Gloria Stuart was an Artist and Bonzai Master. She lived in the Bohemian Community of Carmel where my late sister, Christina Rosamond Benton, had two galleries. She married Blair Gordon Newell, a sculptor who helped Ralph Stackpole with his creative projects. Ralph was a good friend of the muralist Diego Rivera and his artistic wife. Ralph knew George Sterling who co-founded the Carmel Bohemian community, and the Bohemian Club. Gloria was friends with the Weston family of photographers of Carmel. Gloria’s offspring are making a documentary titled ‘The Secret Life of Old Rose’.

Gloria went to Santa Monica High School, and my kindred, Elizabeth Rosemond Taylor, went to University High in the Sawtelle where sprang a Creative Beat Musical scene at a Tea House located at 11271 Massachusetts Ave, Los Angeles. Here I drew my High School sweetheart, Marilyn Reed. We were fifteen and sixteen, and considered ourselves, Beats. My friend, Bryan McLean of ‘Love’ played here, as did David Cosby. Bryan was in love with my sister, who became the world famous artist ‘Rosamond’. Liz and Gloria were involved in the Arts. The muralist, Stanton McDonald Wright, placed Gloria next to the actor Leo Carrillo overlooking Santa Monica Bay. That is Gloria’s husband with his sculpture near Rocky Point. Stanton was a good friend of the artist and muralist, Thomas Hart Benton.

https://rosamondpress.com/2015/12/09/the-crouching-tiger-of-synchronicity/

America needs a Peace Center where people can gather and look for ways to be peaceful. I am looking at the Sawtelle Asylum for Wounded Veterans where Ralph’s statue of Pacifica can be rebuilt. Unto this sanctuary all Seekers of Peace would be welcome.

Come! Put on your tapping shoes, and help make America great again!

I just talked to Marilyn and she told me she used to hop the fence and swim in the Tongva Springs all the time, starting when she was eight. She lived on Armacost near Brockton Elementary school located a few blocks from Uni High. Gloria and M look like the French Actress, Madeleine Sologne,  who starred in Cocteau’s movie ‘L’Éternel Retour’ The movie ‘The Titanic’ returned to the theme of Eternal Love. Artists are immortalized. I have found a stellar group of creative souls that sprang from mural in Santa Monica where Marilyn and I went to swim in the sea. These are…………my people!

Jon Presco

Copyright 2015

Group No. 8 is the “shooting” of a moving picture, with present-day “blimps” for deadening the sound of cameras, lights, etc. Gloria Stuart is the central figure. Leo Carrillo is in the background and his father, Judge Carrillo, is in front of him. Gloria Stuart was born in Santa Monica and the Carillo family is one of the oldest of resident Santa Monicans. On the left stands Director Frank Tuttle.

http://smpl.org/mural/statement.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sawtelle_Veterans_Home

https://rosamondpress.com/2012/06/11/the-destruction-of-pacifica/

At the end of her junior year, in June 1930, Stuart married Blair Gordon Newell,^[17] a young sculptor who apprenticed with Ralph Stackpole on the facade of the San Francisco Stock Exchange building.^[18] The Newells moved to Carmel-by-the-Sea where there was a stimulating community of artists and movers and shakers such as Ansel Adams, Edward Weston, Robinson Jeffers and Lincoln Steffens and his wife Ella Winter.

In 1934, Stuart and Newell divorced amicably and she married screenwriter Arthur Sheekman, one of the writers on Roman Scandals. Sheekman was Groucho Marx‘s best friend and was collaborating (sometimes without credit) on Marx Brothers films. Later, Sheekman ghostwrote several of Marx’s books; Marx called him “The Fastest Wit in the West”. The Sheekmans’ daughter, Sylvia Vaughn Sheekman, was born in 1935. Four years later, Stuart convinced her husband they should travel around the world. When they reached France, they tried to volunteer for the French Resistance, but were turned down, so they caught the last ship sailing to New York.

Stuart was also active in political and social causes, Stuart helped form the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League in 1936, the same year she and writer Dorothy Parker helped organize the League to Support the Spanish War Orphans. She also became a member of the Hollywood Democratic Committee and was on the executive board of the California State Democratic Committee. For several decades she was a member of The Wesley United Methodist Church in Los Angeles, California.^[2]

During this period, Stuart took up the Japanese art of bonsai, becoming the first Anglo member of the California Bonsai Society. And she began to travel again, going with friends or on her own to Europe, India, Africa, the Balkans. Five years after husband’s death, Stuart became reacquainted with California printer Ward Ritchie (Ward Ritchie Press), whom she had known during her college years. Both widowed, they fell in love. She was fascinated by his antique hand press and asked him to teach her how to run it. She bought her own hand press and established “Imprenta Glorias”, and began creating artists’ books (books hand-made, labor intensive, usually with a very limited run). Stuart wrote the text, designed the book, set the type, printed the pages, and finished pages with water colors or silk screen or decoupage. Books from Imprenta Glorias are in the Metropolitan Museum, Library of Congress, Huntington Library, J. Paul Getty Museum, Morgan Library, Victoria and Albert Museum, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and numerous private and university collections. No longer able to work with small type and a large heavy press, she gave her press and sets of rare type to Mills College. Stuart and Ritchie kept company (each in their own house) until his death from cancer in 1996.