Sketching the Rich Details of a Norman Rockwell Life

I know right away, just in the way he begins, that Russ Anderson knows how to tell a story: “Years ago, before you were born . . . “ he says, as if settling in to tell me a bedtime tale.

And as we sit in his Santa Ana living room, Anderson, all arms and legs and 90 years old, tells how his acting career began in 1927 and how his classmates at the New York City drama school included people like Bette Davis, Joan Blondell and Paul Muni.

They became famous, but not him. He did some summer stock but, because money was tight and “show business is pretty precarious,” he quit and took management training with the Woolworth dime-store chain.

Let’s move forward some, oh, 50 years or so, to the 1980s when Anderson, now comfortably ensconced in Orange County, figured it was time to get serious again. So, at 80, he got an agent. “I had to get some work,” he explains. “Out here, you can’t work in radio, TV or pictures without an agent.”

One day, a friend had an idea. “Why don’t you do a one-man show?” he asked Anderson. The idea appealed to him, and Anderson looked for subjects. World War I flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker came to mind, but he had been too husky for the gangly Anderson.

Anderson settled on Norman Rockwell, an iconic American figure of the 20th century and, better still, a man to whom Anderson bore a facial resemblance. Friends cautioned that artists and writers aren’t interesting, because they spend all their time alone, but Anderson’s instincts told him something different: “I always enjoyed his pictures,” he says. “He always had a story in them without any words.”

Rockwell’s illustrations and paintings of Middle America captured America’s heart from the time of his first Saturday Evening Post cover illustration in 1916 to his last in 1965. He died in 1978.

Excited about his subject but unable to find anyone to write a script about Rockwell, Anderson threw himself into research. The result is a two-act play that Anderson wrote and will perform Aug. 25 at 2 p.m. at the First Presbyterian Church of Santa Ana. Admission is $5. Just as Rockwell would have wanted, an ice cream social will follow.

I ask Anderson to tell me something about Rockwell and the America he portrayed. My first surprise is that Rockwell was born not in a hay mow in Kansas but on the streets of Manhattan.

“When he was a boy,” Anderson says, “his father would take the family on vacation for two weeks to the country. In those days, some farmers upstate would take boarders. He’d go up there, and he and his brother would swim and fish in the pond, catch bullfrogs in the meadows and ride the work horses. That’s when he learned to love the country and country people.”

Anderson nods when I say oldsters associate Rockwell with a different America than the one today.

“That’s right,” he says. “We picture Rockwell in a time when things were simple, quiet, and everyone was honest. You didn’t lock your doors when you went out.”

In his play, with each act running about 50 minutes, Anderson-as-Rockwell talks of the artist’s failed first marriage and his subsequent meeting of the woman he would take for his second wife: “I found out what it’s like to be in love for the first time, and to have someone love me.”

After her death in 1959 of a heart attack, Anderson says of Rockwell: “He was lost. All he had was his work.”

But he bounced back, and after a friend advised Rockwell to do something to change his routine, the man who was America’s most loved illustrator, by then in his 60s, signed up for a sketch class at a local college.

As Anderson steps into character for me and begins doing material from his show, he becomes more animated, more vibrant. He becomes Norman Rockwell. “Sorry to have kept you waiting,” he says. “So, you’re the tour group from California. Welcome to Stockbridge. Welcome to my studio. . . . “

Anderson has performed his Rockwell show about 15 times, but usually in a shorter version. I ask if it seems strange to be doing one-man shows at 90.

“No, it seems good,” he says, laughing. “Really, I haven’t been too active. They were treating my heart for a while. It’s doing better. We’ll see how it does in two acts.”

I ask if he’ll be nervous on the 25th, or if, at 90, he’s beyond that.

“You bet. You don’t get beyond that, if you’re any good. Or if you ever want to be any good. If I ever get to the point where I go on stage and don’t feel a little nervous, I’ll know I’m slipping.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.