Meet Dale Ulrey!

Dale Conner circa 1939

A couple weeks ago one of my readers asked why there seemed to be so little information on 1950s Oz and Baum illustrator Dale Ulrey. Indeed, no Oz folk seem to have ever even seen a photo of her! Might something be done about this? While a basic internet search proved rather fruitless, popping into a couple of Eric's and my genealogical resources turned the trick!

Mildred Dale Conner was born January 1, 1904, on a farm near Sulphur Springs, Texas. Her father was William Madison Conner (1870-1936) and her mother was Nellie Nichols (1872-1949). The family moved to Dallas in 1916 where her father became a salesman for Butler Bros., a department store and mail-order firm.

Young Mildred seems to always have drawn. The Dallas Morning News, September 2, 1939, wrote of the small brunette: "Before she was old enough to enter school, the future artist drew sketches of people. Her consuming ambition as a child was to 'write a book and draw all the pictures.'" She finished grade school at John S. Armstrong School in Highland Park, Texas, and spent all four years of High School at Oak Cliff High. She graduated in 1921.

Mildred Dale Conner at Oak Cliff High (1921).

Her year book says: "Some one has described Mildred as the little girl with the 'come hither' eyes and it's not such a bad description. Besides being very easy to look at, 'Cricket' can draw almost anything on earth - even a crowd." So little Mildred had the nickname of "Cricket." Oh, the things one can discover online! Cricket spent all four of her high school years on the staff of "The Acorn," the Oak Cliff High newspaper. 

Mildred Dale Conner and the "Art Staff" of THE ACORN.

She apparently adored her art instructor, Nellie Clement, and according again to The Dallas Morning News, two of her classmates also found art careers: Commercial artist Jewel Brannon of Fort Worth, and Lansing "Lance" Nolley, who went on to have a very full career working for Walt Disney Studios. See the "comments" section below for more information on Lance Nolley.

She spent another year in what the newspaper calls "post-graduate work" at Oak Cliff High studying art and Advanced French; and spent a year at the University of Texas "concentrating on line drawing and technical drawing." She also studied anatomy and life drawing with Vivian Anspaugh. While still studying in Dallas she began work in the art department of the Palace Theater.

Dale must have enjoyed her movie theater art work as she moved to New York (for the next twelve years) where she worked for Hap Hadley's theatrical art studio, handling publicity for many of the major movie studios.

Her earliest cartooning work seems to have begun when she started working for Martha Orr, creator of  the comic strip Apple Mary, later renamed Mary Worth's Family. In 1937, Orr married, and turned over all of the drawing chores to Dale.

One of Dale's "Apple Mary" strips from August 23, 1939 - click to enlarge

An original Sunday strip of MARY WORTH'S FAMILY from 1941.

You can read the entire and fascinating history of the transformation of Apple Mary into Mary Worth, here, in this Comics Journal essay. But Conner's reasons for departing from the strip are best summed up here, in a letter she wrote to fellow cartoonist Milton Caniff: “I’m so heart-sick over what Apple Mary has turned out to be. Working on it has become a chore. There’s no action to draw, only dull and childish conversation, and the plot is so inane that I gag as I try to make something of it. I dread seeing the proofs each week for my feeling shows in them.”

Sometime between September 1939 and April 1940 Dale Conner married Frank Herbert Melville Ulrey (1898-1958). The 1940 census shows them living in Chicago. Herb Ulrey was a navigator in World War I and after the war continued his work as a navigator, working for Sir Thomas Lipton, the famous yachtsman. A 1942 Dallas newspaper article states that Herbert Ulrey had previously drawn his own comic strip about a "G-Man," but I can find no information on or evidence for this claim.

Soon after their marriage, Dale quit Mary Worth's Family and she and Herb developed a new strip called Hugh Striver, relating the adventures of a newspaper boy; it debuted October 5, 1942.

Hugh Striver seems to have been only moderately successful. It came to an end in February 1945. You can see the first strip below:

HUGH STRIVER, October 5, 1942, by Herb & Dale Ulrey - click to enlarge

For a time the Ulreys lived in Barrington, Illinois, (on Bateman Road) and in August of 1943 they had a daughter, Dale Caroline Ulrey.

Herb and Dale Ulrey circa 1943.

In April 1945 Dale Ulrey launched a new "adventure" comic strip that she both wrote and drew called Ayer Lane, about a young man with an airplane. This strip ran until sometime in 1947.

