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Lunch With Dugald

Posted on August 13, 2017January 17, 2019 By Ann Thompson

Lunch With Dugald
by Newell Alexander

Rose­mary and I had flown to San Fran­cisco from L.A. to act in a series of commer­cials for a now defunct Bay Area amuse­ment park. In the first shot of the day, Rose­mary, two little kids and I were riding in a basket on the back of a huge elephant. We were stuck as the animal proceeded to go rogue, he ran through a large part of the park before he could be stopped with us unable to get off. Later, in another shot I was supposed to stand next to a Tiger who decided to lie on top of me, I was trying not to panic. The trainer kept screaming at the cat and jerking on a long chain. I was begging him, ​“Don’t make him mad.” The Tiger finally lost interest, stood up and saun­tered away. The produc­tion was a disaster, the director quit in the middle of the day, the whole thing was a wash, I don’t think the spot ever aired. But all was not lost, we both had a good payday and we were going to get to see my old pal, famed San Fran­cisco artist Dugald Stermer, so the trip was not a total failure.

It had been several years since I had seen Dugald, so Rose­mary and I rented a car and added an extra day to our trip so we could have nice long catch-up lunch. Dugald called in his no nonsense manner, ​“Meet me at Delancy’s, it’s near my studio in the Embar­cadero.” The meal was delightful, Dugald’s pres­ence gave us lots of atten­tion, the staff approached our table as if he were a Francis Ford Coppola Godfa­ther, we later found out he was a long standing member of the board of the Delancy Street Foun­da­tion that managed the restau­rant. I did give him some grief over him having a sand­wich named after him on the menu. Dugald wasn’t a big fan of show busi­ness; his ex-father-in-law was James Bacon, a long time promi­nent enter­tain­ment colum­nist for the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner. Dugald’s former wife Carol was raised in Holly­wood amid all the glitz and glamour, neither she nor Dugald were attracted to celebrity.

After lunch we walked around to Dugald’s studio, which was in the complex, it’s hard to describe how he had designed his work­space, it was remi­nis­cent of what Tom Mix or Ken Maynard’s den would look like, Indian pottery, rugs, Western memo­ra­bilia, a real Western ambiance. Several left-handed guitars adorned the walls. After his passing it was dupli­cated in a display at the Cali­fornia College of the Arts.

When he first came to Houston, I watched Dugald tran­si­tion from a West Coast casual look, to boots, vest, Levis, and western shirts, a signa­ture look he retained to the end. In his studio we looked at some of his work, we remi­nisced, Rose­mary and I sang, and we drank some rare Irish Whiskey, of which he was very fond. It was the last time we were face-to-face.

The next week after our lunch, I wrote Dugald the following letter using the Delancy Restau­rant address.

Dear Mr. Stermer,
We had lunch in San Fran­cisco last week at Delancy’s, we saw you
having lunch with one of our favorite actors, Newell Alexander, we were going to ask him for an auto­graph but we somehow missed him when you guys left. My wife asked the staff who you were and the waiter said you just ate his sand­wich. Ha! Since you know him could you send this enclosed package to him? It has return postage.
Thanking you in advance, this means a lot to us.
Sincerely,
Babs and Sven Yevhoods 
P.S. We met Newell at the Cow Palace when he was touring with Neil Young.

I got an answer to my letter a few days later, it was on his letter­head, in the middle of the page were two words hand lettered in his trade­mark callig­raphy, ​“Nice Try.”

I first met Dugald when I was working as a designer/paste up artist in a small six-man studio in booming Houston, Texas. He had been working for a short while for the Dick Kuhn Studio in Los Angeles, he was recruited by our studio owner, Bill Middaugh. I was a little disap­pointed when my boss Bill, came back from a Cali­fornia trip all-aglow over Dugald’s work. I saw the attrac­tion when I leafed through Dugald’s port­folio, his work was so good I couldn’t be jealous. I had one year of art at the Univer­sity of Houston, he was a grad­uate of the UCLA School of Fine Art. He and Olympic Cham­pion Rafer Johnson were class­mates and they were exchange students together in India during Dugald’s Junior year.

I was assigned to pick Dugald up at Hobby Airport in South Houston, I was curious, I knew he and I were about the same age. We both were family men, I had three chil­dren, he had four. The years he had spent in art school, I had spent in the U.S. Navy as an aviator.

