BEL- GEDDES IN CONTEXT

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BEL- GEDDES IN CONTEXT Whats in a

name? The denominations of designer Norman Bel Geddes first two wivesHelen Bel Geddes and Frances Waiteprovide insight into the importance of context in design discourse.

When I walked into the I Have Seen The Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center, my only intention was to view a retrospective about an interesting designer I had discovered in a design history 1 course. However, tucked away in the very first exhibition casewhich had I overlooked several times before, and only began skimming while I was waiting for my friends to leavewas a letter that seduced and engulfed me, embarking me on a something Ive come to characterize as an obsessive detective hunt in design research. In it, I discovered that Norman Bel Geddes, a name that would become synonymous with Streamlining and the 1940s Worlds Fair, originally referred not to one person, but twothe man then-termed Norman Melancton Geddes and his first wife, ne Helen Belle Sneider. The letter addressed to Helen, his fianc at the time, proposes an equal design partnership in 1916, twenty-five years before Charles and Ray Eames, the husband-and-wife designers who would come to emblematize such a team, began their career. The joining of their names into Norman-Bel Geddes is an act of prehistoric 2 feminism. Encompassed in the placement and displacement of that hyphen are clues to a story that, to me, held all the components of a detective film: young love and idealistic promises, mysterious gaps, and an elusive woman.

Modernism in Design and Architecture, Spring 2011 with thanks to Jeffrey Meikle

Daniel Okrent, Valhalla Minstrels, Cosmic Baseball Association, last modified February 16, 2002, accessed December 1, 2012, http:// www.cosmicbaseball. com/02vmr.html.

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THAT NAME WILL MEAN A FORTUNE SOMEDAY.

When any person versed in a basic chronology of design history hears the name Norman Bel Geddes, what comes to mind is a behemoth of the design world, a visionary stage designer-turned-futurist whose career spanned four decades and numerous creative endeavors. As Donald Albrecht, head curator of the Harry Ransom Centers I Have Seen The Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America exhibition describes Geddes design practice, he designed the theater set, he designed the theater, he designed the city in which the theater would sit Its a complete view of the future of America. Geddes career is not characterized by any one of his many hats, but by his inclination to have top-down control; even in his early years, he was never content with being just the set designer, but would expand his roles to include engineer, composer, and even director. This is the Bel Geddes most of us know a force to be reckoned with, a salesman who could compel clients to buy into (literally and figuratively) his elaborate visions of the future, and a hustler whose tireless self-promotion made his a household name so ubiquitous that in 1932 the New Yorker published a cartoon depicting a board of directors pronouncing that their next line of biscuits ought to have the Norman Bel Geddes aesthetic.
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streamlining, particularly in his 1932 novel Horizons, helped define the aesthetic of the 1930s. The exhibit is large, vibrant, and leaves attendees with a strong impression of the size of Geddes extensive career. The prolific and varied nature of this career makes it easy to be adulatory, and its understandable that Albrecht falls into the temptation. In keeping with the bad habit in design discourse, developed with the rise of advertising, of superlative statements when describing a designer or his work, exhibition materials contain a glut of words such as celebrated, visionary, and futurist,often all at once. Much is made of Geddes expansive influence, and he is repeatedly attributed the somewhat hyperbolic distinction of designing America, or designing the future. Albrecht writes in his first line of the introduction to Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, the book accompanying the exhibition, When you drive on an interstate highway, attend a multimedia Broadway show, dine in a sky-high revolving restaurant, or watch a football game in an all-weather stadium, you owe a debt of gratitude to Norman Bel Geddes. In reality, that debt is not so very large; though his ideas had some influence on the industrial designers of his day (particularly mentee and more pragmaticallyminded Henry Dreyfuss), many of Geddes favorite ideasan elephantine ocean liner, teardrop cars, collapsible housesnever quite took root. This rhetoric of sweeping, breathless statements is encouraged by Geddes own life-long practice of self-pro5

Laura Wright, I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America, The Daily Texan (Austin, TX), September 13, 2012, Life and Arts, accessed December 1, 2012, http://
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www.dailytexanonline.com/ life-and-arts/2012/09/21/ihave-seen-the-future-normanbel-geddes-designs-america .