Ulrey's AYER LANE strip from August 11, 1945 - click to enlarge

Dale Ulrey began her association with Oz publisher Reilly & Lee in 1953 when she illustrated L. Frank Baum's Jaglon and the Tiger Fairies. The cover has always struck me as extremely dull. I suspect the blame should be placed with Reilly & Lee, not Ulrey, as anyone with Ulrey's skill and gifts at composition simply could not create such an uninspired cover.

Compare the cover to one of the interior illustrations shown below. It is lovely, beautifully executed, and thoroughly charming.

Interior art for JAGLON AND THE TIGER FAIRIES by Ulrey.

In 1954 she designed a dust wrapper for Jack Snow's Who's Who in Oz, but it was used only in advertisements for the book, being replaced by the yellow and red jacket based on the endpapers of The Royal Book of Oz.

There are a number of drawings by Ulrey for Ozma of Oz. No such edition was ever published, and given the fact that they were executed in varying techniques, I suspect they were work samples. You can see more of these on Bill Campbell's Oz Enthusiast blog. One of the prettiest is seen below.

Unpublished illustration by Dale Ulrey for L. Frank Baum's OZMA OF OZ.

Reilly & Lee must have liked the samples because in 1955 Ulrey began a project to re-illustrate the Oz series with a new edition of The Tin Woodman of Oz. Presumably the publisher thought more modern illustrations would help invigorate sales.

While most Oz fans would argue that Neill's original illustrations are inseparable from Baum's text, Ulrey produced a very handsome volume. You can see and read much more about Ulrey's edition of The Tin Woodman of Oz in this previous blog post.


The next year, in 1956, Ulrey got the honor of illustrating the first edition of The Wizard of Oz to be published by Reilly & Lee.

Ulrey's jacket design for the 1956 edition of THE WIZARD OF OZ.

Ulrey's illustrations are handsome, though not as successful as those she did for Tin Woodman. They were all printed in two colors.

Dale Ulrey illustration from the 1956 edition of THE WIZARD OF OZ.

Herbert Ulrey died on January 29, 1958, of a cerebral hemorrhage. At the time he and Dale were living in Hickory, North Carolina, on 450 3rd Avenue Drive, S. E., though I can not yet find when or why the family had moved to North Carolina, but it was after 1951.

After her 1956 Wizard of Oz, Dale Ulrey may have retired, as I can find no evidence that she did any additional work in either comics or illustration. Dale died October 14, 1989, in Dallas, Texas. It seems an absolute crime that no one ever interviewed her for The Baum Bugle or tried (as far as I know) to get her to a convention. Such missed opportunities! We will take closer looks at Ulrey's edition of The Wizard of Oz in the coming weeks.

Map of Oz Monday - Minor Map Mop-Up

We are quickly running out of maps in the main series of forty Oz books. Today we'll look at a couple of the remaining few. First we come to the "Diagram of a Journey" in Neill's Lucky Bucky in Oz (1942). As described in the illustration it is clearly "not a true map," yet it does have a couple interesting features, besides being a handsome image.

LUCKY BUCKY Map - Click to enlarge.

The geographic detail in this image, such as the Zeron's Mountain, Dollfins, etc., could easily be incorporated into a "true" map. There is a lot of detail in the mountain range as depicted. But one thing I found especially interesting is that Neill gives us a view of Ozma's palace from the south. You might remember we discussed the northerly view in a previous blog post. Here Neill has definitely drawn a different view of the palace without the grand entrance or the pair of high towers in the wall. Is Neill consciously drawing it differently, as he has clearly shown he beleives the main entrance to the palace is on the north side?

Note that we see Ozma's Palace, surrounded by its high wall, but surrounding it are many small Oz-style cottages with their domed roofs and "stick 'em up!" chimneys, shown both to the north and south of the palace. Neill does not show any outer city wall. Does this suggest that Neill may have considered the entire green area on most traditional Oz maps to be "the city" and that only the palace is behind the wall? This might explain why he seems to never show the outer wall in his later Oz book illustrations. Essentially he is giving us the walled Palace and grounds surrounded by Emerald City suburbs of traditional Oz-style homes. Then again, this isn't a "true map."

The next map in the Reilly & Lee Oz series comes to us as the endpapers of Jack Snow's Who's Who in Oz (1954).

1954 Map of Oz - Click to enlarge.

Since it is hard to see the complete image when it is used as endpapers I have reproduced the above from a postcard-size version of the same map that was probably prepared by the publisher for Snow to send to his various Oz fan correspondents.

There is not much new to say about this map. The most interesting thing is that it combines the two 1914 maps into one. Thus we have the detailed "Map of the Land of Oz" embedded within the "Map of the Countries Surrounding the Land of Oz."

