Oscars in the Family Album

Excerpt from Clay Bodies:

Among my grandmother’s things from her life as Mrs. Brad Keeler is a photograph of eleven presumably bronze statuettes that look eerily similar to the famed Oscars of the Academy Awards. Family lore is that Grandpa Brad had a hand in designing the first statuettes. But is it true? Here’s what I know: 

 In spite of other assertions that Brad’s first job was for Padre Potteries, it appears that his first first job was working for the Phillips Bronze and Brass Corp. studios, which was owned and operated by Rae Warren Phillips, a friend of his father’s who is named on his patent for a specialized clay-cutting apparatus that is intended to neatly cut square architectural tiles, thus saving the ceramist the tedious work of hand-cutting. Rae, or R.W., was the metallurgist who knew how to cast shapes in various metals, particularly bronze, and he was the craftsman behind Phillips Bronze and Brass.

Brad sculpted and created large-scale works in bronze including the bust of John Bullock, founder of Bullocks Department Store, and some larger-than-life parrot sculptures that are as tall as I am. There is a photo of him, elbow propped on the head of Bullock, his other hand on his hip, whole body cocked to the side in a confident posture, a literal feather in his cap.

And there are the photographs of the Oscars.

Official written history is that George Stanley sculpted the original statuette from a sketch by director Cedric Gibbons, and the first of what would be many contracts with foundries went to Guido Nelli, an Italian immigrant who lived from 1888-1952. The California Art Bronze Foundry was co-owned by Nelli and a man named P. E. Keeler. 

Keeler. Coincidence? Probably.

There is no one so far that I can locate in the family tree with those initials who lived during that period in that place. 

What I have sussed out so far: Nelli was the creative artist and craftsman behind the foundry. Coming to Los Angeles by way of entering the United States through New York by way of Petrograd, Russia and originally from Rome, Nelli introduced the lost wax process of casting metal sculptures. 

[Mom, while working for Lynx making golf clubs, learned the lost wax process of casting in metal. It is something she has spoken of with some pride.]

Nelli cast the Oscar designed by Stanley and presumably held the contract until the Great Depression forced him to close down the foundry, and for the duration of World War 2, due to a metal shortage, the Oscars were made of plaster. After the war would put us into 1945, and by that time Brad would have been in his thirties and well beyond his early work sculpting for R. W. Phillips at Phillips Bronze and Brass (also known as Phillips Bronze Corporation, or, as I recently learned, Phillips Bronze Bushings Works). So I begin to wonder, did Brad have a hand in the plaster version of the statuettes? That would have been 1944, according to the timeline. 

Letters from Brad to Catherine dated 1942, the summer they rented the Laguna Beach beach house on the Pacific Coast Highway, the one that is now painted a periwinkle blue and owned by a chiropractor, was the summer she was pregnant with her middle child, a son, Patrick. They were already living at the Delay Drive house. On the census for 1940 he is listed as a ceramist and Catherine as a finisher, and a lodger named Elizabeth is with them and she is also employed as a finisher. On his draft card from the same year, he lists his employer as Padre Potteries in Los Angeles. So it would seem by 1942 he was building his own pottery in the backyard on Delay Dr., and already working with James Webster on the Bradster works. James is referenced multiple times in the letters home when talking about his work. 

Looking at the photo of the Oscars that I have, I compare that against a timeline of what the Oscars have looked like. The photo I have is clearly different from the war-time plaster Oscar but identical to one that Katharine Hepburn received in 1933. Identical. 

So where was Brad in 1933? He would have been twenty years old. That would have been two years before his marriage to Catherine, one year before his father Rufus died. Brad had two years of college, according to voting records. That would make the timing of his first job, around age 20, about right. 

In fact, though, all of the earliest statuettes match the ones in the photograph. But Brad would only have been sixteen years old in 1929, so it’s unlikely he worked for Guido Nelli at that time. Could there have been a bidding war for the right to produce the statuettes? 

What I can tell you is that internet says Brad was employed by Phillips circa 1931. The timing is right. And Nelli closed the foundry during the Great Depression. It couldn’t have been 1929, when he was producing the first statuettes, but I can find no record of his producing them after that. And while the Depression lasted until 1939, when World War 2 brought us out of it, it’s unlikely he would have closed down so close to the end—surely it was more toward the middle? 1934ish? Or even earlier, maybe? 

Let’s say hypothetically that Phillips outbid him for the Oscars and produced them in 1933. 

It’s possible.

An avenue for further research. 

What I know is this: We have an original photograph of the Oscar statuettes. In the photograph are eleven statuettes. The statuettes match the design of the originals, including one won by Katharine Hepburn in 1933. Brad worked for Phillips Bronze and Brass for his first job, which would have been around that same time. He would have still been living at home. By 1935 he was married and living at another family property, on Delay Drive in Los Angeles, and working for Padre.

Was Brad involved with the production of the first Oscars? Maybe not the first, but close.

**

Postscript: It is the following morning and I am thumbing through the photographs and find one that I had previously overlooked: three more statuettes, two with engraved plaques that read,

Academy of

Motion Pictures

Arts and Sciences

First Award

1934

So there it is. 

Although the one without the placard is on a very tall base, unlike any of the others I have seen thus far. So the mystery remains.

***

Post-Post Script

My continual searching on the internet eventually turned up an article, "The Oscar Statue Gets a Makeover", on the Los Angeles Magazine site circa 2016. In the article is the following sentence:

In 1935 the Academy switched to Phillips Bronze Bushing Works near Central and Washington for one year.

So there's the answer. I still have many questions, like, why? And why only a year? Where did the author get his information?