “If you’re serious about these things, you go to the trouble of making them work and get ways of making them work.” So, I often talk about Benton in that way. For that reason.

SA: Well, that’s a really interesting story. Did you meet any of the other major painters of the day? In that early period?

MZ: No. Tom Craig was very chummy with . . . he came out here . . . he’s a portrait painter. He worked with tempera and then glazed over it with oil. And Thomas got involved in his technique. [Alexander Brook] We didn’t. There were two reasons. First of all, I don’t think the Eastern artists came out here that much and secondly, I was living out of the city and didn’t have the occasion to meet any of ‘em.

SA: Right. Well, we were talking a little bit about Zeitlin. You also had a relationship with Stendahl, to some extent, didn’t you?

MZ: Well, yes. Stendahl –- I always enjoyed going to Stendahl’s gallery. He always had interesting shows and do you know that the Russian painter . . . Oh -– he wound up in New Mexico.

SA: Nikolai Fechin.

MZ: First time I ever saw Nikolai Fechin he was working in the back room at Stendahl’s doing framing. I think Stendahl brought him out here and he worked ‘til he got his start as a painter. But my first meeting with him, he was just a workman in the back room but . . .

SA: Well, were you all frequenting the galleries at that point? Was that another popular thing you did?

MZ: Oh yes. Tom and I would go to Los Angeles and if we could we’d go to two or three shows and do as many things as we could possibly crowd in with what little resources we had.

SA: What do you remember about the L.A. art scene in those days? What could you tell me about it?

MZ: Well, to a great extent, the most important single concern was the annual meeting of the California Watercolor Society. The annual show. And, I suppose, I would have to concede that I wasn’t very closely identified with the so-called art scene. I would go to these big shows and usually we saw . . . everybody went out to them and then we’d [leave] them and I think we were a pretty scattered bunch. I don’t know that we worked, got together like we would think of artists in New York or Paris. I think we were more, what would be the term when you’re more . . .
SA: Scattered or . . .

MZ: . . . scattered out over Los Angeles county.

SA: Because it was such a big area.

MZ: Yeah.

SA: And you were already talking about it before as being just, you know, area after area after area . . .

MZ: Yeah, that’s right.

SA: . . . being developed.

MZ: Now, but we did get together. We wouldn’t fail to want to go to the opening of the annual show, the Watercolor Society. For a time I attended some dinners or get togethers of the California Art Club, wasn’t it?

SA: Yes.

MZ: They were mostly oil painters and a good many older men in that and they seemed to be very conservative and I think that they felt critical of our group, the so-called California group as we know it.

SA: Well, you were sort of the young Turks, don’t you think? Taking over their territory?

MZ: That seemed to be it. And we’d get the benefit of some of their barbs about the way we were operating. I remember Ralph Holmes introducing me to someone sometimes, “He takes a trip, takes a weekend trip, comes back and gives an exhibit of watercolors.” Or something, you know. And so we were a bunch of renegades.

SA: That’s funny. Well, in terms of the L.A. art scene, you already said you were aware of the earlier watercolor school. Were there other groups of artists that you were aware of?

MZ: Well, when you say other, now we were the only ones identified as watercolor.

SA: Right.

MZ: Most of the other painters were oil painters. Of course, at Laguna Beach there was that group down there.

SA: Those were mostly the oil painters?

MZ: Yes.

SA: What we call sort of the Plein air school now.

MZ: Yes. Yes. And then I’d meet artists, Los Angeles painters, but again, it’s such a nebulous and . . .

SA: Were you aware of the work of Lorser Feitelson, for example?

MZ: Oh yes. Yes.

SA: You must’ve been.

MZ: Feitelson and . . .

SA: Helen Lundeberg?

MZ: Yes, a very . . .

SA: His wife.

MZ: I think it was during the Public Works of Art that I got better acquainted with them. And I think we looked upon Feitelson as a quite, you know, an innovative and daring artist because he did these things with simple patterns. I’d like to see them again. I think, possibly, they’re more interesting than I realized at the time.

SA: Maybe I’ll bring some things I’ve got that I could show you. You might be able to remember them. What about Stanton Macdonald-Wright?

MZ: Oh yes. I knew him quite well. He was a smooth guy. He was a very sophisticated fella. He’d had experience as European-trained. The thing that impresses me now, and it seems a travesty that he was very imitative of oriental art, and yet he was doing them in oil, which it seemed out of character. I admi