One correction that I suspect Snow might have personally asked for is that the "corn ear" that was used to represent Jack Pumpkinhead on earlier Reilly & Lee maps has been replaced with a drawing of Jack's head. The map also has the mountains drawn in the representational style I associate with Tolkien maps, where you see the profiles of the mountains instead of the more topographical view used in the earlier maps.

The last odd design choice was that the Deadly Desert is populated with assorted cactus, cattle skulls, broken wagon wheels, and the like. Ride 'em cowboy!

The map was reused two years later in the first Reilly & Lee edition of The Wizard of Oz, which was otherwise illustrated by Dale Ulrey. But in this 1956 edition of Wizard the map is reproduced in color!

1956 Map of the Land of Oz - Click to enlarge.

As you can see, the staff artist that colored the map also eliminated the countries surrounding Oz. And then, coloring the area beyond the desert a couple shades of blue, they have given the impression that Oz and its Deadly Desert is surrounded by an ocean rather than the usual adjacent countries.

Next week we'll look at the last map printed in any of the main forty Oz titles. See you then!
Click here to go to our next Map of Oz Monday post!

White Edition Wednesday - WIZARD

Last week we got an overview of the ever-popular "white editions." Today we begin our look at the books one at a time - beginning, of course, with The Wizard of Oz. This will be the most complicated and lengthiest of these blogs, as this title has more variants and Dick Martin's modifications were much more extreme. The "white edition" shown above was published in 1965. But two other Reilly & Lee editions of Wizard preceded it, and we must pay our respects to them as well.

Martin's jacket for the 1960 Ulrey WIZARD.

The first Reilly & Lee edition of Wizard was published in 1956 and featured new illustrations by cartoonist Dale Ulrey. Her pictures were attractive and were printed in black and red in the early printings. In 1960, soon after Dick Martin started his long association with Reilly & Lee, he drew a new dust jacket design for the Ulrey Wizard. For this 1960 printing, the text illustration colors were modified to help tell the story - just like W. W. Denslow had done in the original 1900 printing. Blue in the Munchkin Country, red in the Poppy Field, green in the Emerald City, etc. I am fairly certain this ink color change to the Ulrey illustrations was done at Dick Martin's urging. I doubt anyone at Reilly & Lee even knew of Denslow's original color scheme. Dick was already a major Baum and Denslow scholar, and tweaking the colors like this is exactly the sort of thing he would have done. I also suspect Dick planted the idea that they needed a totally new edition of Wizard featuring the original Denslow illustrations. And in 1964 a new Denslow illustrated edition was published.

1964 "Poster Cover" edition of THE WIZARD OF OZ

For this first printing of the Denslow edition, Dick Martin prepared a lovely cover based on one of the original advertising posters for The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from 1900. Dick also adapted Denslow's 1903 "Poppy Field" endpaper design for the book.

Endpapers of the 1964 Reilly & Lee "Poster Cover" edition of WIZARD

If you compare these to the original 1903 endpapers, which were printed in red and green, you will notice Dick has redrawn the image and extended it at the bottom by almost an inch to accommodate the Reilly & Lee Oz book proportions. The book retained the afterword by Edward Wagenknecht from the 1956 Ulrey edition and got a new foreword which may have been written by Dick Martin:

"W. W. Denslow, the illustrator, was the perfect collaborator for L. Frank Baum. His pictures could no more be separated from the text than Gilbert's words could be taken from Sullivan's music. The same spirit of fun, surprise and mystery held them both in a rare and happy partnership. This sparkling new edition contains all the best of Denslow's illustrations - including many which have not appeared since the original edition of 1900, and several of which have never before been published."

Looking at the chronology of events, it seems likely that it was Reilly & Lee's pleasure in seeing this spiffy new edition that prompted them to ask Dick to redesign all of the Oz books in a new modern format. Alas, he had given this 1964 edition a very unique cover - a style that would be hard to replicate on thirteen additional Baum titles. So Dick copied the style he'd used on Merry Go Round in Oz for the post-Wizard books, and when Wizard needed to be reprinted in 1965 he designed the new "white edition" cover we all know, as seen at the top of this blog post, to replace the "poster edition."

For the most part the interior of the "white edition" is identical to the earlier 1964 "poster edition." But there were a few changes. The illustration color scheme was improved. In the 1964 "poster edition," the first two 32-page gatherings had blue text illustrations. In the 1965 "white edition," the first 16-page gathering has illustrations printed in gray, better suiting the story. The "white edition's" final gathering of 16 pages also changed to illustrations printed in gray and added eight more pages to the end of the book. To fill these extra pages Dick cut the three-page ad [see comments] listing all forty Oz books as well as two illustrations that appeared in the "poster edition." He replaced them with a multi-page ad - featuring the plot synopses of the Baum Oz books from Who's Who in Oz - plus two additional illustrations. Many copies of the "white edition" Wizard have the Kansas illustrations printed in chocolatey brown rather than gray. The brown can be seen in the illustration of Uncle Henry sitting on the stoop further down this blog.