Albrecht, Donald. I Have Seen The Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America Harry Ransom Center. 300 West 21st Street, Austin, TX 78712. October 4, 2012.
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Wright, I Have Seen the Future, Life and Arts

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A retrospective on Norman Bel Geddes is long overdue: a giant across both fields and eras, his career spans the Great Depression, WWII, and the rise of postwar American society. His advocacy of

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motion: In The Futurama Recontextualized: Norman Bel Geddess Eugenic World of Tomorrow, Christina Cogdell describes how his numerousself-written press releases in addition to books he owned and read reveal his deep-seated, long-standing desire to be considered a geniushe consciously fashioned a modernist Renaissance-man persona for himself. (Cogdell 2000, 194) Nevertheless, Geddes was an interesting creative mind with a flair for the theatrical, and his notable and expansive career well deserves his own exhibition. Albrecht is quick to note that though Geddes name is mentioned in most histories of industrial design, this exhibition is the first comprehensive retrospective of his work, an admirable and impressive effort. However, the exhibition represents a missed opportunity to present designand prominent designerswithin a more critical and complex frame. Norman Bel Geddes eugenicist world of tomorrow vision of the future influenced modern culture, as evidenced in the Disney Corporations cultural mainstays Tomorrowland and Epcot Center theme parks. Academics have made salient critical arguments, including Bel Geddes impracticality, the consumerist and absurdist facets of streamlining (a joke among design historians is that you dont need to streamline a toasteras it doesnt fly), and the contention that futuring isnt so much a visionary practice as a privileged one, in which prominent men with insider information (as well as the power to back their declara6 7

tions) simply inform a less-knowledgeable public on a recent trend before the public has heard about it. Helen Baer, curatorial assistant for the exhibition and head of the theater section of the Harry Ransom Center, has pointed out (regarding Geddes Futurama exhibit, contracted by GM to convince the general public of the desirability of an interstate highway system) that it is one thing to have a vision of a car-centric society and quite another thing to actually live in one. However, in the I Have Seen The Future exhibition, no critical context is given or acknowledged. Bel Geddes presentation sustains persistent myths of the lone genius and heroic male designer, that assume creative work is the product of a decontextualized inspiration. This belief marginalizes collaboration and teambased work as well as minority creatives. Design does not exist outside of its personal and social context. A work is always borne from the condition of its creator, and innovation is the result of complex collaborative thought. The portrayal of design as if from a void belies a full cultural understanding of the design process, and as a result many impressive female designers have been lost in the shadows of their more famous male counterparts.
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Christina Cogdell, The Futurama Recontextualized: Norman Bel Geddess Eugenic World of Tomorrow, American Quarterly 52, no. 2 (June 2000): [139], accessed December 1, 2012,doi:10.1353/ aq.2000.0016.
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For a good criticism of Disneys future visions, see Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space, ed. Michael Sorkin.
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Cameron D. Norman, The Persistent Myth of the Lone Genius in Art and Science, Censemaking, last modified June 7, 2011, accessed December 1, 2012, http://censemaking. com/2011/06/07/thepersistent-myth-of-the-lonegenius-in-art-and-science.
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Such is the case with Helen Bel Geddes ne Helen Belle Sneider. Tucked inside the first display case of the exhibition sits a small letter, alongside a plaque repeating Geddes proclamation Norman-Bel Geddesthat name will be famous one day. At first blush, the statement seems

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NAME, CONT.
impressively propheticand is presented as suchbut when one remembers that society rarely hears of those would-be prophets who declaim their own fame and then fail, and remembers also Geddes ego, the prophetic declaration quickly loses its impressive shine. endearment among her friends and family. The name that would make a fortune someday began as Norman-Bel Geddes, comprising not one person, but two.

What stands out in Norman Geddes letter is not so much the prescience (or perhaps, self-fulfilling prophesy) | From I Have Seen The Future of his declaration, but Now that I have had the lurch of the Letter from Norman Geddes to Helen Belle that his dreams and business world Id like to quit it and get into Sneider, postmarked Feb. 22, 1916 character are so inmy own business (with you of course). If we could only determine which of our endeavors tertwined with Helen In this letter to his fianc, written just we preferred to concentrate onlets do it. before their marriage on March 19, 1916, Belle Sneiders. This Our brains are good in all lives but better Geddes vows that they will do everything is not the monolith in artistic ones. I could be a Cracker Jack together under the joined last name of Bel of industrial design businessman if I wanted to but I hate it. Geddes predicting that name will mean a and architecture with Lets think this over. Well get in a rut and fortune some day. Helen Bel Geddes did tied down and be afraid to take the leap soon, whom we are familindeed contribute to subsequent issues of then we cant move. Inwhich, and co-authored the play iar, the man whose You and I are going into life together Thunderbird with Geddes. name would lend an and under unusual hard and straigned [sic] circumstancesbut with unusual prospects if assurance of good Geddes and Helen had two daughters, we use our heads. Joan Bel Geddes, who became a writer and design and efficiency When I say going into life I mean Barbara Bel Geddes who achieved fame as a to everything from sociallybusinesslythat is, with all we have stage and screen actor. jewelry to Chevy Every thing togetherour loveour work. carsthis is, simply, No one can hire one of us without the otherno one will know which of us did a The true content of an excited young man certain thing that they likewe both did itit in love, with a head the letter is much was done by Norman-Bel Geddes! That name more intriguing. full of dreams and will mean a fortune some day. Geddes, age 22, is plans for the future Norman Bel Geddes, March 22, 1916, to then- for two. The letter is writing to Helen fianc Helen Belle Schneider (emphasis his). Belle Sneider about sweet, heartbreaking, a month before they and full of youthful are to be married. Though the handwritoptimism, obviously written by the hand ing is somewhat difficult to decipher, and of a young man in love. Here is a lesserthe paper dark, the story is absorbing: known Geddes vision of the future. Geddes is proposing a radical-for-its-time notion that he and Helen collaborate as There is plenty of lofty languageraised equal partners. The Bel in Norman Bel in Christian Science by his mother, GedGeddes is in fact her middle name and an des was very familiar with the idea of

