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STAR OF THE BROWN SECTION
In His Introduction to “Chesapeake Bay and
Tidewater,” Watson recalled Bodine’s visit. “I was editing the
Baltimore Sunday Sun years ago,” he wrote, “when a shy youth
submitted some strikingly fine photographs for publication. He was then
a novice in the Sun’s commercial-art office, gnawing his knuckles in
impatience over the dull daily business of making routine pictures of
routine goods for routine sale. The young redhead was so eager to do
creative work on the Sunday staff that he might almost have come for
nothing at all. But he calmly stated that nobody could want him to
provide good pictures at poor pay. His way of putting it startled the
editors and almost made the business manager blush (which is quite a
feat) and he got the raise.”
Watson remembered correctly. Bodine was making
$27.50 a week as a commercial photographer. Going “upstairs” he got
a whopping raise to $40. At the same time the “shy youth” talked the
seasoned editor into giving him a flat $25 a month extra for the use of
his car in Baltimore, no matter how little or much he traveled. At
that time other reporters and photographers were paid travel money in
streetcar tokens. When Bodine went outside the city limits he charged
extra, too, even if it was only to Towson or Catonsville.
In 1927 the Sunday Sun sold for five cents in
the city and suburbs, eight cents elsewhere. It had a circulation of
200,905 and consisted of eight sections, usually about 136 pages.
Coolidge was president. Lindbergh flew across the Atlantic on May 21.
Frank R. Kent’s column, “The Great Game of Politics,” was on page
one. Edmund Duffy was the editorial page cartoonist. Grantland Rice was
writing about Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. Ronald Coleman and Vilma Banky
were stars of the movie “The Night of Love.” Morton Downey was
singing at the Maryland Theatre. The Sunday comics included the Nebbs,
the Bungle Family, Toonerville Folks, Mutt and Jeff and the Gumps.
The most attractive part of the Sunday Sun was
the three-part Photogravure section known by everyone as “The Brown
Section.” This was a hodgepodge of international, national and local
pictures. Usually the big news scenes of recent weeks were displayed on
page one, the pictures coming by mail from such agencies as Underwood
and Underwood, Acme and Wide World. In the spring of 1927 Lindbergh was
often on page one. On other pages were spreads of Coolidge’s summer
retreat in the Black Hills, the treasures from King Tut’s Tomb, tulip
fields in Holland, and British sailors rehearsing rope climbing for a
royal tournament. Every issue, it seems, had a photograph of a
dreadnought firing a salvo or catapulting an airplane, a rags to riches
personality (“Edith Mae Cummings who in four years moved from a
telephone switch board to million dollar fortune is running for mayor of
Detroit.”) and a rider being thrown in a steeplechase, or from a
bucking bronco or a careening motorcycle.
The local pictures were of events that had
taken place a week or two earlier-opening day at Pimlico, an air meet at
Logan Field, a Worthington Valley horse show, a Memorial Day parade on
Frederick avenue, the Queen of Spring pageant at Alexander Hamilton
School.
The pictures were not displayed in rectangular
form but in circles, ovals, triangles, rhomboids and shapes that defy
description. If there was space left between them it was filled with
type set in odd measure and with ornaments and filigrees drawn by the
layout artist. Inside pages were crowded with ads, usually of
silversmiths, bakeries, dairies, a local soft drink company and the
Baltimore and Ohio Railroad-the railroad advertised its passenger
service and often its motor coaches, which carried passengers from
trainside in Jersey City across the Hudson River by ferry to coach
stations in Manhattan.
Although Bodine, as Sunday photographer, had to
take pictures for the theater and society pages too, most of his work
was for “The Brown Section.” For a year or more he covered the same
subjects as his predecessors - the Maryland Hunt Cup, graduation at the
Naval Academy, Fourth of July celebrations - along with the big events
of the day, Queen Marie of Romania visiting Baltimore, Lindbergh
speaking at the Stadium in the rain, the dirigible Hindenburg cruising
over Baltimore. Most of these were news pictures. They differed from
those that had appeared earlier in the news columns only in being part
of a spread on the subject and, sometimes, but not always, catching the
mood of the event.
Though the pictures were credited merely as “Sun
Staff Photos” it is possible to identify some that Bodine produced
soon after he began contributing to the Photogravure section. A sweeping
view of sheep grazing on the Mansion House slope in Druid Hill Park gave
indications of his pictorial talent. So did a small picture titled “Steel,
Steam and Mist,” showing a switching engine shuttling from a trainshed
toward the St. Paul street bridge in the background. This was taken with
a soft focus lens and had the quality of a French daguerreotype.