We were doing very well at the studio, the addi­tion of Dugald was amazing, he and I worked well together, word was out that we were a ​“hot shop,” doing good, creative work. Our boss Bill came in with the news that we were getting a chance to land an ad campaign for the largest bank in Houston, no pitch, just design an ad, if they liked it we could have the account. It was to be a full-page four-color ad on the back of Hous­tonian Maga­zine. We briefly brain­stormed and Dugald did a rough sketch, it said in small type, ​“member of,” and then ​“FDIC” in a huge bold font. He added a small photo of the bank building about the size of a postage stamp on the bottom margin. Sizing up the work, Boss Bill said, ​“I don’t think they’ll get it.” There was a long silence, ​“How about doing an alter­nate? Just make the building big and FDIC small.” Dugald refused to change it. I wouldn’t change it either and we didn’t get the account. Dugald’s reac­tion? Fuck ​‘em.” The story got around the ad commu­nity in Houston and our busi­ness skyrock­eted. It was a lesson well learned. I used the same tech­nique later when I was working as an art director on major accounts at a large agency in Dallas. I won some battles and lost some.

I never knew Dugald as an illus­trator, he did however do the linocuts and hand set all the type in the work he did on his small letter­press he called ​“The Impress.” The small 4 x 5 inch books were gems that he printed on hand­made paper, the text was simple and clever, the art was very tasty. His press was set up in his house and he spent many late nights drinking Irish whiskey and making small delightful pieces of art. His mastery of typog­raphy was amazing and he won numerous awards in the Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth Art Director’s competitions.

Howard Gossage was flown in to judge the Houston Art Director’s show. He was an icon in the adver­tising San Fran­cisco adver­tising commu­nity, Howard was blown away by Dugald’s work. Dugald won several awards and with Howard’s help he landed the Art Director’s job at Ramparts Maga­zine in the Bay Area. Dugald assisted me in getting a job at CA maga­zine in Palo Alto. I free-lanced some for Dugald at Ramparts but only for a few months. The mail boy at the maga­zine, and our weed connec­tion, was a young eager kid named Jann Wenner. Jann went on to trans­form the anti-war maga­zine Ramparts into today’s Rolling Stone Magazine.

My tenure at CA was brief, I moved back to Texas and didn’t see Dugald for many years. I watched his ascent into art fame as I labored in Southern Cali­fornia building an acting career.

Dugald and I only had one moment of discord, I made an off-hand remark in a post, ​“Keep the lenses of your Art-O-Graph clean.” (An Art-O-Graph is a tool to aid drawing). I knew he was pissed because of several one-word responses to my e‑mails.

Every once in a while when I have a moment I will log on to Dugald’s website and just browse through some of his work. His design sense helped him place his art on the page in very tasty ways. He would scoff at the notion, but I consider him a master.

Dugald Stermer mastered the appli­ca­tion of art and ideas.

Dugal Stermer
Dugal Stermer 
1964 Spring Artist Unknown
1964 Spring Artist Unknown 
1965 March Artist Unknown
1965 March Artist Unknown 
1966 August Ben Franklin by Dugald Stermer
1966 August Ben Franklin by Dugald Stermer 
1967 May Bertrand Russel by Normal Rcokwell
1967 May Bertrand Russel by Normal Rcokwell 
1968 Nov. Woody Guthrie by Dugald Stermer
1968 Nov. Woody Guthrie by Dugald Stermer 
1969 April Editorial Chapter 11
1969 April Edito­rial Chapter 11 

The Ramparts covers, above show one example from each of the years when Dugald was the art director at the maga­zine. The two exam­ples— Ben Franklin and Woody Guthrie — show styles far different than illus­tra­tions that he produced later. The edito­rial page, in 1969 explained that Ramparts had been loosing revenue and had to go into bank­ruptcy, Chapter 11. Dugald left his posi­tion as art director in 1970. The maga­zine needed to raise its subscrip­tion price and had legal prob­lems. It lasted until 1975. Then it was taken over and became the Rolling Stone Maga­zine. Another offshoot was Mother Jones Magazine.

At the left of this story, under Artist’s Sites, you will see Dugald Stermer’s website showing his deft illus­tra­tion and lettering styles known to his many admirers.
More on Newell Alexander can be found on IMDb.

Ann Thompson

Of That Time, Recollections

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