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A LOVE STORY OF THE PAST AND A MAN FOR THE FUTURE

two become onebut Normans proposal to Bel, beyond that of marriage, is the melding of two creative mindsa joint practice so inextricable clients would not know the work of one from the other. Here, an innovative mind is being uniquely progressive: the proposition of two minds as one, wherein the woman is not just a muse or support but has equal agency and input to that of the mans. This is one future vision that was not fully realized; heartbreakingly, though Geddes and Helen Bel * collaborated on several issues of Inwhich, a literary magazine, a play, Thunderbird, during the first few years of their marriage, theres no evidence of any future creative work.
In a mystery, you seize upon any clue, hoping it will lead you to the true storyso I began searching the exhibition for any any mention of Helen or information or Inwhich, hoping for a glimpse into Helen Bels work. I later found a mention of Elbert Hubbard in Helen Bels correspondence to Geddes, in which she compares their respective relationships:

* As names are an important theme, I feel the need to make a quick note on naming conventions. To avoid confusion between Helen (Bel Geddes / Belle Sneider) and Norman Bel Geddes, I often refer to her as Helen Bel, omitting the last name, while referring to Norman as just Geddes. This is not intended to imply any hierarchy or imbalance of respect, but is simply to aid clarity. Also: confusedly, Geddes spells her name in Miracle in the Evening as Helen Belle Schneider, shortened to the endearment Bel. However, as most other accounts, including the Harry Ransom Center and various newspaper obituary reports, spell her name Sneider, that is the spelling I am using.

| July 8, 1915
Darling, do you realize that I love you and want to work with you; it makes it a real partnership. Youll never lose me dear; its a life partnership. Its simply another case of Elbert and Alice Hubbarddont you see, dear, and dont you remember what he said about the new love of the 20th century? 9

Who was this woman with whom Geddes is so besotted? His letter inspires empathy and curiosity for this elusive person, a woman whose brain Geddes considered to be equal and in concert with his own quite a feat, considering his famed penchant for self-promotion and confidence. In a letter written only two years after womens suffrage was accomplished in the United States, Geddes is giving his future wife an equal vote in their partnership. Like most mysteries, the story only invites more questions: Where is the work, created from the Bel-Geddes team? Why did they separate, and what happened to her when they did? If shes truly as formidable a creative mind as this letter seems to implyan assumption Im willing to make, based on Bel Geddes future habit of marrying talented women and collaborating with themwhere is her work after their separation? Was she simply another casualty of her time, a creative woman left undeveloped in favor of living on in the domestic sphere?

| From I Have Seen The Future

Elbert Hubbards magazine, The Philistine, June 1901; Inwhich, 1915

In breadth, tone, and design, Geddes magazine, Inwhich, owed much to Roycroft founder Elbert Hubbards little magazine, The Philistine, published from 1895 to 1915, the year Hubbard perished on the Lusitania. Although conceived as a multi-contributor literary magazine, Hubbard soon became the sole author, offering his opinion on myriad subjects. Geddes and Belle Sneider had visited Hubbards Roycroft Shop in East Aurora, NY and Geddes may have seen himself as a successor to Hubbard.

Helen Bel Sneider to Norman Melancton Geddes, June 1915, Personal Files, Norman Bel Geddes Theater and Industrial Design Papers, Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX.
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LOVE PAST, CONT.

* Helen Bel illustrates several common issues for feminist historians seeking to reinstate herstory into the official record: firstly, it can be difficult to uncover the truth when our only sources are inherently clouded; i.e., written by or about the very man whose shadow is obscuring the woman in our academic focus. Secondly, it is very difficult to extricate individual roles in collaborative work which, unfortunately, often results in the privileging of the mans input over that of the womans. Lastly, analyses of bias and male privilege are often interpreted as attacks on the male designer and his work, or are seen as a petty attempt to denigrate him simply because of his genderwhich is in fact the very thing we are trying to undo and rehabilitate.