Gradually the Bodine style began to evolve and
it changed both the quality and the type of local pictures used in the
Photogravure section. A layout on the new Western High School indicated
that the photographer was trying to stress the architectural aspects of
the building. A page of pictures of Baltimore gardens caught their
freshness and individuality. On March 28, 1928, a large photograph
titled “Evening in the Harbor” appeared; it was made at dusk and it
showed the rigging of oyster boats against a somber sky. It was lovely
and it carried the credit line “A. Aubrey Bodine.” That probably was
the first, or one of the first, credit lines he ever received. A few
weeks later the layout on the new City College also carried his name.
From then on his byline appeared regularly and became one of the best
known staff names in Sunpaper history.
More and more Bodine was shooting for pictorial
effect. His best picture illustrating a Western Maryland hunting story
showed the hunters with their guns and dogs dramatically silhouetted on
a hillside. For a ducking story along the Susquehanna River he took not
only pictures of gunners in their sink boxes and with their bag, but
also a mood photograph of a guide rowing his boat across a pond in early
morning light. In the distance was a clump of trees on a crescent of
land, and in the foreground the edge of a barn. It was a picturesque
scene and Bodine recognized its possibilities years later. He went back
to photograph it again with the rowboat coming out of rising mists. This
picture was superior to the earlier one; with better composition and
heightened mood. Through darkroom magic he had perfected, several
distracting pilings had been removed. The picture was titled “Ebb Tide”
and became one of his big prize winners. It was characteristic of Bodine
to note striking scenes like this and appreciate when they could best be
photographed. Many times he went back after intervals of years, to get
pictures he knew were there.
Bodine now was living the full, sweet life. He
loved his work and the opportunities it offered, both professionally and
socially. As a Sun photographer he had an advantageous spot for anything
of interest or significance going on in Baltimore or Maryland. He was
using his best pictures from these assignments in exhibitions.
Occasionally he was asked to judge a show, not only locally but out of
town, and that must have been heady stuff indeed for a young man who was
still experimenting to improve his own work.
Only one embarrassing incident was to mar these
perfect days. He was assigned to cover a matinee vaudeville performance
of Abbott and Costello. He hated such assignments. He was not at his
best making interior pictures, had a hard time shooting unpredictable
action, and was ill at ease before crowds. But there he was in a box
seat adjoining the stage, and so intent on what he was doing that he was
caught unaware when the comedians bounded into the box, grabbed his
camera and equipment bag and jumped back on the stage. One of the pair
tried to coax him up to retrieve the camera while the other pretended to
pull outsize purple bloomers and other unlikely objects out of the bag.
The audience roared at the stunned and mortified young man sitting in
the most prominent seat in the theater. Bodine was wise enough never to
tell anyone at the office about the experience. But that night when his
mother asked if he were running a fever, because his face was so
flushed, he let slip a few details of his horrendous afternoon.
In 1927 or 1928, when he was 21 or 22, Bodine
left the family home in Elk Ridge and moved to Baltimore. He and Raleigh
Carroll, a reporter on the Sun, and often a third roommate who changed
from time to time, had an apartment at Park avenue and Tyson street,
above Leon’s, a popular speakeasy. Many nights their rooms were the
scene of bull sessions and parties but more often Bodine used them to
take pictures of still life and his friends. He liked the gay life of a
bachelor but he enjoyed even more making pictures, either alone or with
someone who could teach him. He and Robert F. Kniesche, a bright young
news photographer who later directed the Sunpapers’ news photographic
department for years, traveled together. They might drive to Pittsburgh
to shoot the steel mills or take a trip on the Baltimore Mail Line to
photograph Southern scenes. Kniesche has a picture of Bodine standing on
the steps of the Cloisters in Savannah. He was wearing knickers and
argyle socks, an outfit that he wore most of the time. Years before they
traveled out of town they roamed Baltimore, photographing the railroad
yards, the waterfront and harbor and downtown Baltimore at night. One of
Bodine’s favorite spots was the roof of the YMCA building on Franklin
street. From there he took several exhibition prints of the Cathedral
and its onion-shaped domes looming against the city’s skyline.
Bodine, Kniesche, Carroll and Leigh Sanders,
who had succeeded Bodine as commercial photographer, lived high and well
on their $40 and $50-a-week salaries. They would meet in the lobby of
the Rennert Hotel because that was the place to be seen; they ate at
Schellhase’s Restaurant, then on Franklin street, a restaurant H. L.
