Albert Dorne, 1904-1965

Albert Dorne, renowned advertising artist, illustrator, founder and first president of the Famous Artists School of Westport, Connecticut, was born on the 7th February 1904 in the slums of Stanton Street, Lower East Side of Manhattan. His father was Joseph Dornholz (☼16th November 1884 in Austria), and his mother was Celia Rubin Dornholz (☼16th February 1884 in Russia). Both parents were Jewish immigrants, families originated from the historic region of Galicia, and they were married on the 18th July 1903. Albert was the oldest of four children. Siblings: Grace Lizzy Dornholz Greenberg (☼1905, †1956), Sylvia Dornholz Parker (☼1907, †1959), and Maxwell Dornholz (☼1909, †1995). From the time Albert was five years old, he wanted to be an artist, a desire that stayed with him through a childhood ravaged by tuberculosis, heart trouble, and poverty. It is interesting to note, that Albert's born name was Louis after Celia's father (Louis Rubin, ☼1851) and in Census 1905 until Census 1915 Albert was registered as Isidore. After finishing seventh grade, Albert Dorne had to quit school to support his mother, two sisters, and younger brother, which put an end to his formal education, and he worked days and nights at various jobs. At the age of 13 Albert managed four newsstands in New York, at the age of 14 he became an office boy with a movie chain, and at the age of 15 he was a salesman for another movie chain. The parents were apparently living apart from 1917* and finally divorced around 1921. When Albert Dorne was 16-17 years of age he became, for a brief period, a professional fighter, winning ten bouts. In his eleventh fight, he was flattened by a veteran, and he decided boxing was not the road to becoming an artist. At the age of 18, in November 1922, Albert Dorne married his first wife Ruth Friedberg (☼18th August 1901, †15th November 1990) and began to worry that the career he had planned in art was slipping by fast. At the time he was working without pay as a letterer for the commercial artist Saul Tepper (☼1899, †1987), an apprenticeship from nine to five, and simultaneously took another job working nights as a shipping clerk. In 1922 Albert Dorne was employed as illustrator for the Alexander Isadore Rice (☼1892, †1959) and Saul Tepper art studio (dissolved in 1923), but continued to work for Saul Tepper for another half a year before he began his career as a free-lance illustrator. At last, Albert Dorne began working for the established Aarons Studios in New York, and his art started appearing in national magazines such as LIFE, COLLIERS, Saturday Evening Post, LOOK, and LIBERTY. At the age of 22 Albert Dorne was earning $500 a week and stayed with Aarons Studios until around 1930 or maybe early 1932, when he established Kent Studios with German born commercial artist Albert Staehle (☼1899, †1974). Around 1930 Albert Dorne married Celia Sonkin (☼25th May 1911, †7th June 2001), a marriage that lasted only a few years, and in 1934 Albert Dorne married his third wife Edna Etta Hyman (☼13th February 1904, †12th January 1988), and resumed his career as a free-lance illustrator until around 1947. Through the thirties and forties, Albert Dorne became the highest paid and most-in-demand advertising artist in the States, and he made a series of at least sixteen different, colourful advertisements for The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company in the whirlwind national advertising campaign of 1946-1948 initiated by the general sales manager Milton Gerald Hammergren and the industrial designer Paul Max Fuller.

All through his career, Albert Dorne was available to young artists who wanted his advice. The fact that so many aspiring artists needed help gave him an idea, that culminated in the Famous Artists School, founded in 1948. With the dedication he had once reserved for illustration, he developed the idea, a home study program prepared and directed by America's foremost artists. Albert Dorne built his program into one of the largest correspondence schools in the world. In 1953 he was the first artist to be honored with the Distinguished Career Award from the Art Directors of New York, and in 1958 he was recipient of an honorary D.F.A. degree from Adelphi College. In the early sixties Albert Dorne also founded the Famous Writers School and the Famous Photographers School, and the schools had more than 50,000 students in the United States and 54 foreign countries, and in 1963 grossed $10 million a year. In 1963 Albert Dorne received the Horatio Alger Award for success in his chosen field. Albert Dorne, the former president of the Society of Illustrators and member of the President's Committee for the Employment of the Handicapped, died on the 15th December 1965 at the Rockefeller University Hospital in New York. Even today his name is recognized as something very special, for example through the honorary Albert Dorne professorship in drawing at the University of Bridgeport's department of art, endowed in 1964. The graves of Albert Dorne and his widow Edna can be found at the Westchester Hills Cemetery (Section WCH, Plot W1087) in Hastings-on-Hudson, Westchester County in New York. Albert and his first wife Ruth* had a daughter, Elaine Gertrude Dorne Bolton (☼6th May 1924, †21st June 2013), and Albert and his second wife Celia* had a daughter, Barbara Sandra Dorne Bullas (☼15th November 1930, †11th February 2019).

Gert J. Almind

* Joseph Dornholz was the father and Mary Wilkers (☼1891, †1940) the mother of a baby girl, Helen Josephine Dornholz (☼4th July 1917, †20th July 1917). Joseph Dornholz married Sarah Brodsky Feinberg (☼1885, †1978) in 1934, and he died the 26th April 1962 in Bronx, New York. Burial details unknown to the editor. Sarah (Sally) was interred at the Star of David Memorial Gardens (Shar Hashamayim Garden) in North Lauderdale, the same cemetery as that of her children from first marriage to Moses Feinberg (☼1878, †1925): Jacob (Jack) Eli Feinberg (☼1906, †1996), Charlotte Gertrude Feinberg Tepper (☼1909, †1994), and Cecelia Deborah Feinberg Coppola (☼1913, †1999).

* Celia Rubin Dorne married Morris Martin (☼1877, †1965) around 1941, and she died the 22nd January 1946 in Los Angeles. Celia was interred at the Beth Olam Cemetery (Garden of Shalom) in Hollywood, the same plot as that of her daughter Grace Lizzy Greenberg and son Maxwell Dorne and their families. The daughter Sylvia Dorne married Jack Merle Parker (☼1908) on the 16th April 1932, and she died the 1st November 1959. Sylvia was interred at the Gomley Chesed Cemetery in Portsmouth, Virginia.

* Ruth Friedberg Underberger (☼1901, †1990) died in Palm Springs, Riverside County in California. Burial details unknown to the editor.

* Celia Sonkin Grey (☼1911, †2001) died in Peoria, Maricopa County in Arizona, and she was interred at the Beth Moses Cemetery in West Babylon, Suffolk County in New York.