Should we even take Bel Geddes at his wordwould their partnership truly have been as egalitarian as he proposes? Or would Helen have encountered many of the same issues Ray Eames did, years later: being ignored, or assumed she is a muse, a support, or worse, a gimmick? The letter is so evocative of a lost love and great partnership among two great minds, a unique pairing based in equity and mutual admirationthat it at least begs the questions. So what happened to Helen Bel Geddes? Though the evidence is scarcewe have her letters to Norman, but few of his letters to her, and what accounts we have of her are problematically filtered through his autobiography the answer seems pretty straightforward. According to Geddes 1960 autobiography Miracle in the Evening,* Helen Bel left him abruptly one night; as he puts it, And, then, very suddenly, the bottom dropped out of my life. He affirms that she refused to give explanation or recourse, asking only that he leave for a while and, in the time he was gone, moving out with all of the furniture and their two children. Claiming, the fact was that Bel herself was responsible, he speculates later that her shyness, in conjunction with the development of an inferiority complex, kept her from being involved in the social life that [his] profession required.
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Helen Bels inability to participate in Norman Geddes work hard, play hard ethos led to her increased withdrawal from a social life that, to her husband, was growing in size and priority. He in turn began occasionally ask[ing] a young lady to accompany [him] to a dinner or an opening. Bel unsurprisingly demurred his friendships with other women, but he insisted she instead accompany him herselfand thus they were placed at an unhappy impasse.
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Norman Bel Geddes, Miracle in the Evening, ed. William Kelely (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1960), [326]
10 11

Ibid.

12

Ibid.

Cogdell, The Futurama Recontextualized: Norman, [139].

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Performing an autopsy on a failed relationship is complex, messy, and muddled, but it may be worthwhile to pursue here. As Geddes says, I suppose it is an old story.
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There is reason to take Geddes words with a grain of salt. A man with such an awareness of his future legacy that he carbon-copied every sketch and scrap, Geddes late-in-life autobiography was clearly made with the intent to establish his legacy. This is the man who often placed as much energy into his own self-promotion as into his work: in a press release about himself written in 1939, he wrote: A man of versatility and of enormous dynamic qualities, Norman Bel Geddes has, through the medium of design found himself in the midst of innumerable vastly different fields, and in each one of them has left his mark of genius. Edited by his secretary, the press release has strike-throughs on the words enormous and mark of genius with the comment, too boastful. Miracle in the Evening is written with revisionist intent, and it is unfortunate that the only information we have about the end of his and Helen Bels marriage is from his perspective. When Geddes describes her, he does so from the position of a man who knows what happens, and though he speaks
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of her fondly its surrounded by a sense of foreboding. He seems to want to diminish her influence in his life, and his tone is very different from that of his letter proposing a design partnership (as is the audience): We spent all of our time discussing one another, our ideas, and our dreams. I could not have fully realized then that Bel was a highly delicate human mechanism. All of my characteristics were wrong for her, but she didnt know it and neither did I. My vigorous, roughshod manner of speaking my uninhibited thoughts must frequently have silenced her. Flaming out, as young energy does, in all directions at once, I repressed nothing, told all. In so doing, I am sure I frightened herAnd so we grew to live in each others thoughts constantly. Never before had I experienced desire and enjoyment in just touching someone, nor had I ever imagined there existed such violent sensations such as beat and boiled within me when I was near her
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though she was more concerned with the manner in which ideas were expressed than with their intellectual content (an apparent slight). Her sensitivity was for the little things, and this was her loveliest and most adorable quality. A highly delicate color, a suitable variation in tone, a dainty distinction in choice of words, these were rare things to her. Like her mother, she lacked physical courage. Never have I heard of anyones suffering so continually as these three women did from fear of the man they lived with.
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Geddes, Miracle in the Evening, [144].

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15

Ibid., [144].

16

Ibid., [144].

His interest in setting the record is evident when he recounts his courtship with Helen Bel, where he betrays an animosity with her father while simultenously assuring his readership of their virtuosity: For as long as I knew Mr. Schneider [sic] I never heard of anyone say anything favorable about himafter I returned to Detroit, I had to determine when her father would be in his office before I could safely telephone Bel. We were young and enjoying our youth and, almost from the first, loving each other honestly and chastely. In such circumstances, [Mr.] Schneiders regulations and suspicions could scarcely have been more odious.
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Here too Geddes displays a facility with language, writing evocatively about their youth and love. However, some aspects are incongruous as he seems set on their ultimate unsuitability. His descriptions of Helen Bel are diminutive, keen to establish her as a frail, delicate creaturealmost otherworldlywho is unfit for his roughshod manner (and later, his worldliness): Reality was a void to Bel; her whole world was books and imagination,

His repeated assertions that Bel lacked courage (even when just meeting her: I brought up the subject of visiting her that evening, but she said that neither she nor her sister had even been allowed to receive male visitors alone. The very idea

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LOVE PAST, CONT.

seemed to frighten her, so I told her to forget it. ) foreshadow his later diagnosis of their failed marriage as owing to her inability to join in his social ambitions:
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17

Ibid., [144].

