Did a little digging into who owned the
Bride of Frank piece. It was never owned by Forrest Ackerman. He may have posed with it, but it was never in his possession.
It was owned by a woman named Jewel Evans. When she died in 2006, her son, Woody Welch, inherited this along with other pinup art, and the piece made its way to the Rockwell Museum. Also, it isn't a painting. It was done with color pastels. So it is framed behind glass/plexi as it can smear. According to Jewel Evans' son, Armstrong did not like to use fixatives on his work, as he felt it would alter the color. So even more delicate and subject to smears and damage.
Welch is now an artist and photographer.
http://woodywelch.net/home.htmlImage of Evans' son with the pastel in his home, in 1960:
And as it now looks in the Rockwell Museum, along with another piece of Armstrong's study sketches:
A direct 2009 post/quote from Woody Welch about the piece and its getting to the Rockwell:
"Couple things you guys should know.....the flesh tone on the monster was aqua marine, a very light blue gray (with a hint of green....just a hint). Rolph Armstrong always painted true color and when he wanted certain color effects on his subjects he would use lighting gels and render them accurately...he didn't paint the monster a light blue gray because it looked ghoulish, he painted it because that was the color of the make up...in BRIDE OF FRANKENSTIEN.
What else,? Oh...I was supposed to own that piece but actually my mom did and spent most of my childhood lying to me that it was mine. And yes, in New York where I grew up, and even when Armstrong was still alive, the monster was on the wall just beyond the foot of my bed. Friends of my mother's would would be shocked that a cute little pre teenager (well...I was!!!) would have to look at the Frankenstein monster before he went to sleep.
Are they kiddin"?
I loved it!!!
Neither of those pictures are accurate and don't represent the true colors of the artwork that well, but the background images of the distant cemetery looks more accurate in the left picture but the colors of the monster look more accurate in the right one. The backgrounds always seemed to me to be a muddy burnt sienna with a bit of BOTH red and yellow mixed in. Remember...this is NOT a painting, it was done entirely with pastels as most of Rolph's work was done.
And....the pastels were NOT FIXED...Armstrong hated putting affixatives over the pastels because it changed the color...slightly...and he hated that. So...if you took the monster from behind the glass and out of the frame...all you had to do was run your hand over the image and ....it would be gone....or at least ruined.
Several photographers refused to shoot it...no kidding!
At one point my mother was going to make posters out of it with a guy named Ray Ferry but nothing came of it because Sara Karloff wanted too much money for her end and I remember my mother was indignant saying, "Well I know that it's her father but it's my...er...OUR painting...yours...uhhhhhhhh." Hardly a clash of the titans between those two.
Anyway, Mom died in '06 and I got a hold of the painting and all the sketches because Mom willed it to me and with the assistance of my lawyer and one of my Mom's friends, I was able to place it in the Rockwell museum.
I will not talk about the Heritage situation as I have nothing to say about them that would be polite. A shark does what a shark does."