Mencken liked and at which his Saturday Night Club often met. They went
with girls at the Maryland Institute, tore around town in their Model T’s
and had access to the speakeasies in the Park avenue neighborhood which
was their stamping ground. One of the favorite speakeasies was Harry
Channel’s on Biddle street. A popular bootlegger was Lee Turner, known
as the society bootlegger because many of his clients were the best
people in town. The boys would mix half-pint bottles with 180 proof
alcohol and spigot water. They seldom bothered to add juniper berry
juice to give the potion a gin flavor. Nelly Moore was another popular
bootlegger, particularly with newspapermen. Gordon gin bottles with
labels were premium items. Bootleggers liked them for making it look as
if they were selling the real thing, right off the boat. Kniesche says
that if the group turned in five empty Gordon gin bottles they got six
bottles of gin for the price of five, but of course in plain bottles.
Newspapermen seldom drank anything but gin. Whisky was hard to get. The
only way to get good whisky was to have a friendly doctor who would
prescribe it for medicinal purposes.
The event of the year for newspapermen and
artists was the Bal des Arts sponsored for many years by the Charcoal
Club, which was composed of artists, architects; writers and other free
spirits. The members spent weeks discussing their costumes and whom they
would take. A day or two before the ball they would get a supply of gin
from the busy bootleggers. Bodine and Kniesche carried their gin and
orange juice in two suitcases. They would meet in the basement of the
Charcoal Club on Preston street to apply their makeup and “start to
get a package on,” an expression in those days for getting drunk. The
ball was in Lehmann Hall on Howard street. Tickets cost as much as $12.
The affair usually had a theme-robots, Hollywood, East of Suez, Back to
Bohemia - and the guests were to dress accordingly. Uniforms of all
kinds, tuxedos and “spike-tail coats” were barred. Even the
policemen and firemen assigned to the hall were required to wear fancy
dress. The ball started at 9:30 p.m. A 25-piece orchestra played in the
main hall, in another room was a 15-man jazz band, and a string quartet
played for the midnight supper. One newspaper account read: “At about
1 a.m. when the revelry reached its zenith an announcement was made that
half a dozen husbands would like to find their wives and rewards were
offered.” The ball was officially to end at 4 or 5 a.m. but usually
went on much of that day and sometimes that night too.
After a few years of Baltimore’s gay life
Bodine decided he should get away for a while. On August 30, 1930, he
sailed for Europe on the S.S.Republic. The cost of his round trip,
including United States and French taxes, was $207.75. A friend took his
picture before he sailed. Despite the summer heat, he wore a heavy
overcoat with large plaid stripes and a plaid scarf. He held a large
pipe and leaned nonchalantly against the wheel of the ship. His new felt
hat seemed too large. No matter how hard he strove to pass as a man of
the world embarking on an adventurous trip, he looked about 17. He was
24.
He stopped to see his friend Dick Medford, who
was studying at the Sorbonne. Bodine, who did not know a word of French
or anything about Paris, walked more than halfway across the city to
find Medford, who had no idea that he was coming. When he located the
address he walked in without rapping and said “Hi” in the same tone
he would use to someone he saw every day. He also visited with R. P.
Harriss, another Baltimore friend, then working for the Paris Herald and
writing a book.
Bodine spent most of his three weeks in Germany
and Austria taking pictures. A number of those made in Rothenburg,
Nurnburg and Wien (the spellings he used as picture titles) were
exhibited for years. They were among his favorites and several hung on
his living room wall until the late Forties. He was perceptive enough to
notice that the German government was encouraging its youth to fly and
working hard to build an air force. He was flattered that on several
occasions he had been mistaken for a touring Englishman. He returned to
Baltimore with his suitcase plastered with stickers.
In the early Thirties he went back to school
and he met and married Evelyn LeFevre.
His only schooling after St. Paul’s had been
a year at the Industrial Boys School on Franklin street in 1922 or 1923;
he attended two nights a week, studying eighth grade subjects. But in
1931-32 he enrolled in the YMCA night school, taking English and
possibly another subject. The meager records indicate that he had a high
school diploma when he started but that would have been impossible.
Also, in the summer of 1931 and 1934 he studied commercial photography
at the Winona School of Professional Photography at Winona Lake, Ill.
The two or three-week courses included such subjects as camera swings
and tilts, commercial lighting, film processing, negative printing,
laboratory techniques, composition and architectural photography. Both
summers he was elected leader of his class.
Most important, he entered the Maryland
Institute Evening School in October, 1932. Tuition was $20. He studied
general design three nights a week under Hughes Wilson, a graduate of
the school who had won its European Traveling Scholarship in 1928. The
catalogue described the course as “planned to meet the needs of
designers and teachers in art structure, composition and fundamentals of
general design. The advanced course gives practice in application of
design principles to problems in decorative and applied art, as well as
self-expression in the fields of design.” Photography was not part of
the course. Bodine studied there for two years, 1932-33 and 1933-34. He
received an A his first year, a B his second. He did not begin the
advanced work for the four-year program. He credited the Institute with
teaching him what he knew about design and with giving him an
appreciation of art. He believed that his two years there greatly
influenced and benefited his photography. In Who’s Who he listed his
attendance as four years.