17

Ibid., [326].

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Sneider to Geddes.

She said she did not know how to talk with such sophisticated people. I told her that I didnt know how either, but that it was like learning to swim; you struck out for the deep water and did the best you could. After a while you learned, and were at your ease. She said she knew this, but could not face up to the learning period.
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20

Ibid.

It is a painful and ironic statement in retrospect, often happens when one reads love letters after the dissolution of the romantic partnership. When she assures him that When you go among people I want you to know that there isnt a finer gentleman and you have the word of a very critical young lady, it seems to be Norman Geddes who suffers from social anxiety. Understandably, this is not the something he would be inclined to recall when writing his autobiography, years later, towards the end of his life. He ends the chapter on meeting Helen Bel with a diagnosis of their failed marriage:
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Geddes believes that the essential difference between them lies in his willingness to just jump in, compared to her lack of courage. A bright girl who graduated second in her class at Smith College, the Helen Bel portrayed in their correspondence doesnt seem shy; in fact, many of the letters are reassurances to a deeply insecure Geddes and she offers creative suggestions as an equal collaborator. A great many of the letters include sentiments of supportive admonishment (I want you to have more confidence in yourself, dear, because you need it,) and she seems to be directly addressing statements of uncertainty from Geddes: Enough of that. Darling, do you realize that I love you and want to work with you; it makes it a real partnership. Youll never lose me dear; its a life partnershipI love you, darling; dont you believe it?
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Geddes, Miracle in the Evening, [144].

21

Dowling Family Geneology, Rootsweb, last modified November 30, 2012, accessed December 1, 2012, http://wc.rootsweb. ancestry.com/cgi-bin/igm. cgi?op=GET&db=dowfam3& id=I194112.
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I ignoredwe ignoredlarger problems: our very different interests in life, the variable intensity of our emotional reactions, the extent to which work absorbed our individual beings, the kind of lives we each wanted to live, and the simple fact that she was a little older than I. These were the things we should have thought about, the things that youth is impatient to forget, and these were the things that were to limit and number the days of our future together.
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Interesting to note is Geddes comment that, among other incompatibilities between him and Helen Bel, she was older. If so, it is a matter of monthsgenealogical records state that both were born in 1893. However, when he meets Frances Waite at the Paris Expo of 1925, she is 19 while he and Helen Bel are 32. By that point, Helen Bel is managing two young daughters and
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a workaholic husband with a massive ego. The New York Times wedding announcement for Geddes and second wife Frances Waite, is uncomfortable and insinuating: Norman Bel Geddes, nationally known theatrical and industrial designer, was quietly married yesterday at City Hall to Miss Frances Resor Waite, former Cincinnati society girl, who for the last three years has assisted Mr. Bel Geddes in his workshop and has designed costumes for many of his theatrical productionsThis is the second time Mr. Bel Geddes had been married, his first having culminated in a divorce less than six months ago.
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Desperate for any shred of information, I searched for more on Thunderbird, the only play they coauthored during his time as a theatrical designer:

| Thunderbird, 1916
Geddes spent the summer of 1913 on the Blackfoot Reservation in Montana working for the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, furthering a childhood interest in Native American culture and dress. By 1915 Geddes and his first wife, Helen Belle Sneider, had written a four-act play recounting the Blackfoot tribes legend of a multicolored bird that appeared during a storm as a manifestation of thunder. Thunderbird, with music by Charles Wakefield Cadman, was planned for production by Aline Barnsdalls Los Angeles Little Theater but appears to have never been performed.

Norman Bel Geddes Weds Frances Waite, New York Times (New York, NY), March 4, 1933, accessed December 1, 2012, http:// ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/ login?url=http://search. proquest.com/docview/100 761126?accountid=7118.
23

Geddes, Miracle in the Evening, [144].

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25

Ibid., [144].

