A recent post by Jim Harris showed the covers for a number of stories from 1957 we’re about to read at the Best Science Fiction and Fantasy Short Fiction group on Facebook. One of them is the cover for the March 1957 Venture Science Fiction magazine below, upper left), for the Leigh Brackett novelette, “The Queer Ones“.
I had seen that cover last year when I read that story, and loved it and the story. See my review of the great anthology I read it in, Rediscovery: Science Fiction by Women Vol. 2 (1953-1957), Gideon Marcus editor, 2022 Journey Press. “The Queer Ones” is great late career Leigh Brackett that surprised me. I checked the Internet Speculative Fiction Database (one of my go-to resources, at http://www.ISFDB.org), which said the cover for that issue of Venture was by an artist I did not know, Dick Shelton.
I confirmed that the cover was for the story “The Queer Ones”. This is not unusual for SF magazines of this era, for an artist to be asked to do a cover illustration for a specific story. Occasionally a writer was asked to write a story for existing cover art, but this is not at all common. I recall one such case, but cannot remember the details.
For genre (SF, fantasy and horror and adjacent) publications, ISFDB listed four magazine and one book covers by him and five interior illustrations, all between 1953 to 1961.
It said nothing else about him at all. Going by the information in ISFDB, we could conclude that someone using that name was alive in that era and was skilled enough to create and be paid for those ten artworks listed there. This was many decades before AI, thank god.
This is not unlike what I first found in ISFDB when I looked for information on Winona McClintic, Elma (Miller) Wentz, April Smith, A. A. Walde (real name Warren Bertil Lindgren), and Francis Donovan.
I find these mysterious speculative fiction figures fascinating and enjoy investigating them. I also feel that they deserve to be remembered and known, beyond that people using those names sold work to publishers and editors.
I have been able to find out more about and write about Winona McClintic (Winona McClintic – “Who?”), Elma (Miller) Wentz (Who is Elma “Miller” Wentz?) and A. A. Walde (A Wonderful Mystery Solved About My Favorite “Solitary” SF Story). Unfortunately, I found out nothing conclusive about either April Smith or Francis Donovan. I was optimistic but not sure I would be able to find out more about Dick Shelton.
In addition to the 10 entries found at ISFDB for Dick Shelton, I found added entries for him at Galactic Central for mystery/detective/men’s/other magazines.
I searched for “Dick Shelton” and “Richard Shelton” at www.fanac.org, the wonderful online fan resource. There were some interesting tidbits under “Dick Shelton”.
First, in the October-November 1953, Volume 2 Number 6 issue of Brevezine, Henry Moskowitz has this to say about Shelton’s interior art in Volume 1, Number 1 of the new and short lived SF magazine Orbit:
Fanzine The Monday Evening Ghost 6, August 1960, has an item by fan Mike Deckinger in his The Creaky Chair column that says this about the 1957 Venture cover:
The next issue, The Monday Evening Ghost 7, has this response by another fan on Mike Deckinger’s item in Ghost 6:
From what I found at Fanac, we can definitely say that Dick Shelton was known and discussed in the SF fan world of that era, but only in the 1950s and certainly not that extensively. I found no mentions of him in the context of participation in any fan or other SF professional activities. My conclusion is that he sold work there, but did not have any other relationship to speculative fiction and it’s denizens.
I also found credits at IMDB for a Richard Shelton for art department work on movies from 1979 to 1986. IMDB lists birth in 1928 and death in 1987. This seemed like a possible match, but it was not clear yet that it was the same person.
Finally, I found a number of other similar names online that seemed unlikely to be the same person.
- Richard Shelton, writer, poet and academic, University of Arizona, born 1933 and died 2022.
- Richard Shelton, an artist with a long career in Los Angeles, starting with study at Art College Center of Design, Los Angeles, 1963-64.
- Richard Shelton, a British actor and singer, whose year’s active as a performer started in 1984.
- Going a bit farther afield, there was Dick Shelton, in the National Rodeo Hall of Fame.
I also found an entry in ISFDB for a Richard Shelton that included both a short story, “The Bus to Veracruz”, and cover art for “The Martian Way and Other Stories“, an Isaac Asimov collection, 1955 Doubleday.
I confirmed that the 1992 short story “The Bus to Veracruz” was written by the poet and academic Richard Shelton, listed above at the University of Arizona.