Evelyn LeFevre had graduated from the Institute
in 1927 with a diploma in costume design. She won first prize in that
subject and received a $300 scholarship for study in New York. She
attended the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts and the Traphagen
School. She returned to Baltimore in September, 1928, to teach costume
design at the Institute and was there until 1947.
She was beautiful, vivacious, talented and
ambitious. She and Aubrey met when he was taking newspaper pictures at
the Institute. After a two-year courtship they were married on August 7,
1932, at a church in North East, near Elkton, Md. Bodine wanted to be
married there because he thought it was one of the prettiest churches he
had photographed. Only the immediate families were present; he had not
invited his friends, or even told them about his wedding.
The newlyweds took a four-room apartment on the
second floor at 112 West Mulberry street and lived there for four
years-until one night at a party, with everyone high on bathtub gin,
Bodine bought a house without realizing it. The next day a friend, a
real estate salesman, called him. “Well, Aubrey,” he said, “when
do you want to make settlement on your house?” “What house?”
Bodine demanded. He was told that at the party he had been offered 805
Park avenue for $7,000 and had made a counter offer of $4,000. The real
estate man called his client in the morning and the offer was accepted.
Bodine thought it over and decided he had made a good buy even if he had
been drunk. The century-old three-story brick house had five apartments.
Bodine loved 805 and had only one fault to find
with it. When he bought it he did not realize that it had an
irredeemable ground rent, which meant that he could not own the land, no
matter how long he lived there, unless the owner of the ground chose to
sell. Despite many offers and cajolements, the owner would not sell.
This infuriated Bodine, particularly when it came time to pay the annual
$250 ground rent. Every year he fired off complaints to public officials
about the “viciousness of the system.” In a three-page letter to
Governor Preston Lane he described ground rents as tyrannical, barbaric
and “little short of treason.” “We fought for our independence 171
years ago for something equally as sacred,” he raged. He concluded:
“I would like to mention for the benefit of this anti-democratic group
[evidently those who held irredeemable ground rents] that some years ago
Abraham Lincoln issued his famous Emancipation Proclamation, thus
depriving thousands of Southerners of slaves overnight with no
compensation whatever, and many were shot in the bargain including many
of my relatives. Wishing you every success and the minimum of headaches
during your tenure, I am, cordially. . . “
In this period Bodine was developing a sideline
business of selling his prints. This started with the University
Repertory Theatre, popularly known as the University Players. The actors
were young, mostly from Princeton, Harvard and New England girls’
colleges. They had opened a summer theater on Cape Cod and then decided
to establish a repertory company in Baltimore at the Maryland Theatre.
They spent the winters of 1931 and 1932 here. The company included Henry
Fonda, Margaret Sullavan, Mildred Natwick, Joshua Logan, Myron McCormick
and Bretaigne Windust, all to become famous on Broadway. The Sunday Sun
had Bodine take pictures of the company from time to time. When Henry
Fonda and Margaret Sullavan were married in the dining room of the
Kernan Hotel (later the Congress) on Christmas Day in 1931 Bodine was
present as a guest-photographer. Later the company manager wrote him,
requesting copies of various pictures. He ordered prints of Mr. and Mrs.
Fonda and other players, and shots of scenes from their plays. For six 8
by 10 glossy prints from one negative Bodine charged 50 cents each. For
less than six prints his price was 75 cents. On March 19, 1932, the
company sent him a check in the “full amount due you to date. As you
will notice this check is dated April 10, 1932, at which date it may be
cashed.”
Evelyn was a good business woman and after they
were married she convinced Aubrey that he could never get rich, or even
make money, by selling his pictures for 50 cents. He made more when he
began taking pictures for the Bethlehem Steel Company of its Sparrows
Point plant. Officials were so pleased with his work that they asked him
to photograph their Western mines. He took a leave of absence from the
Sunpapers in the spring of 1935 for six weeks.
Bodine gave an account of this trip in a resume
of his career he prepared during World War II for unknown reasons.
