Interview

David: Tell me about your career in fashion design.

Edmund: Well, I was about eighteen, living in New York, and I was working in fashion design and fashion illustration for advertising agencies.

David: Did you have any formal training?

Edmund: I went to an art school in Newark; New Jersey called Arts High School. I had my last junior and sophomore years in that art school, which was very unique. It gave you all of your high school subjects as they related to art, as well as sculpture, painting, anatomy and perspective classes. We learned about the use of watercolor, and the geometric study of forms. We got a very well-rounded education, all of the usual subjects in relationship to art.

David: So when you graduated then you moved to New York?

Edmund: I didn’t graduate. I was drafted in 1942. I would have been a senior in 1943, and graduated, but I was drafted into the Navy. I stayed in the Navy for about two months. I loathed it, and I had a very hard time adjusting. I knew I didn’t want to be where I was. I had gone in thinking I must do my duty just like everybody else, and I didn’t anticipate what the experience would be like. I just got with it. I felt I was no different than anybody, and once I got in, I didn’t want to handle it. I thought it was all a waste of my fiber and my mind, and I loathed the circumstances – getting up at 5:00 in the morning and drilling with a gun in the cold Rhode Island snow, in muck on the ground. I didn’t like the fellows I was in with in one of these igloos.

So I went and talked to the Chaplain finally and just told him that I hadn’t discussed my homosexuality when I entered the Navy, but that I was willing to discuss it now. (Laughter). I just said I was finding the whole scene very stressful, and rather than be discharged for some misdemeanor, I’m applying for a discharge. I was examined by psychiatrists immediately, and answered their questions clearly and honestly. Then I was discharged in two days. I had a special orders discharge, and I went back to school.

Now this is a very interesting story about one of the teachers that I had there. I had two women teachers in that school that taught me painting and sculpture. I was crazy about them both. I thought they were dynamic sibyls in my life. They cared about my artistic nature, and what I could do. They encouraged it. They brought it out, and made it flourish. They were terrific support. I liked them so much that I used to bicycle down to their summer home just to be with them at the beach in New Jersey. And this one teacher – Gladys King Howard, my sculpture teacher – met me in the halls the day I returned to school, and said, “I don’t know what you did to get out of the Navy, but I don’t like it.” So I said, “Well, screw you.” (Laughter).

I said to myself, if this is going to be the atmosphere of my next year, I’m not going to be here. So I moved to New York, got my first job, and started working. Actually, I had started working in Bamburgers, a big department store in Newark, New Jersey. I also worked in an art supply store, as a sales person, and then I gravitated over to New York.

But before I go on too much I want to complete this story about this teacher, because this is very interesting. She was a catalyst in driving me out of the group and onto my own life. She got me started in some strange way.

Well, a couple of years ago, I was interviewed for a Monterey paper and I mentioned Arts High School. It was the first time that I had ever mentioned it in an interview. I don’t know why I never did before, but I mentioned it in this interview. So a woman called the paper and said that she had been a teacher at that school, and she wondered if I had ever passed through her classes. Well, sure enough it was Gladys K. Howard, and she was living in a retirement home in Pacific Grove.

Now this is fifty years later. (Laughter). I called her immediately and went to see her. I took her out and we re-established our relationship. She didn’t remember me specifically, because so many students had passed through her classes.

I brought her down here to Big Sur to see my work. I said, how rare it is that a teacher gets to see what an art student has done in their lives, hoping that she’d have a great experience out of it. And, she did. She was absolutely blown away, flabbergasted, and immediately began lecturing me on how selfish I was hording all of this art, keeping it all to myself, not spreading it out in the world, and letting people see it. “Why you’ve had the most incredible life. You’re an all-American success story, and you’re hiding away on this mountain. Oh, if I was only younger,” she said, “I’d write a book about you.”

I said, “Oh Gladys, I didn’t bring you down here for all that stuff. I’ve heard it all before. Just enjoy the whole experience, and don’t get on my case. I’ve had a rare experience. I’ve been able to sustain myself for thirty-five years doing this sculpture, under circumstances that I call ideal. I’ve enjoyed myself. I was trying to get away from that whole commercial world. I stopped thinking about being a successful artist. I just wanted to do it, and have that pure creative freedom.”

I saw her for about two years. I used to take her out to lunch, and we’d go for hikes. I told her that I thought she and that other woman teacher were lesbians. Although I didn’t know it at seventeen, as I thought about them over the years, I thought that they had some kind of strong girlfriend relationship. And I got her to admit it and discuss it. We became friends, were very open, and talked about everything.

David: Did you remind her of what she had said to you?