Looking at online scans of a copy for sale, I confirmed that the jacket design for “The Martian Way and Other Stories” was by Richard Shelton. I strongly believe that this cover was done by the same Dick Shelton who did the art for the 1957 Chad Oliver novel, “The Winds of Time” (Doubleday), and not the poet, writer and academic Richard Shelton.
I searched online for obituaries for 1987 for Shelton, but came up with nothing. I looked in both Ancestry.com and Newspapers.com, both very useful often but not here. There were Dick and Richard Sheltons, but nothing clearly tied to this artist.
Finally, one specific search with the right combination of terms on Google yielded the 2005 New York Times article by Dan Barry, https://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/23/nyregion/art-you-can-lose-yourself-in-unless-youre-in-it-already.html
This article had enough information to pin down quite a bit about Dick Shelton (Richard T. Shelton, per his daughter Elizabeth K. Shelton) and his career as an artist in and outside of the SF field. It confirmed that he died in 1987 and that he was 59 at death, matching the 1928 birth and 1987 death noted above. It confirmed that he had worked on the movie “Ragtime” as noted on IMDB, producing the children’s flipbook, and that he had done magazine covers.
It provides enough information to establish that Shelton did the cover for the May 1956 Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, using himself and his wife Blossom (Leichman) Shelton as the models for a woman in a yellow bikini and a noose and a maniacal clown. That’s my favorite of his covers for mystery/detective/men’s magazines.
It also discusses an interior illustration for the story, “Double Murder on the Rocks, Please”, appearing in the August, 1957 Bachelor men’s magazine. This is noted in the New York Times story, although the name and issue of the magazine was something I had to find elsewhere. That story was by Catherine Gaskin and was expanded into her 1962 novel “I Know My Love“, a story of love and friendship in 1850s Australia during their gold rush. Catherine Gaskin is noted as “an Irish-Australian romance novelist” on Wikipedia.
A story by a romance novelist seems somewhat incongruous for a story first published in a men’s magazine, with that issue noted as “SPECIAL ISSUE for CADS and BOUNDERS” on the cover. However, strange things happen in life sometimes.
In her comment to me with the photo of the illustration below, Elizabeth Shelton noted that the “Double Murder on the Rocks, Please” illustration had “Mom all tied up…”. This suggests to me that this was another illustration using Blossom Shelton as a model. Clearly Blossom supported and perhaps even enjoyed helping Dick with his art.
Dick Shelton painted the cover to Mercury Mystery Book-Magazine April 1956. The cover has his signature clearly, even though the interior credit is to Solovioff. I love this cover, and I do find myself wondering if Shelton used his wife Blossom in creating this cover. This cover is for the story “Hang for Her” by Floyd Mahannah.
About Dick Shelton using his wife as a model, daughter Elizabeth Shelton told me:
My aunt (mom’s little sister) once mentioned that dad would sometimes illustrate mom as a blonde, although she was a brunette in real life. Probably a case of giving the people who paid for the job what they wanted.
From information on Ancestry.com, Shelton appears to have enlisted in the New York National Guard on February 28, 1951, before any of his genre art work appeared and before he was married. This was during the Korean War, and that might have been a good alternate choice.
He married Blossom Leichman in 1953, the same year he began to create and sell art for various speculative fiction and mystery/detective/men’s magazine markets. These two 1953 occurrences might be related. He continued to create art for this market until 1961.
In addition to the Venture cover above, I really like his F&SF covers below.
His June 1956 F&SF cover above, left, illustrates the cover story, “The Asa Rule” by Jay Williams, which I read when I was reading SF from 1956 (The Best SF Short Stories of 1956). I thought it was a great story, although unlikely. Jay Williams is perhaps best known for being a co-author on 15 Danny Dunn juvenile SF novels. I know I read those a long time ago, before moving on to Andre Norton, Robert A. Heinlein, and others at the library.
His August 1956 F&SF cover above is for the cover story, “Fear is a Business“, a short story by Theodore Sturgeon. Although not unheard of, it’s not that common for short stories to be cover stories on speculative fiction magazines. That does signal how prominent Theodore Sturgeon was in that era. I am a little surprised I did not read this when I was reading SF from 1956. I suspect I have read this story reprinted somewhere, but I remember nothing. Per Elizabeth Shelton, her mother Blossom thought that the person on the cover was modelled on Alec Guinness.
