When Mickey Met Betty

 

2 June 2021

WHEN MICKEY MET BETTY

 

Today is the 85th wedding anniversary of my late parents. A few years ago I did a painting based on the story of how they met.

 

In the summer of 2013 I ran across an obituary for Ninalee Craig, the 23 year old subject of the well known Ruth Orkin photograph "An American Girl in Italy." This photo is a favorite of mine and I keep a digital copy in my computer files...

 

This brought back the memory of Dad's story of how he met Mom in 1936, which in turn immediately inspired my painting “When Mickey Met Betty.”

Dad told the story of standing by the newsstand in the center of Chester, PA chatting with a friend in the spring of 1936 when he heard the click clack of heels and spotted a young girl approaching, Mary Elizabeth McAteer. His friend seemed to know her, and Michael "Mickey" Walsh, was immediately smitten. He commented (at least in his imaginative memory), “That’s the girl I’m going to marry.” He bribed his friend for an introduction, a 1936 extravagant $10, again Dad’s tale. A month or so later they were indeed married.

Ninalee, then calling herself Jinx Allen, in the photo was 23 and six feet tall. Betty McAteer was 15, and 4 feet 11 inches. Still, the image of watching the girl walking down the street clicked in my imagination.

The whole image seemed to fit the style of the New York street scenes Edward Hopper painted in the 1930s and ‘40s which also flashed to mind. Here’s “Nighthawks” ...

 

And here’s “Early Sunday Morning” ...

 

My 14 x 11-inch acrylic painting was influenced by Hopper’s style and the Ruth Orkin photograph. I reconstructed the newsstand from old postcards and my memory of its appearance when we visited family in Chester in the 1940s when my Uncle Elmer’s typewriter shop was about a block away from the newsstand. 

 Hopper meets Orkin via my limited talents, "When Mickey Met Betty"...