He wrote: “The largest job that I ever
tackled on the outside was when the Assistant Manager of Public
Relations came down from Bethlehem and wanted me to go out West for
them. I turned the proposition down for it involved about three months
travel clear to the west coast up to the Grand Coulee Dam. Later they
again approached me with such an attractive offer that I accepted and
secured a leave of absence. I drew up a contract which met the approval
of their attorneys. One of the stipulations was that they would give me
one of their own photographers to set up and carry equipment. The job
was arduous and difficult for it involved photographing mining equipment
in gold, lead, silver, zinc, copper and molybdenum mines, under
conditions just as difficult as one might imagine. One mine, the
Argonaut in Grass Valley, Calif. was 6,000 feet deep, and the other
extreme was the Climax Molybdenum Mine in Colorado, being 12,000 feet
above sea level. Most of the mines were wet, many using 440 volts. As I
moved from one town to another I would develop my negatives in the
bathroom using the wash basin for developer, the toilet for washing
excess developer off and the bathtub for hypo fixing bath. The trip
netted me some thousands of dollars and I have had most cordial
relations with the company to the present . . . “
Bethlehem Steel selected 285 of his prints,
paying him $5 for each one and $2 for its negative-the same rate it paid
him in Baltimore-and $2 for 34 negatives the company considered
unacceptable. He made over $2,000 for the six weeks’ work. He also got
two exhibition prints out of the trip: “Continental Divide, Climax,
Col.” and “Leadville, Col.”
Commercial pictures were also taken for
Appalachian Apples, Inc., of Martinsburg, W.Va., a turkey farm on the
Eastern Shore and several small companies that did work for Bethlehem
Steel. The apple people wanted, in one day’s shooting, “pictures of
the harvesting in nearby orchards, with girls and with men, some
balanced precariously out high on a ladder reaching for the top apples;
several photographs of boys eating apples in various situations; some
packing house pictures and some photos of nicely packed fruit; and such.”
The turkey people were upset over what they
described as a “clothes line” shot. “Who under the sun,” wrote
the wife of the turkey farm owner, “would want to display the picture
with Mr. Baker pushing a wheelbarrow and our ugly little tenant house
and a goodly size wash on the line in the prominent background? Without
an explanation one might suppose that our business was small enough for
Mr. Baker to care for the crop and unprofitable enough for us to live in
a tenant house. The picture did no one justice, least of all you who
makes such beautiful pictures.” Bodine’s answer was surprisingly
mild. After noting that the letter contained many erroneous and
intimidating remarks, he concluded: “However, in consideration of your
feelings, I have destroyed the negative.”
One company complained that the cost of the
pictures ($5 each) “is so extremely high we feel that you no doubt
made an error in the billing and would be pleased to have you recheck
your figures and advise by return mail.” In his reply he was polite
but firm. “This one particular job was an emergency. The photographs
were made in a raging snowstorm from dangerous angles and under adverse
circumstances. I gave your company immediate service because Mr. was
extremely anxious to have the pictures to submit to the president the
next day.”
A building products company was not impressed
that Bodine was already known in salons across the country for the
sensitivity of his work and his ability to use light and shadow to
create beauty. In a long letter the district manager complained about
his photography. “I am very sorry that you have not been able to
secure a good exterior view of the Boiler Shop and the Forge Shop,” he
wrote. “The Boiler Shop. view does not show the ventilators, except
one at the near end which is badly distorted. You will understand that
this need not be a close up view-the idea being to show the entire
installation of ventilators on this roof. I trust that you will secure a
better picture of this installation. Regarding the exterior view of the
Boiler Shop-this picture is all right, except that the line of vision is
such that we cannot see the slope of the main roof, therefore it is
impossible to determine what is being done on this roof. It should be
possible to get a picture of the main roof from some point.”
In later years Bodine would not even consider
photographing a boiler shop roof, no matter how much money was involved.
And if any customer had dared to complain that he had not made an
effective view and had better go back and do it the way it was wanted,
the confrontation would have been frightful to behold. In the late
Forties he was offered $7,000 by an automobile manufacturer, his
favorite one at the time, to portray its factory-supervised service
installations. He turned it down because, as he put it: “Who in the
hell in their right mind would want to photograph those phony bastards
in white coats peering at engines as if they knew what they were doing?”
But those earlier pictures, remember, were made
during the Depression. Bodine had taken a ten per cent pay cut. He was
buying a house. Extra work was not easy to get. An important factor,
too, about the tone of those letters-Evelyn undoubtedly revised them
after he dictated them.
Bodine, of course, did exceptional work and
even during the Depression the demand for his commercial and industrial
photography increased. He had so much to do that he and Leigh Sanders
formed a partnership. Sanders had left the Sun in December, 1931, to
become a ship’s photographer but he eventually came back to Baltimore
with the idea for the partnership. They consulted a lawyer about drawing
up papers but considered his fee too high. Ellen Bodine helped here; she
was dating a young lawyer and she prevailed upon him to do the legal
work for practically nothing. Bodine-Sanders rented a second floor suite
at 105 East Franklin street in November, 1938. They kept a copybook
record of all expenditures-which included 95 cents for doormat, 25 cents
for phone calls to the gas company before phone was installed, and 10
cents for drinking glass holder. Bodine was to bring in the orders from
Bethlehem and other companies and Sanders was to take some of the
pictures and do all the darkroom work. But it did not work out. Bodine
was too demanding, Sanders too easygoing. Within nine months the
partnership was dissolved.