It’s fun to see how the cover to the 1957 “The Best from Fantasy and Science Fiction Sixth Series” (Doubleday) differs from the earlier F&SF cover. They are obviously related and feature the same basic elements. I suspect that he did two illustrations, given the differences in the figures in the two covers, including them looking in different directions on each. There is also a color difference in what I see for both the figures and the background, but I don’t know if that color difference is deliberate or some artifact of printing those covers on both a magazine and a book jacket or cover and of digital scans of them. I’ll be curious to see what my sister the artist thinks of this subject.
I don’t like most of his mystery/detective/men’s magazine covers as well, but I like some of them, such as this one from Adventure.
I prefer his SF covers to his interior illustrations. Perhaps he had more latitude for interesting design on the covers, and perhaps the colors helped. However, I do like his first SF illustration, from the 1953 Orbit 1 noted above, for the Mack Reynolds short story, “D.P. From Tomorrow“. It appears to be about refugees or “displaced persons” from some other time or space. I think I need to read it, as I’ve read a few other stories on that subject with interest.
I don’t dislike his other interior illustrations for SF magazines, but I don’t find them as interesting. These were all in Fantastic, and Milton Lesser is the only author I recognize. These included:
- “The Man Who Read Minds“, a short story by John Toland, Fantastic December 1955.
- “Mind Bet“, a short story by George Julius, Fantastic February 1956.
- “The Sore Spot“, a novelette by Ivar Jorgensen (a house author’s name with no real knowledge of who wrote it), Fantastic February 1956.
- “The Hero“, a short story by Milton Lesser, Fantastic April 1956.
For what it’s worth, I did not read any of the stories that he did interior illustrations for when I was reading SF for 1955 and 1956. I could have missed great stories, but I doubt it. As I noted above, I’ll probably read the Mack Reynolds story “D.P. From Tomorrow”.
Another Shelton illustration from this period was the cover to the 1956 Lion Library (paperback) novel, “House of Dolls“, by Yehiel De-Nur (pen name Ka-Tsetnik 135633), first published in English in 1955 by Simon & Schuster. Yehiel De-Nur was a Jewish survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp. It is presented as being based on the diary of a young woman during the Holocaust in a concentration camp. I have no idea how fictionalized it is, but the House of Dolls discussed here does bear a lot of resemblance to the “comfort women” in Asia during World War 2.
In 1959, Dick Shelton did an interior illustration for the story, “Evangelina-The Girl Behind a War”, by Don Abbey, found in the February 1959 issue of a short lived magazine “O.K. For Men”. I did not find anything else out about this story or writer.
I was lucky to get this photo of that interior illustration from Elizabeth Shelton. I love what she told me about this illustration, “In the above illustration, my mom’s brother, uncle Howie, is on the ladder, and dad on the right is holding the ladder.”
I don’t know why he stopped doing genre illustrations in 1961. Perhaps he was tired of it, perhaps he did not like those buying the art, perhaps it was too much work for the pay, perhaps better opportunities presented themselves, or perhaps his markets dried up.
I find this from daughter Elizabeth Shelton to be insightful into both Dick Shelton’s career and his personality:
My father indeed did illustrations, murals, and segued into being a scenic artist on films which he enjoyed, because he loved the camaraderie of working with a group of people. He was a go to guy if you needed someone who could do high quality painterly stuff, although much of the scenic artist work is far less glamorous than that.
I imagine art as a craft can be rather lonely, as it’s often one person doing art. I can see the appeal of working with others. That was and is a factor that counted a lot for me in my career and other endeavors.
Elizabeth said her dad “…did a beautiful tromp l’oeil mural that was in (I believe the basement) of the State Theatre at Lincoln Center.” She had this to say about the photo of that below, with Dick Shelton on the right:
The photo you have of him painting Joan Baez is part of the mural that was in the State Theatre. The entire room was trompe l’oeil, everything you see in the background is painted (the paneling, the metal bar). The fellow with him would likely have been someone who worked at the State Theatre.
He is working on a painting of Joan Baez, so I’m thinking early 1960s. The State Theatre opened in 1964, so this is reasonable.
It’s not entirely clear to me what art assignments Dick Shelton was doing between 1961 (his last magazine illustration) and 1979 (his first movie credit). My thanks to Elizabeth Shelton for helping fill in some of the pieces for this period.
At some point Dick Shelton and his wife Blossom had two children, son B. A. Shelton and daughter Elizabeth K. Shelton.
