Zoë Mozert
(1907 – 1993), born Alice Adelaide Moser, was an American illustrator. She was one of the early 20th Century’s most famous pin-up artists and models.
In 1925 Mozert entered the Philadelphia School of Industrial Art where she studied under Thornton Oakley, a former student of Howard Pyle. She painted hundreds of magazine covers and movie posters during her career. Mozert frequently was her own model, using cameras or mirrors to capture the pose Her paintings are best known for their pastel style and realistic depiction of women.In 1941, Brown and Bigelow bought Mozert’s first nude and signed her to an exclusive calendar contract. During the war, her pin-up series for the company called Victory Girls was published both in calendar and mutoscope-card form. In 1946, Mozert created the publicity poster for Republic Pictures’ Calendar Girl, a movie about the Gibson Girl. By 1950, Mozert had become one of the "big four" along with Rolf Armstrong, Earl Moran and Gil Elvgren.
Some of Mozert’s most famous works includes the poster for Paramount Pictures’ True Confession starring Carole Lombard, the poster for the Howard Hughes film The Outlaw with Jane Russell, and her most popular image, Song of the Desert (1950).
Earl Moran
(December 8, 1893 – January 17, 1984), born in Belle Plaine, Iowa, was a 20th Century pin-up and glamour artist[1]. Moran’s first instruction in art came under the direction of John Stich, an elderly German artist who also taught the great illustrator W.H.D. Koerner. Moran also studied with Walter Biggs at the Chicago Art Institute.
Moran later studied at the famed Art Students League in Manhattan, where he took instruction from the muralists Vincent Drumond, Robert Henri, Thomas Fogarty (Norman Rockwell’s teacher), and the legendary anatomist George Bridgman. After moving back to Chicago in 1931 and opening a small studio where he specialized in photography and illustration, he sent some paintings of bikini-clad girls to two calendar companies; when both Brown and Bigelow and Thomas D. Murphy Company bought the work, his career was officially launched.
Moran signed an exclusive contract with Brown and Bigelow in 1932 and by 1937, his pinups had sold millions of calendars for the company. In 1940, Life ran a feature article entitled "Speaking of Pictures" which mostly focused on Moran’s work and made him a national celebrity. In 1941, Moran helped the magazine publisher, Robert Harrison, to launch a new men’s magazine called Beauty Parade, and he later contributed pin-ups to other Harrison magazines such as Flirt, Wink and Giggles.
In 1946, Moran moved to Hollywood though he had already painted many movie stars including Betty Grable, for publicity posters. Soon after his arrival, he interviewed a young starlet named Norma Jean Dougherty who wanted to model for him. For the next four years, Marilyn Monroe posed for Moran and the two became friends. She always credited him with making her legs look better than they were as she felt they were too thin.
Moran lived in the San Fernando Valley from 1951 to 1955, hosting fabulous parties, directing and starring in short television films, painting portraits of Earl Carroll’s Vanities Girls, and maintaining his position as a star of the pin-up world.
After a move to Las Vegas (circa 1955) and several years of living in the fast lane, Moran decided to devote his time to painting fine-art subjects, with nudes as his favorite theme. Signing with Aaron Brothers Galleries, he painted for collectors until 1982, when his eyesight failed. An interesting note, some of his earlier works for Harrison were signed "Steffa" or "Black Smith"
Moran died in Santa Monica, CA on January 17, 1984
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