Bodine’s commercial work ranged from steel
mills to portraits. He photographed Mencken and Mencken’s bride.
Mencken wrote him often, ordering extra prints, particularly of his
wife. Several times he mentioned that Aubrey’s was the best portrait
ever made of her. Once he thanked the photographer “for your very
humane bill.”
Many others hounded him for pictures or were
important enough to receive them as gifts. Organizations were after him
for all sorts of favors. Mayor Howard W. Jackson thanked him for the
photograph of his little grandson, Billy Sheehan. Albert D. Hutzler
wrote a gracious note of thanks for pictures of Pomona, the Hutzler
estate. An organist friend turned a thankyou note into a request: “The
pictures are fine. I had no idea they would be so large. Now that you
have the negative would it be possible to get a few small ones of me at
the organ in shiny finish to use as cuts?” The Irvington Improvement
Association asked him to photograph an estate it hoped to have turned
into a neighborhood park. Requests for appearances also came. House
officers of the Johns Hopkins Hospital asked him to judge their camera
contest. The Junior League of Baltimore was sponsoring a Children’s
Theater Bureau Conference of the Junior Leagues of America and wanted
him to judge the photographs of the sets. So many wanted so much that
Bodine took to ignoring both letters and his telephone. One man who had
tried to reach him in these ways for weeks in desperation penned a note
saying, “You are harder to get up with than the ghost of Julius
Caesar!”
Magazines, small ones and important ones, were
now asking for permission to reproduce his pictures. He developed a
reply that insured that his name would appear in the credit. When the
Philadelphia Electric Company asked for such permission he replied: “My
price for the photograph of the spillways at Conowingo Dam which you
desire to use in Current News is $10 provided a credit line reading `A.
Aubrey Bodine’ appears beneath the reproduction.” Carmel Snow,
editor of Harper’s Bazaar, admired his photograph “Two Nuns,”
which appeared in the 1935 issue of Camera, and offered $25 if she could
publish it. His pictures help illustrate “Maryland, a Guide to the Old
Line State,” compiled by the Work Projects Administration. These were
credited to Kramer-Bodine, a commercial art studio which was handling
some of his pictures. It was owned by Evelyn Bodine and Edward Kramer, a
former commercial artist at the Sun who had later toured the Keith
vaudeville circuit with the Maryland Collegians as a song and dance man.
Life had asked Bodine to make pictures but he
was unhappy over the treatment he received. He was assigned to
photograph Gerald W. Johnson, the writer, and he did. The pictures were
not used and Life sent Bodine a check for $10. That made him angry. He
wrote the magazine: “I don’t think $10 is adequate. Just to list the
various things involved: First, I neglected a job on hand that Sunday in
order to help Gerald Johnson whom I know very well; second, the pictures
took up the whole day. I spent the morning with him, rearranging the
furniture, completely turning his study upside down for the proper
setting. Then I took particular care in printing the negatives and
getting them off to meet the right train to get them in your hands the
first thing Monday morning as promised.”
From here he went on to another complaint:
“You spoke in your letter about the German liners that I made in the
Patuxent River back in 1937. How well do I remember this job and the
trouble and effort I put into obtaining them for you for the small sum
of $20. For example, I first had to get permission from the Maritime
Commission in Washington to board the ships. I then drove a total of 70
miles, had to hire a boat to board the ships, spent most of the day
going through extremely dark passageways all the way down to the boiler
room. After finishing that I managed to get hold of a plane and flew
over the ships and gave you an excellent air view of them. Finally after
that, with nothing to eat all day long, I wound up in a saloon in
Solomons Island and got tangled up with some slot machines. I know I
lost at least $5 or $6.”
Bodine was putting it on a bit thick. He
undoubtedly had submitted the pictures to the Sunpapers too and had been
reimbursed by the paper for his expenses. But Life was properly
apologetic. It sent him an additional $10 for the Johnson picture and
offered to pay his expenses on the liner story “except for what you
lost on the slot machines.”