His daughter Elizabeth had this to say about Dick Shelton’s work in the theatre:
One show was “A Matter of Gravity”- which starred Kate Hepburn. He did some fine art paintings which decorated the set. Old money, horsey- Ralph Lauren mansion style. The set designer was Ben Edwards, a wonderful designer for television and film was president of the United Scenic Artists Local 829 union in the 1970s, with whom he collaborated. He also had a friendly working relationship with the great Ming Cho Lee, but I cannot say which shows he did with Ming.
Both Ben Edwards and Ming Cho Lee were active in theatre during this period, and I do believe Dick Shelton worked with them.
Other work by Dick Shelton listed in the New York Times article and referenced in Elizabeth Shelton’s online bio includes restaurant menus, murals for hotel walls, and art for the theatre. She does mention that she helped him with the murals for the Plaza Hotel in 1977.
According to IMDB, he worked on the art for ten movies from 1979 to 1986, including “Ragtime” and “Sophie’s Choice”. The 2005 New York Times article noted that he worked on the 1987 movie “Radio Days” as well, which is not listed in his IMDB page.
From Elizabeth Shelton, I heard that her father gave back to those wanting to work in art as a craft. She said:
Later on, dad taught painting fundamentals and the lighting of the masters to the apprentices in the United Scenic Artists Local 829.
Elizabeth Shelton had this to say about the one movie that she and her father worked on:
“Radio Days” is the only movie that both my father and I worked on. I was one of a number of assistant costume designers fitting the background players although we were not included in the credits. Dad had done portraits of a couple of radio show hosts in the style of Tamara DeLempica for the film. When the costume designer, Jeffrey Kurland, came back to the costume shop from set one day, he told me that Woody said that they were the best portraits he had ever seen done for a film and he changed the shot to feature them (the scene may have started showing the portraits?). I haven’t seen the film in decades and don’t remember this well but I believe the scene involved a married couple with a radio show. Whether or not the shot stayed in the film in the same as what happened the day of the shoot, I cannot say.
Dick Shelton discovered he had a very serious and soon to be fatal heart issue. Quoting the 2005 Dan Barry article:
He spent part of his last year in France and England, taking in scenes that he might otherwise have enjoyed only through the dancing strokes of his paintbrush. He died at 59 in 1987, but not before telling his only daughter that his final year had been his best.
His wife Blossom was a teacher at James Madison High School in Brooklyn, married to an artist who might have had uncertain and uneven cash flow. She might have been the main breadwinner in an era when that was not as common for women. According to daughter Elizabeth’s website , “My mother, Blossom L. Shelton, continued to pursue printmaking and art throughout her life.” Elizabeth also told me that her mom was a musician. Blossom died in June 2009. Her obituary stated, “On the day before her death, when asked her age by a doctor, she replied ‘Privileged.'”. That’s quite an interesting response in a rather serious situation. I may be jumping to conclusions, but Blossom feels to me like someone who is both rather sharp and has a sense of humor. She sounded like an accomplished and interesting person, and I think a good match to Dick Shelton.
I find it interesting that I was unable to find any photos of Dick Shelton or Blossom (Leichman) Shelton online. Perhaps one or both of them were very private people in some ways. If so, it is interesting that Shelton used both of them as models for the Ellery Queen maniacal clown cover. There are other possible explanations.
I also find it curious that I was not able to pin down much about Dick Shelton’s family. I know he had parents, and I assume he might have had siblings. While there was information on more than a few Dick or Richard Shelton’s on Ancestry.com, it was not possible for me to clearly identify his parents and siblings. I assume they were present but that I could not figure out specifically who they were from the information present. I never found an obituary for Dick Shelton, and that made it much harder to figure out his parents and siblings.
I don’t know if Dick Shelton ever had formal art education, although I assume he must have had some at some level.
I heard from Elizabeth Shelton that her dad was inspired by the example of his uncle Gene Widhoff, who made a career out of various art jobs. Widhoff did movie posters and lobby cards for RKO Radio Pictures from at least 1936, “Follow the Fleet“, until 1949, “The Clay Pigeon” and “Mighty Joe Young“. I found a 1941 Universal Artists poster for “Never Give a Sucker an Even Break” as well. He did several album covers for American Recording Artists, including the 1945 Art Tatum album “Piano Impressions“. I found what several people say is a paperback cover by him in 1951, for “Everybody Had A Gun” by Richard Prather, Fawcett Gold Medal. He also did the cover to the novel “Children of the Archbishop“, Norman Collings, 1951, Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
Widhoff also did several interior illustrations for magazines, in Argosy October 1951, Bluebook March 1952, and Bluebook April 1952. I suspect that Dick Shelton heard of his uncle’s success in doing art for magazines, which may have given him the idea to try the same thing in 1953.
