My father and I have come across literally hundreds of magazine clippings that either Wally or his wife, Glenny had saved for posterity. In some cases my father had scribbled down information on accompanying yellow sticky-notes offering up interesting insights about that particular illustration. Turns out Walter was a work horse within his industry, publishing sometimes a dozen illustrations in a month, year round, for decades. 
Walter DuBois Richards did quite a bit of work for many classic automobile manufacturers over the years: Packard, Mercury, Cadillac and Ford, to name a few.Several 55 Fords are illustrated in this one page commercial, the red Custom Ranch Wagon in the background, the stunning yellow and black Fairlane Sunliner with the pretty Blondie in front, and the Fairlane Victoria below.
The yellow note explains that Glenora had saved this particular Ford commercial because she had helped Wally mix the colors for it (and did this often for Wally's illustrations.) This could sound surprising, until you learn that Glenora Case Richards was a celebrated artist herself, who made a name for herself in Miniature art, and also produced some commercial art.
If anybody knows or can find out where and when this advertisement appeared, it would be greatly appreciated!
ReplyDeleteCan't tell you the "where" but I can say the "why" is that Cadillac in the '50s utterly dominated the luxury-car market. If Lincoln sold 1/4 as many cars as Cadillac it was a good year. So Ford had nothing to lose trying to sell high-end customers two Fords, where GM would be more reluctant to allow Chevrolet to make this kind of pitch (they would a couple times in the '60s, but never as often or as enthusiastically as Ford did).
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