BEACH - Key Persons
left: 1920 self-portrait by Arthur P. Dickson; right an undated photo with young "A.P. Dickson" in the center (c.1910?)
My grandmother had a brother who died relatively young - 15 years before I was even born. He'd been a commercial illustrator, and visiting her house growing up, I saw evidence of her brother's former existence.
I remember she'd hung one his paintings in an upstairs bedroom - of a well dressed man with a very white collar. She said that he had painted it for an Arrow Shirt ad, but I never saw the advertisement. It would be interesting to find it, but I reckon it would be pretty hard. Since any online search would only yield the work of another, more celebrated illustrator: J. C. Leyendecker.
If you're hoping to make a mark on the world, dying too soon can put you at a disadvantage. Leyendecker lived to the age of 77, but my great uncle, Arthur Parkinson Dickson was 51 when he died (of tuberculosis) in 1939.
As a result, he's now widely unknown. So finding any information about his life and career online is difficult. Still, we have certain clues…
"George Arents Jr., besides being the heir to the American Tobacco Company, was an avid book collector, my great-aunt's boss and a race car driver, but that's another story."
George Arents Jr.'s biography is a little confusing because his both his father (the nephew of Major Ginter and for many years treasurer of the American Tobacco Company) and his nephew (who also raced cars ) were also named George. After his father's death in 1918, George Arents Jr. dropped the "Jr." and was himself known as "George Arents." His son who owned the United States franchise for Ferrari is sometimes referred to as George Arents III and sometimes as George Arents, Jr.
Our subject is the George Arents Jr. who was born was born in 1875.
Lou Reed attended Syracuse without graduating but was later given an honorary degree in English. He is the most recent recipient of Arents Medal.
William Fox founded his Fox Film Corporation in 1915 and my great uncle appears to have been been there right from the start of the silent film era.
William Fox held his 1915 convention in New York, which is where Dickson worked and where Fox Film Corporation had its home office at the time.
For a later convention in 1930, William Fox chartered a train from New York to Los Angeles. Arthur Dickson also attended that convention and was one of the passengers on that train.
So much of Arthur P. Dickson's life is a big question mark. Why is there so much work from 1915? There's much less to be found in the subsequent years. Of course, he probably did not bother signing everything that he did while working on staff for "20 years."
In fact, there's a lot of work that I suspect he may have done, but can't say for certain. He most likely did his own hand-lettering on the 1915 heralds that he signed. How much of the typography in early Fox Film ads did he also have a hand in? Fox Film came out with innumerable versions of their logo, during his tenure. Did he design any of those?
General Film Company revoked William Fox's license on the grounds that he had shown some of their films in a whorehouse (which was a lie), Fox retaliated by bringing a lawsuit against the Patents Company [The Motion Picture Patents Company] for $6 million, saying the companies involved constituted a trust in restraint of trade, thereby violating the Sherman Antitrust Act. Fox was a bulldog yapping at the heels of an elephant.