Elizabeth Shelton says this about her father:
He and my grandmother would stop and look at the posters at the local theaters to see if any were done by Gene, who was employed for years by RKO Radio Pictures when dad was a kid. The art business goes back a ways in the family. Gene moved to California where he helped found the Society of Illustrators and became NBC’s courtroom artist on a number of well known trials. My dad and I would watch the nightly news to see Gene’s sketches when I was a kid.
Gene Widhoff spent 18 years as a staff artist at NBC, including doing court room art for the Charles Manson and Sirhan Sirhan trials where photographers were not allowed. Dick Shelton observed his uncle’s movie posters and lobby cards as a little boy, and later his brief stop at doing illustrations for magazines. Having observed this myself in my life, there is nothing like the personal example of someone you know doing something successfully for a career to show you that this specific activity could be an option. In my opinion, this would be especially important for a person considering a career in art.
Shelton spent two years at the University of Miami, but it’s not clear if that included any art education or training. He also studied at an art studio, but the name is not remembered.
Elizabeth Shelton told me that her father never exhibited in art galleries.
I asked Elizabeth Shelton if her father ever did art for pleasure, art that he just had to create for himself. I love her response and what it reveals about him and his relationship with wife Blossom.
He did art for pleasure. Ink sketches and little watercolor studies. He also would experiment with egg tempera and dry pigments (he once considered grinding up a Lapis Lazuli necklace of mom’s which she told him was off limits!).
Elizabeth Shelton said that he could draw beautifully, his ink sketches especially. In a family of artists, no one could draw nearly as well as him, and that he was said to have “golden hands”. At the same time, he was producing art that was appropriate to the market and whoever was buying it.
Dick Shelton was quite good at hand lettering. Elizabeth Shelton shared this:
One thing dad knew well and was trained in was lettering, and it was a thing that came in very handy on films like “Ragtime”, where he lettered most of the signs. In the studio, I have the hand lettered stencils dad made for the back of the directors chairs for “Sophie’s Choice”.
Here is one of Dick Shelton’s ink sketches, courtesy of Elizabeth Shelton, of writer Ian Fleming (James Bond and Chitty-Chitty Bang-Bang). It appears that the year “71” is below Shelton’s initials, suggesting this was from 1971. I concur with Elizabeth’s opinion that his ink sketches were very good.
I asked about his artistic influences and artists that he admired. Elizabeth Shelton had this to say:
He loved the old masters- Rembrandt, etc. and great watercolor artists like John Singer Sargent and Turner. He adored Chagall and once spent what money he had buying one of Chagall’s prints rather than buying himself a winter coat. We have a little print by André Derain, so he may have been a favorite as well.
He did mural work at the Pierre Hotel in New York City. The murals had to be moved for high priority plumbing and related work during COVID recently. The hotel is still hoping to preserve and repurpose the murals. Here is a photo of an exhibit about his work in a standing case in their museum room; we don’t know if the exhibit is still there.
Dick Shelton turned out to be a very interesting artist with an interesting life and career. I just love his three SF magazine covers, and the maniacal clown cover to Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. He deserves to be known and remembered, for all that his genre work was not that extensive. I’m glad I was able to figure out a good bit about who Dick Shelton was and update his ISFDB entry to be more informative (these edits are still pending at this time).
His daughter Elizabeth K. Shelton continues her life with a career in costume design and related areas in film, theatre, and TV. Here is a photo from her website “About” page for an excellent photo of Elizabeth with an outstanding childhood portrait of her in a Dick Shelton mural in the Pierre Hotel’s Garden Foyer in New York City.
One of her recent credits is as assistant costume designer on the 2022 film “Hocus Pocus 2“, where she had an Emmy nomination. It’s fun to see a member of Dick Shelton’s family working on a genre film, some 60 years after his last genre illustrations were published.
My thanks to Elizabeth K. Shelton for her assistance and the photos and art she shared with me. I am especially pleased to be able to confirm that I am on the right track and that I have been able to give a sense of who Dick Shelton was as an artist and as a person. I am very pleased Elizabeth had a role in helping her father Dick Shelton be known and remembered.