Another reason to take Geddes words somewhat skeptically is that in some cases, whether by intention or faulty recollection, he outright lies. When relating his solution for seeing Helen Bel alone on the premise of working on Thunderbird, he claims: Whatever is was that had made it possible for us to be alone, I was thankful for it. We didnt discuss the Thunderbird, not that evening or any evening; however, Geddes and Helen Bels collaboration on Thunderbird is well known and documented. Even if he meant that they didnt discuss Thunderbird during specifically those early visits, there are many letters from Helen Bel during their days of courtship in which she discusses Thunderbird explicitly, inquiring about specific plot points as well as elements of style and tone.
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His contention over her mention of marriage in Miracle in the Evening, which appears to position her as a woman eager to marry and settle down, is somewhat misrepresented; he claims The day came when she mentioned marriage, in passing, of course, and taking it for granted. It came as a shock to me, and put me to thinking about my responsibilities; producing the income and output of ten employees, supporting three people in my own family, working out my future. Between designing posters in Detroit and going forth to seek my theatrical fortune in New York, there really was no choice; the latter won hands down. But there was the problem of steady income, a problem that the question of mar-

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Sneider to Geddes.

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riage seemed to complicate endlessly, and I gave it enormous thought.

25

MRS. HELEN B.S. GEDDES: Former Wife of Stage Designer Dies in Millburn, N.J., New York Times (New York, NY), May 30, 1938, [Page 11].
27

Pat Kirkham, Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century, 4th ed. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), [71].
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Helen Bels correspondence, however, relates measured discussions of their marriage plans and assurances that it would be best to wait and be patient before marrying, recommending they wait even up to three years. Her early letters portray a young woman excited to begin her creative career, eager to improve and keen to discuss the finer points of plot, structure, tone, and more with her partner-husband: an insert in a letter postmarked on June 22, 1915 has the declaration I loved successful husbands and wives because that means us, darling. In every way it means us. However, with the birth of their children Helen was suddenly under pressure to give up her intellectual pursuits. Encouraged to put aside her creative work to take care of two children, left to that unhappy task by a husband who worked hard and played hard, but more and more did so only for himself. Left thus, Helen Bel rather courageously takes matters into her own hands and leaves. For the design historians purpose, she disappears into the diurnal responsibilities expected of her, with the added difficulty of being a single mother (she never remarries). Helen B.S. Geddes, so termed in the obituary, dies after a yearlong illness in New Jersey at the age of 44, a mere five years after their divorce.
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I am not trying to argue that Helen Bel was not fulfilled by her role in the domestic sphere, nor do I want to make an indictment of motherhood, family, or the choice to be devoted to such. I do, however, believe that Helen Bel constitutes yet another example of how a patriarchal culture, with its accompanying gender expectations, results in the marginalization (and, in this case, erasure) of the female half of a creative team. This imbalance of attention is likely what affected and ultimately destroyed their marriage. Such was the case with Charles and Ray Eames, whose preeminent design partnership began with Charles abandonment of a wife and a child for his promising young student, Ray Kaiser. He would go on to have many mistresses towards the end of their marriage, a practice that hurt Ray Eames deeply and almost led to her pleading a divorce, were it not for their continued working relationship. As Pat Kirkham describes in her book Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century, There is abundant evidence of Charless devotion to Ray, but he was brought up to operate in a mans world and to prioritize work over emotional and personal commitments.
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After such a rabbit trailin which I played the obsessive detectiveit seems a distinctly anti-climactic ending.

There is a tradition in America among creative menincluding designers such as Charles Eameswho have established careers, or are rising in their fields of marrying their younger, creative students. Ray Eames, ne Kaiser, was

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RAY EAMES AND OTHER WIVES

five years younger and studying painting and graphic design at Cranbrook when she met Charles, the newly-minted head of Industrial Design. Norman Bel Geddes himself also tended to marry among his creative female employees. Unfortunately, though these designer men married their female students and colleagues for their complementary minds, they would then turn around and encourage their wives to stop or greatly reduce creative endeavor in favor of staying home and taking care of the children. Many of themRalph Rapson, Russel Wright, and Frank Gilbreth among themencouraged their wives to run their design shops while they continued their own careers. This series of events had one happy consequence wherein these women, though relegated to the private sphere, nevertheless did not lose their creative minds nor their design focus. Instead, they turned their eyes to improving and designing their home spaces, making adjustments towards greater efficiency (thus giving themselves more time for their own pursuits) and more fulfilled home lives. However, topics designated as feminineinterior design and work in the home among themare pushed aside and under, along with the women who participate in them, no matter how brilliantly. Lucinda Kaukas Havenhand writes in A View from the Margin: Interior Design how Part of adiscourse that assigns both interior design and the feminine the position of other. Interior design is perceived as feminine, superficial, and mimetic as compared to a male, rational, and original architecture. Although the subtext is not said out loud, it still is clear: interior design is inferior to architecture.
29

