A biography of artist Bradshaw Crandell, a Glens Falls native, would capture all the elements of a classic novel.
“Crandell’s success story is remarkable even in a city where ‘local boy makes good’ is a familiar phrase,” Frances Whiting, managing editor of Cosmopolitan magazine, wrote in 1939.
In 1918, Crandell, who had dropped out of Wesleyan College in his sophomore year to enlist in the Navy, came home from World War I in ill health.
WAC Recruitment Poster featuring a painting by Bradshaw Crandell, 1943
“He needed to build himself up and no spot on earth offered more, he felt, then the shores of Lake George, known and loved from childhood,” Whiting wrote, in a feature story, published in The Post-Star.
It was there that Crandell met and fell in love with Myra Clark, a new teacher at Lake George school.
The couple, who married May 15, 1919 in New York City, borrowed money to survive while Crandell launched his art career, with the pledge he would pursue a different lot if he was not successful in one year.
Crandell had attended Chicago Art Institute for about six months between high school and college.
The couple never looked back.
Judy Garland by Bradshaw Crandell - Cosmopolitan cover, 1944
The Post-Star on Feb. 26, 1920, reported that a recent issue of The American Painter magazine featured several sketches Crandell drew of a young girl in various moods.
“In the heart of New York, a Glens Falls boy is rapidly rising to lofty heights among the artists of the country. … This young man is John Bradshaw Crandell,” the home-town newspaper boasted.
Crandell stopped using his first name professionally around 1925.
The ideal young woman would become the trademark image of Crandell, famous for his advertising, magazine and movie poster illustrations, including 12 years illustrating the monthly covers of Cosmopolitan in the 1930s and ‘40s.
Carole Lombard, Bette Davis, Judy Garland, Veronica Lake, and Lana Turner were among celebrities that posed in his studio.
Veronica Lake by Bradshaw Crandell - Cosmopolitan cover, 1941
His favorite subjects, though, were “not those scrawny sophisticates” associated with stardom, but the typical theater goer or office worker.
“The American girl I draw has character,” Crandell said in 1933. “She is resourceful, yet always feminine. She has plenty of sex appeal, but doesn’t show it.”
In later decades Crandell primarily was a portrait painter of politicians, college presidents and business tycoons.
Crandell, who as a teen won a blue ribbon at the Warren County Fair for his sketches of the Warren County Home, and in 1918 sketched the scroll for the Glens Falls YMCA military honor roll, frequently made his home city proud.
In 1923, father Hubert Crandell, owner of a flower shop at 17 Warren Street, distributed “highly attractive calendars” the son worked on for Palmer Advertising Service of New York.
The calendar had a sketch that the son drew of a young woman in summer attire, wearing a rose color scarf with a blue sky background and white clouds, set in a panel with a blue and white border.
In 1927 Bradshaw Crandell pointed an oil painting for The Queensbury Hotel of a scene of the falls on the Hudson River.
At Christmas 1932, Post-Star carriers distributed to subscribers a 1933 calendar with the Crandell illustration “Sweeter than all roses.”
Glens Falls architect Miles Crandell was the artist’s brother.
Crandell died Jan. 25, 1966 at age 69.
He is buried at Pine View Cemetery in Queensbury.
Sources: The Post-Star May 27, 1918; Feb. 26, 1920; Jan. 6, 1923; Dec. 24, 1932; Feb. 17, 1933; April 24, 1939; Oct. 5, 1954; Jan. 6, 1966; Aug. 11, 1967; Glens Falls Times Oct. 12, 1963
MAURY THOMPSON
Maury Thompson was a reporter for The Post-Star for 21 years before he retired in 2017. He now is a freelance writer and documentary film producer specializing in regional history. Thompson is collaborating with Snarky Aardvark Films to produce a documentary about Charles Evans Hughes and the Adirondacks, which is expected to release in September 2020. See the trailer here. Read his full bio here.