Before we get into looking at how Dick Martin adapted the Denslow illustrations it is well to point out one feature I only recently noticed. The typography of the Denslow edition is that of the Dale Ulrey edition. Dick Martin simply replaced her illustrations with adapted Denslow illustrations

Note that the text, page numbers, and running titles are identical in both editions. Martin has simply adapted two of Denslow's images to replace those of Ulrey. He also deleted the chapter number. In the foreword quoted above it mentions that this edition includes several illustrations which "have never before been published." That refers to these two images:

The image at left was discovered in a 1954 Metropolitan Life Insurance advertisement. In 1964 Dick still believed this was an unknown Denslow illustration. It isn't. It dates from 1954. The Lion (above right) is from Denslow's 1905 "Scarecrow and Tin Man at the Flower Festival in California" comic page.

It must be pointed out that while I am calling these Denslow illustrations, most of them have been heavily adapted and some have been completely redrawn by Dick Martin. He did this both to simplify Denslow's elaborate two color design and to create images the right shape to fit the Ulrey layout. Let's take a look at some examples:

Original Denslow on left - Dick Martin on right. CLICK TO ENLARGE

Above, you can see how Dick modified Denslow's original illustration to serve as a stand-alone full-page drawing. I like that he preserved Denslow's aesthetics by allowing the sunflower to break through the frame. Yet once one realizes these "white edition" images are Dick Martin tracings it's easy to spot his work. In the right hand picture, the simple, cartoony silhouette of Aunt Em doing dishes is much more Martin than Denslow.

Below are several examples of the clever way Dick cobbled together different Denslow illustrations to meet the needs of fitting into the Ulrey edition typesetting.

Original Denslow on left - Dick Martin on right. CLICK TO ENLARGE

You can see that Dick kept the initial S to start the chapter, but he needed to remove the Munchkin hat and some of the wildflowers. However, the raised position of the S created an empty space above the type, so he replaced the original seated Dorothy with a standing Dorothy pulled from the illustration below.

Dick reused the Toto from this picture on the chapter title below. Note, too, that Dick replaced almost all of Denslow's solid blocks of color with zip-a-tone line patterns. The line pattern was easier to print reliably and probably added a subtly modern feel to the book. 

Original Denslow on left - Dick Martin on right. CLICK TO ENLARGE

Many of Denslow's color plate drawings were reproduced fairly accurately, though printed in a single color. However, the other illustrations were almost all Dick Martin tracings. Sometimes Dick's tracings were quite close to Denslow's original lines. At other times Dick's lines couldn't help but display his own style. And a few times Dick made deliberate changes to Denslow's linework.

W. W. Denslow above - Dick Martin below.

BIBLIOGRAPHIC ODDITIES
This section will be modified as more information on variants comes in

While the 1964 printing of the "poster edition" of Wizard had "poppy field" endpapers, it is probable the earliest printings of the "white edition" also have "poppy field" endpapers. But the vast majority of Wizard "white editions" I have seen have the Road to Oz "crowd of Ozian celebrities" endpapers. (These endpapers were also used in the rest of the "white edition" Oz books.) I'd be most curious to hear what endpapers are in your copies of the Wizard "white edition." If you know when you bought your copy or it has a presentation date, that can be useful information, too. The earliest printings have the front and back cover properly centered. The later printings (probably from the mid-late 1970s) used smaller boards, 6" wide as opposed to the 6 3/8" inches of the earlier printings, as shown below.

Note how the cover on the right is off-center due to the smaller boards.

I have several copies of this book here in the Tiger Den - one of which seems somewhat atypical. I bought it new in 1979 at F. A. O. Schwartz when I was a kid. It has the smaller 6" boards, so the cover doesn't wrap well, but it does have the "poppy field" endpapers printed in black and red and the Kansas illustrations are printed in gray. The smaller board size and known purchase date indicate this is a later printing. So clearly the gray Kansas illustrations and "poppy" endpapers do not automatically indicate an early printing date.

Examples of both the gray and chocolate brown ink colors.

So I'd be most curious if any of you can share info on whether the Kansas scenes in your copy are gray or brown, and if you have Road endpapers or "poppy" endpapers. Also if there are ads in the front or back of the book for either 14 or 40 Oz books. You can leave info in the comments section.