This remains the same when substituting with other forms of design connoted more masculine or feminine, ensuring that, whether because of their roles in the interior design side of his practice or simply because of their femininity, Norman Bel Geddes wives and their creative contributions, while we are still ruled by patriarchal hierarchy, will always be under appreciated. Geddes has a history of collaborating creatively with his wives, though never to the extent that he proposes to Bel: Frances Waite begins working for Geddes as a set designer in 1928 and continues to collaborate with him throughout her career, becoming a partner in Bel Geddes and Co. His third wife, Anne Howe Hillard, studied in Paris and was the daughter of his former partner, George Howe. While together, she and Geddes create a line of jewelry for the Rice-Weiner Company. His fourth and final wife, Edith Lutyens Bel Geddes, was a Belgian fencing champion who then opens a dress shop in London during World War II. His fourth and final wife, during their marriage she becomes a celebrated costume designer and theatrical producer alongside Geddes.
30 30

Lucinda Kaukas Havenhand, A View from the Margin: Interior Design, Design Issues 20, no. 4 (Fall 2004): [33]
29

Albrecht, Donald. I Have Seen The Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America.
30

Jennifer Dunning, Edith Lutyens, 95, a Designer Of Costumes for the Stage, The New York Times (New York, NY), August 23, 2002, Arts, [Page #], accessed December 1, 2012, http://www. nytimes.com/2002/08/23/ arts/edith-lutyens-95-adesigner-of-costumes-forthe-stage.html.
31

Interestingly, Frances Waite keeps her name as her career is rising; Geddes other wives, however, took on the Bel Geddes name, by that point established

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BEL- GEDDES IN CONTE XT | 14

WIVES, CONT.
as a significant brand in American design. Waite has a happy marriage with Bel Geddes, and is said to have been the love of his life. In fact, her name is the only one cited in a primary sectional panels in the I Have Seen The Future exhibition, which describes Geddes troubles upon her death of tuberculosis in 1942.
32

Norman Bel Geddes Manhattan Cocktail Set and Norman Bel Geddes Medal, Visakay, last modified May 24, 2012, accessed December 1, 2012, http://www. visakay.com/8301.html.
32

With the lack of information on Helen Bel beyond the occasional mention, the trail seemed cold, and I began looking for mention of his second wife, Frances Waite, who received more biographical details in the HRC exhibition placards. A strong figure, she began to intrigue me as well:

| Geddes & Frances Waite

Frances Waite (1904-1943), the niece of the president of the J. Walter Thompson agency, studied stage design with Geddes after graduating from Bryn Mawr. In 1928 Geddes hired her as a researcher and draftsman. Geddes and Waite married on March 3, 1933. Waite retained her maiden name as she continued to advance in the business. Her introduction of Geddes to her uncles advertising agency earned Geddes some of his most important commissions including the Simmons Company, Shell Oil, and Futurama. Waite contracted Tuberculosis in 1938 and died in 1943.

Cogdell, The Futurama Recontextualized: Norman, [193].

33

Jeffrey Meikle, Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design In America 1925-1939, 2, illustrated ed. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001), [110].
33

Jeffrey Meikle to Raquel Breternitz, November 9, 2012.

34

However, in most texts Waite is only mentioned for her most immediately traceable effect on Geddes career: it was her introduction to Stanley Resor, her uncle and president of a major ad agency, that earned Geddes many of his contracts, including Futurama. However, it is important to note that she was hired as project manager for the Franklin Simon window installations that made Geddes famous, and launched him into the world of industrial design (as well as literally stopped traffic), and she was an equal partner in Bel Geddes & Company along with Worthen Paxton, Earl Newsome, and the architect George Howe. (Landscapes of American Modernity) In some ways, Frances Waite offers design historians with an interest in reinstating talented female designers into the record a better chance than Helen Bel ever had: invested in her career, she kept her name and, it seems, never chose to have children. Records of her work with Bel Geddes & Company show a confident, talented designer well capable of leading her projects on her own, efficiently and with an elegant sensibility. Housed in the archives at the Harry Ransom Center among Norman Bel Geddes papers is a
33 34

series of photographs of the making and formal documentation of the Shell City of the Future model for a 1937 advertising campaign. The large, formal photographs of the triangular-shaped city model, taken by Richard Garrison, were those used in the magazine ads, but there are smaller photos, sepia-toned and taken by Frances Waite, that record the creation of the model as well as the Garrison photo session. Included among them is a photograph of her, seated at a desk looking elegantly bohemian in fashionably short, tousled hair, white blouse, and thin gold necklace and bracelets, which must be a self-portrait. Her photos are much more engaging, beautifully composed, and cre34

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BEL- GEDDES IN CONTE XT | 15

ative. To future art and design historians, there is significant roomor, to look at it negatively, a significant gapin discussion and dissemination of her work and career. Frances Waite is our chance to redeem the design practice that, for Helen Bel, was cut short: here is a woman with significant talent, strength, and documented work. If we are to begin reinstating women designers into the canon, taking a closer look at the wives and mistresses of renowned male designers is not a bad start.