Despite a heavy schedule, provocations and
disappointments, Bodine was generous with his time and his pictures. He
made extra prints, free, if he liked an individual or thought it might
help an institution such as a school, hospital or orphanage. He donated
prints to the Peale Museum as early as 1931. In 1932 he began donating
photographs of Baltimore and Maryland scenes to the Enoch Pratt Free
Library. Some of these appear in this book. Joseph L. Wheeler, the
librarian, thanked him, saying: “As you know, we are planning to have
a Department of Local History in our new building and the photographs
which you have given us will constitute a large portion of the picture
collection of this department.”
Between 1931 and 1936 he submitted prints to 40
salons sponsored by the Photographic Society of America. For the most
part these were the top salons in the country. Later he was to write a
consoling letter to a friend who had done poorly in the Pittsburgh show,
probably the toughest one of them all. “I am not ashamed to mention,”
he wrote, “that I was kicked out of the Pittsburgh show the first two
years I submitted prints although I had never been rejected by any other
salon. In 1933 I was subjected to the same treatment. Yes, I was burnt
up but I did not stop. No! I was more determined than ever to do better
the next time.” And he did. Soon he was made an associate member of
the Pittsburgh club, an honor bestowed for “consistent excellency of
exhibits.”
He judged his first Pittsburgh salon in the
early Thirties and was invited back several times, high recognition for
a young man. He was also judging other shows in the East and South. When
asked for advice in picking a third judge for the Norfolk salon he
revealed his shrewdness in such matters. He wrote: “The third judge,
in my opinion, should be someone of local prominence, such as an editor
of your paper, director of your museum or someone who patronizes the
arts. Should such a judge make an unwise decision, Mr. Nagel and I will
naturally out-vote him. Also, with such a man or woman on your jury, you
should be able to obtain more publicity.”
His first major one-man show was held at the
Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown in January, 1933. It
consisted of 37 prints and included seven of his German and Austrian
studies, a number of industrial pictures, “Fort Macon Beach,” “A
Study in Balance,” and two old favorites, “Fishing Dories” and “Symphony
in Reflections II” The Hagerstown paper commented: “The subject
matter is extremely diversified . . . A good many industrial photographs
are included, which well illustrate the modern geometric spirit, giving
striking results in patterns of line and shadow.”
In 1934 he had a one-man show at the Baltimore
Camera Club. In 1936 and 1938 he won medals at the Maryland Institute
Fine Arts Alumni shows; he bragged that these were won in competition
against drawings, water colors, oils, lithographs and etchings. Years
later he observed: “I especially cherish those two medals. I felt I
had accomplished something to produce photographs of sufficient merit to
overcome the usual prejudice that many people have against photographs
in an art institution.”
About this time he started a class in
photography for young people at the International YMCA in East
Baltimore, volunteering his services. Later he taught a class in
photography for the Adult Education Program of the Department of
Education of Baltimore.
Bodine was driving himself - at the Sun, in his
commercial work, on his weekend trips to judge salons, and in his
exhibition work - on which he spent hours in his darkroom, sometimes
making 20 or 30 prints before he got what he wanted. He seemed obsessed
with the idea of proving himself, of becoming somebody. In fifteen years
he had pushed himself from messenger boy to one of the best in his
business, whose pictorial artistry was admired and studied in salons
across the country. It had not been easy. There had not been much time
for Evelyn, for fun, for friends or family. Work was his life, success
and fame his goal.
In the late Thirties his world began to come
apart. His marriage had been going badly for some time, and not only
because of his work. He was moody, cantankerous, self-centered. He and
Evelyn were artists with different viewpoints and responses. There were
frightful and prolonged clashes of artistic temperament. And drinking
compounded his problems.
Between 1937 and 1941 he entered only nine
exhibitions. Weeks went by without any of his pictures appearing in the
Sunday Sun. He and Evelyn separated. Pressures and responsibilities
became unbearable. He was away from work for 29 days in the fall of 1937
“for observation and rest.” In late 1938 and early 1939 he took off
three weeks “for a rest cure.” In 1940 he suffered a nervous
collapse, missing three weeks of work. His drinking had become a serious
problem.
To bolster his sagging spirits and to show the
paper’s confidence in him, H. Lowrey Cooling, who had succeeded Watson
as Sunday editor, in January, 1941, appointed Bodine head of the Sunday
Photographic Department. The title was more honorary than anything else;
the department consisted of himself and an assistant. His sister and
brother were desperately trying to help, too, but were usually turned
away. Finally, though, he accepted their advice. Ellen had recently
married Charles Walter. They moved into 805 Park avenue to run the
apartments. Bodine went back to Elk Ridge to live with his mother and
Seeber. He had little to say, but one outburst, a typical one, is
remembered. He had been home for only a day when he telephoned Ellen.
“For Christ’s sake,” he stormed, “bring some of my sterling
silver down here. We’re eating with plated forks.”
He and Evelyn were divorced on April 23, 1942.
