Diana Dale Castle | Entering the Pale

Diana painted celebrity portraits while still in Toronto, probably in preparation for the posters, and then when she moved to NYC and went to school at the Art Students League and afterwards, she continued to paint famous people.

Here is a sample of what she did as a “kid” of twenty or so in Canada.

That is my favorite.

Here are a few more.

At some point after arriving in NYC, Diana embarked on at least two major painting projects. One of them was painting portraits of Broadway stars. She was allowed to attend rehearsals and would then paint the artists in one or more of the show costumes, as well as (sometimes) costumes from other shows he or she had performed in. She also painted some TV stars. Some of these were sold and some she kept. We have a few of the paintings . Here are three.

Ethel Merman

Ezio Pinza

I am not positive about this 3rd one, but it might be Katherine Cornell. I used to know, but right now my certainty has flown away.

The other project was painting the portraits of the jazz greats who performed at The Birdland nightclub. These were commissioned by the club and hung on the walls for years. The murals were saved from the fire at the club, and a grouping of them were eventually displayed at the Smithsonian museum. A limited edition book was published about the club and the murals.

The portraits included Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, and many others. Many of these are now owned by a private collector.

For an idea of what the murals looked like, as well as to read a poem I wrote about Diana’s art, check out this publication at The Ekphrastic Review.

This week I want to backtrack to Diana’s art when she lived in Toronto, before she attended the Art Students League in New York.

As a young woman, Diana worked as an usherette for the local movie theatres. You can find my post about her job at Proud to Be an Usherette. But Diana had another job for the local theatres. She was a film poster artist. Her posters were posted outside and inside the movie theatres.

The other day I wondered if she had ever wanted to be a full-time artist for one of the movie studios, but when I looked at the list of artists the studios used for any length of time they were all men.

These posters were painted (mainly in 1942) in Toronto. Here is 20-year-old Diana posing with one of them.

The “poster show cards,” as Diana referred to them, were painted on beaverboard, and most of them were 40×60. She rented some of them out to the 20th Century Theatre chain in Ontario, Canada. However, Century claimed they lost the posters and never returned any of them to Diana.