DESIGN IN CONTEXT
As I walk through the exhibit, I feel as though Im walking with a ghost. Helens specter, followed by France Waites (and distantly, Ray Eames) haunts me. Why must curatorial practice continue in the tired, universalist tradition which must establish a heroic male designer first, then fill in multiculturalism and gender equality? Norman Bel Geddes career traversing from the Great Depression to post World War II is fascinating and immersingbut I am curious to develop a whole picture, to know also the aspect of his daily life. The paradigm of the work sphere versus (and overriding) the domestic sphere is no longer dominant; we are now able and have a duty to create exhibitions that present critical context; a vision of design that is broader, more complex, more accurate, and more exciting. Nature abhors a vacuum, as does design you cannot divorce its outcome from the conditions whence it grew.

Miss Francis Waite, portrait photo Arnold Genthe, 1932

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Albrecht, Donald. I Have Seen The Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America Harry Ransom Center. 300 West 21st Street, Austin, TX 78712. October 4, 2012. Ancestry.com. Dowling Family Geneology. Rootsweb. Last modified November 30, 2012. Accessed December 1, 2012. http:// wc.rootsweb.ancestry. com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi? op=GET&db=dowfam3 &id=I194112. Cogdell, Christina. The Futurama Recontextualized: Norman Bel Geddess Eugenic World of Tomorrow. American Quarterly 52, no. 2 (June 2000): 193-245. Accessed December 1, 2012. doi:10.1353/ aq.2000.0016. Dunning, Jennifer. Edith Lutyens, 95, a Designer Of Costumes for the Stage. The New York Times (New York, NY), August 23, 2002, Arts. Accessed December 1, 2012.
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Find a Grave. Frances Waite Geddes. Find a Grave. Last modified October 21, 2011. Accessed December 1, 2012. http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/ fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid =78936922. Geddes, Norman Bel. Miracle in the Evening. Edited by William Kelely. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1960. Genthe, Arnold. Waite, Frances, Miss, Portrait Photograph. Photograph. December 3, 1932. LC-G412-. Arnold Genthe Collection. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, Washington D.C., USA. Havenhand, Lucinda Kaukas. A View from the Margin: Interior Design. Design Issues 20, no. 4 (Fall 2004): 32-42. Kirkham, Pat. Charles and Ray Eames: Designers of the Twentieth Century. 4th ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001. Meikle, Jeffrey. Jeffrey Meikle to Raquel Breternitz, November 9, 2012.

. Twentieth Century Limited: Industrial Design In America 1925-1939. 2, illustrated ed. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 2001. New York Times (New York, NY). MRS. HELEN B.S. GEDDES: Former Wife of Stage Designer Dies in Millburn, N.J. May 30, 1938. New York Times (New York, NY). Norman Bel Geddes Weds Frances Waite. March 4, 1933. Accessed December 1, 2012. http:// ezproxy.lib.utexas. edu/login?url=http:// search.proquest.com/ docview/100761126?a ccountid=7118. Norman, Cameron D. The Persistent Myth of the Lone Genius in Art and Science. Censemaking. Last modified June 7, 2011. Accessed December 1, 2012. http://censemaking. com/2011/06/07/ the-persistent-mythof-the-lone-genius-inart-and-science/.

Okrent, Daniel. Valhalla Minstrels. Cosmic Baseball Association. Last modified February 16, 2002. Accessed December 1, 2012. http:// www.cosmicbaseball. com/02vmr.html. Sneider, Helen Bel. Helen Bel Sneider to Norman Melancton Geddes, June 1915. Personal Files. Norman Bel Geddes Theater and Industrial Design Papers. Harry Ransom Center, Austin, TX. Sorkin, Michael, ed. Variations on a Theme Park: The New American City and the End of Public Space. Illustrated ed. New York, NY: Macmillan, 1992. Visakay. Norman Bel Geddes Manhattan Cocktail Set and Norman Bel Geddes Medal. Visakay. Last modified May 24, 2012. Accessed December 1, 2012. http://www.visakay. com/8301.html.

Wright, Laura. I Have Seen the Future: Norman Bel Geddes Designs America. The Daily Texan (Austin, TX), September 13, 2012, Life and Arts. Accessed December 1, 2012. http:// www.dailytexanonline.com/life-andarts/2012/09/21/ihave-seen-the-futurenorman-bel-geddes-designs-america. Yannacci, Christin Essin. Landscapes of American Modernity: A Cultural History of Theatrical Design, 1912--1951. Austin, TX: ProQuest, 2007. Many thanks to Jeffrey Meikle, Helen Baur, Kate Catteral, Daniel Olsen, the speakers at the Flair Symposium, and the Harry Ransom Center.