He never referred to the marriage except for one laconic statement years
later. One night when he was in an unusually relaxed mood his daughter
Jennifer, then about 19, sat at his feet talking in a warm, intimate
manner. “Tell me about your marriage to Evelyn,” she said
impulsively. After a reflective pause he replied, “I was 26. She was
25.” That, he evidently felt, said all there was to say. He made a
business of stuffing and lighting his pipe and then he was gone.
A few days after his divorce Bodine received a
furlough from the Sunpapers. At the suggestion of his family and doctors
he sought professional advice for his drinking and went to a sanatorium
near Ellicott City. At the end of six weeks he went back to work, and
although he took psychiatric treatment for about two years he was well
on his way to a new life. Once again his beautiful photographs of
Maryland were adorning “The Brown Section” and the best of them were
being painstakingly printed for the toughest salon competitions.
During World War II Bodine lost his assistant
at the Sun. Consequently he had to do all the Sunday work himself, not
only the major assignments, but also the routine ones, even the rephotos.
Cooling had him doing more traveling than ever before, much of it up and
down the East Coast, covering the war effort. He ranged from the defense
plants of Baltimore and the beaches of Solomons Island where amphibious
craft practiced landings to the vast maneuver grounds of the South. The
work was complicated by the necessity of getting military clearance for
his pictures. Many times he would carry still-damp prints to Washington
to expedite clearance. With the reportorial staff depleted, he became a
photographer-reporter. He occasionally produced stories about the war
effort but more often he wrote about what he knew best: the strawberry
crop of Somerset county, the Baltimore zoo, and, one of his favorite
places, the farm on Chestnut Ridge in Baltimore county which the
Gartling family still tilled with ancient handmade tools. He never
learned to type, so he dictated his articles to Cooling’s secretary,
Mrs. Lydia Jeffers. An unappreciative copyreader removed all of his
picturesque expressions and pungent observations, and as a result the
stories were dull.
In 1944 Seeber and friends began telling him
about Nancy Tait Weaver, a beautiful redhead with personality and style.
She was divorced and, with her 8-year-old daughter Stuart, living in
Lutherville with friends, Mr. and Mrs. Leonard E. Behrens, Jr. Leonard
and Seeber worked for the same company. They raved so much about Nancy
that finally Bodine’s curiosity was aroused. He stopped by about five
times before he found her at home. That was a Sunday afternoon when she
was washing her hair and also doing the week’s wash. She sent word
downstairs that she was sorry but it was impossible to meet him then and
there. Bodine was never easily discouraged. He sent word upstairs that
this was the fifth time he had called and he insisted on meeting her; if
she did not come down, he was going up. In desperation she fled down a
back stairway and out the back door. Thankful for her close escape, she
began to hang up her wash. Suddenly Bodine materialized at the
clothesline. He prided himself on being one of the best-dressed men in
town and that day he was in his best attire: Homburg, Tattersall vest,
custom-made shirting and suit, English shoes. He introduced himself.
Then, without another word, he began picking wash, including
undergarments, out of the basket and politely handing them to Nancy. She
was doing three things at once: trying to think of something to say,
clumsily hanging up the wash with one hand and, with the other,
frantically pulling out her curlers and stuffing them in the pocket of
her apron. Somehow she made an impression. Aubrey asked for a date but
she put him off. Later that week he sent her a telegram: “We have date
Saturday night for dinner.”
They were married nine months later, on
November 25, 1944, in a church on Harford road.* That morning he had
been on assignment, working with John Stubel of the Sunday staff. Stubel
recalls that Bodine hurried his picture-taking and then, after noting
the time, said he had to get moving. But, uncommunicative as usual, he
said no more. It was not until weeks later that Stubel learned he had
rushed off to get married.
The honeymoon was spent in Salisbury. Bodine
had an assignment to photograph a wildcat oil well in Wicomico county
and he decided to combine assignment and honeymoon. Never one to make
reservations, no matter the occasion, he confidently drove to the
Wicomico Hotel that night and asked for the bridal suite. He was told
that every room was taken. After urgent pleading on his part he and his
bride were assigned a room off the lobby, or, to be precise, half of it.
A folding partition was brought in to divide the small public room. The
other half had been set up as a display space for traveling salesmen.
When the new Mrs. Bodine awoke the next morning
the bridegroom had already left to get a dawn shot of the oil derrick.
It was a cold, damp day. Rather than walk around Salisbury in the rain
to kill time, Nancy stayed in bed listening to necktie salesmen on the
other side of the partition enthusiastically push their wares.
It was not an auspicious way to start married
life, but it was the beginning of Bodine’s happiest and most
productive years.
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