As I mentioned last week twelve of the fourteen "white editions" were also available in paperback form through Rand McNally. Their paperback Wizard printed all of the illustrations in black and white.

That's it for today - next week we'll tackle The Land of Oz!

The Twin Tin Woodmen of Oz

Since W. W. Denslow illustrated the first Oz book, The Wizard of Oz, in 1900, the story has been illustrated countless times by artists all over the world. But the rest of the Oz series rarely gets new illustrations--at least in the USA. For many readers John R. Neill's illustrations seem inextricably linked to the post-Wizard Oz books. But there have been occasional attempts to replace Neill's work.

L. Frank Baum's Oz book for 1918 was The Tin Woodman of Oz. As usual, it was illustrated by John R. Neill (below left). Decades later in 1955 Oz book publisher Reilly & Lee brought out an edition of The Tin Woodman of Oz with new illustrations by Dale Conner Ulrey (below right), former cartoonist on the comic strip Apple Mary (which later became Mary Worth). These new illustrations for The Tin Woodman of Oz seem to have been the start of a plan by the publisher to make the Oz books appear more up-to-date.

As you can read on the cover of the Ulrey-illustrated edition, her illustrations were "adapted from original drawings" by Neill. Let's compare Ulrey's work with Neill's to see how close her adaptation was. If you want to see any of these illustrations in a larger size, just click on it. Then hit your "back" button to return to this blog.

Above on the left is Neill's depiction of Nick Chopper, the Scarecrow, and Woot setting out on their journey. And on the right is Ulrey's. Although it's the same moment in the story, Ulrey has gone so far as to rearrange the figures into a more symmetrical composition. Her design of Woot is younger than Neill's--and happier. But Ulrey didn't always take such liberties with her adaptation.

These illustrations of Woot, transformed into a green monkey, escaping from an underground den of dragons are virtually identical in composition. Ulrey's altered a few details for her illustration on the right, but otherwise hers is clearly taken directly from Neill's on the left.























Neill's full-page illustration (above left) of Ozma and Dorothy riding in the Red Wagon is closely matched by Ulrey's illustration of the same scene (above right).

Neill did a number of double-page illustrations for The Tin Woodman of Oz, such as the one above left, showing Ku-Klip meeting his tin creations once more. Ulrey matched Neill's version with a double-page illustration of her own above on the right, altering the scene to make, for one thing, Polychrome more prominent.

More often Ulrey turned Neill's double-page spreads into single-page illustrations. Here's the characters meeting Mrs. Yoop, the giantess. The moment of the story is the same, and even the positions of the figures are similar in both illustrations, but Ulrey's version on the right radically alters the composition of Neill's on the left.

Here's another major change in Ulrey's adaptation of Neill. In Neill's illustration above left, Nick's and Captain Fyter's enthusiatic acceptance of one another is immediately conveyed by the way their arms are thrown over each other's shoulders. In Ulrey's version above right Nick and Captain Fyter shake hands politely, but their pleasure is much more subdued.

Take a look at both illustrators' versions of Polychrome riding the Hip-po-gy-raf. They're extremely similar. Please note, however, that Ulrey has taken more care with the details of the story by giving Polychrome the Scarecrow's clothes to carry.

Neill's Polychrome in The Tin Woodman of Oz is not as attractive as his earlier illustrations of her in The Road to Oz, Sky Island, and Tik-tok of Oz. She appears slightly older and even seems to have put on some weight. Ulrey's Polychrome is less ethereal than Neill's tends to be, but her Polychrome is quite appealing and--in this story at least--more attractive than Neill's.

Ulrey's illustration of the Scarecrow stuffed with hay is interesting because her positioning of the Scarecrow (above right) is almost a mirror image of Neill's (above left).

Neill chose not to draw a black and white illustration of one of the story's most dramatic scenes--the discovery of Captain Fyter. He did, however, provide a color plate of Polychrome helping to oil the poor, rusted guy (above left). Ulrey's illustration of Fyter's discovery (above right) incorporates all the drama that the scene offers. It's one of the more striking of her illustrations for The Tin Woodman of Oz. What other eye-catching drawings might she have given us if she'd not constrained herself to "adapting" Neill's illustrations?

Dale Ulrey drew new illustrations for Reilly & Lee's 1956 edition of The Wizard of Oz, the first version of that book from the publishers of the rest of the Oz books. Ulrey also began new illustrations for Baum's third Oz book, Ozma of Oz, originally published in 1907. But that project was not published and Reilly & Lee's attempt to update the look of the Oz books with Dale Ulrey was abandoned. Ulrey's work is lively and attractive, particularly when she's not slavishly aping Neill. It's too bad she didn't continue to let us see Oz through her eyes.