Albert Dorne - President

I wonder if Albert Dorne was contemplating the fate he managed to avoid when he drew this ad. In reference to the time before his illustration career, he wrote, "At 13 I quit school to support my family, and did pretty well at it."
During his teens Dorne had been a newsstand manager, an office boy for a movie theatre chain (and a salesman for a different movie chain), a shipping clerk and a professional fighter (he won his first ten bouts and was flattened in the eleventh, which knocked some sense into him about the best route to becoming an artist not being via the boxing ring).
"All through [the] years, young artists have come to me for advice on their own art careers," wrote Albert Dorne. "That's how the idea for the Famous Artists Schools was born."In 1948, the year Albert Dorne drew this ad for Frigidaire, he and 11 colleagues founded the Famous Artists School, with Dorne acting as president. Dorne's ambition to help cultivate the careers of struggling young artists would mean the virtual demise of his own as a commercial artist.In the early 60's, Dorne launched the Famous Writers School and The Famous Photographers School- evolving the correspondence school empire with 50,000 students around the world and a gross income of $10 million a year."My job as president of the schools takes at least twenty four hours a day," wrote Dorne. "I now do about two pictures a year - to keep my franchise."

"My only hobby is the Famous Artists Schools, " he wrote, "and my ambition is to make my school the most respected institution of its kind - anywhere."

All of today's images can be seen at full size in my Albert Dorne Flickr set.