Edmund: You bet! (Laughter). Well, just to complete this story. One day a curator called me from the Monterey Peninsula College, and some anonymous person had donated five thousand dollars for them to buy one of my sculptures, and could he come down and see my work and make a selection. And I thought, well, who the hell did that? And then it dawned on me that Gladys did it. Now, this woman’s on a retirement wage, and lives in this expensive retirement home, and here she lays out five thousand bucks anonymously – ha, ha.

I called her and said, “You know, you’re really butting into my business. Why did you do that? It’s really upsetting me.” And I tried to explain to her my point of view — that I was not ready to sell my work. I had sold my work occasionally at that point, when someone came to visit, and was so crazy about something that they had to have it. If they could afford it, I’d sometimes do it, but not often.

So, I said. “Why don’t you get your attorney to get your money back?” “Oh no,” she said, “I don’t care if you don’t sell them a sculpture, they can just have the money, and they can use it in the library or somewhere else.” See, she’s a school teacher, and that’s what her life meant. That she was just ready. So I let them come down, and they chose what I consider one of my most important and favorite pieces — not that I’m one for having favorites, but I was very pleased with this sculpture, and they wanted it.

So I made a deal finally. It took several visits to the college, seeing where they wanted to locate it and all that. Then after that was done, I didn’t care about having my collection together anymore. It changed it for me. And I started thinking, well, listen you’re getting up in years kid, and you can’t take all this with you. You better start letting it go. And then Carolyn Kleefeld got me involved in that show in L.A. All of those things were signs that I had to let go. But this was the second time Gladys Howard was a catalytic force in my life.

David: What was her reaction when you told her about the result of the first experience that you had with her?

Edmund: She never discussed it. You know, she just heard me, and said she doesn’t remember.

David: That’s very interesting that she played that role twice in your life. So back to when you went to New York, and you started doing fashion design.

Edmund: Right. And then some friends of mine, a musician and his wife, introduced me to Lena Horne and for three years I was her protégé/designer.

David: I don’t know who she is.

Edmund: She’s a very famous singer, entertainer, and nightclub performer. She’s been in some movies, and was a star at MGM. I’ll have to play you a record someday so you’ll know who she is for God’s sake. Maybe today. A very, very beautiful woman who was another major catalyst in my life. I wouldn’t be living in Big Sur today if I hadn’t met Lena Horne.

David: What’s the connection, Lena Horne and Big Sur?

Edmund: She introduced me to the person who brought Big Sur to my attention, and made it possible for me to live here.

David: This must have been over some span of time.

Edmund: Yes, that’s right. It was over a span of time that those things happened. But she introduced me to this person in those three years that I worked for her, and then for numerous reasons our relationship broke. But I came out to California a few times with Lena, and we’d had clothes made out here, and I got to know some of the workshops that made clothes out here. I had clothes made for her in

New York as well, and through that relationship with these workshops, and making her clothes, I became more involved in the garment and dress business as a designer, and more interested.

And shortly after that period with Lena, I met some people who owned a very exclusive shop in New York, and they asked me to do a custom collection of clothes for them. I worked with them for a year or two, and I had my own workshop in New York – my younger sister and I were sort of partners in it. My mother helped finance it, and I had this good order from this shop, and I had to produce about twenty-four garments for them. They were going to take orders on them, or sell them directly. Then after about two years I saw what business was like, what being in business for yourself was like, and I wasn’t handling it well. I did not like it.

I did not like the competitive world. I didn’t like all the responsibility of the day-to-day being chained to a repetitive experience, and dealing with all the business aspects. So I sold the shop to a Greek girl who worked for me, who wanted to carry on with it. She was a teacher of couture. So I severed my relationship with New York. I was always extremely enchanted by New York, and I always wanted to succeed there, and have a career there, but I realized at that point that I didn’t have the equipment to be in business, and I had a slight ulcer from the aggravation of being in business. I went home to stay with my older sister for a couple of months. I practiced on my bicycle, and soon I started on a trip around the world by bicycle.

David: Really? How old were you?

Edmund: I was about twenty-three. I had this passion to see what was out there. I wanted to get my health back in shape, and I had tons of energy. I loved the bicycle, and I always used to ride from Elizabeth down to Asbury Park and Long Branch, and back in a day. I used to cut school a lot when I was in High School, and go into the mountains with my bicycle. I’d always wanted to go to Yucatan; that was the first place I wanted to see. So I left New York in April, when snow was still on the ground, and I went over the Blue Ridge Skyline Drive. And I went down into Tennessee and Mississippi. I loved Natchez. I went to New Orleans.

David: Where were you staying? You had money for hotels?

Edmund: Yeah, I had enough money to rent a nice lodging. I always found the cheapest thing I could, but I had enough money.