Forgotten Heroes - NellBrinkley.net

America's Prolific Romantic Writer
from the Ragtime and Jazz Ages

“Our World Famous Romantic Illustrator”
Broadway Show and Silent Movie
Illustrator and Reviewer

Lois e. Collins with Tom j. Collins

Denver - Edgewater - Brooklyn - Manhattan – ALL U.S.A. - Europe - D.C. - New Rochelle - Long Beach , CA- Vermont - Quebec - Florida - New Jersey

Talented Nell Brinkley was America’s American Idol, the celebrated romantic-writer and illustrator during the age of Norman Rockwell. She was a self taught artist, born in Denver just before the 1890’s. When she was still in high school, the Denver Post and later the Denver Times, hired “little Smearo.”

Soon, in October 1907, she was asked to come to New York as an illustrator and reporter for William Randolph Hearst and his editor Arthur Brisbane at the New York Evening Journal in New York. Within a few months she became wildly popular with New Yorkers. She was assigned as a reporter to interview Evelyn Nesbitt-Thaw, the wife of the love-triangle murderer Harry Thaw, who had killed the famous architect Stanford White. Nell’s very original large romantic illustrations took New York by storm. Within a few months, her talent was adopted as the theme in song and staging as The Brinkley Girl at the 1908 Ziegfeld Follies, played by later silent film star Mae Murray. The young Helen Hayes played a Brinkley Girl in the 1909 play Jack the Giant Killer. Nell became a reviewer of Broadway shows, night club acts and silent movies, sketching in the dark such stars as Mae West, Ethel Barrymore and even Nell’s future father-in-law!

Nell's prolific work appeared for over 30 years. Her talent was shown in other Hearst publications such as the American Weekly, the Daily Mirror, many big town syndicated newspapers throughout the USA, Paris and the UK. She contributed to King Features Syndicate and also to magazines such as Harpers, Cosmopolitan, Puck and Good Housekeeping. She illustrated many books, and she wrote and illustrated a charming book for children’s piano lessons. Nell’s writings, which we call Love Letters, go together with her pen-and-ink drawings like “peas and carrots.”

She could draw the wind, the sea and the sky in come-alive action! Charles Dana Gibson's more formal “society” Gibson Girls were replaced by Nell’s pretty “everyday” Brinkley Girls with their free flowing dresses and curly hair depicting lively feminine beauty. Nell Brinkley’s work as an illustrator influenced many later women artists. Her daring depictions of sweet love and romance may have even inspired Antonio Vargas’ romantic cheese-cakey Vargas Girls of Esquire Magazine fame. She inspired Dale Messick’s Brenda Starr, Reporter comic strip series.

Nell Brinkley made a major patriotic contribution, including showing working women’s patriotic employment during World War I with some highlights on the opposition to their desire to help during and just after World War I. A series, done during World War I, was in color; it was entitled Golden Eyes and was used to sell Liberty Bonds. Throughout her many creative years, Nell drew women of different races and cultures with beauty, grace and dignity.

NELL BRINKLEY entertained all of AMERICA, reached readers in England and even in a Paris prison in the early parts of the 20^th Century. When this is published as a hardcopy book, you can spread her fame by donating copies of this trilogy - 1917, 1918, and 1919 to your county libraries!

America's Prolific Romantic Writer
from the Ragtime and Jazz Ages

America's Prolific Romantic Writer
from the Ragtime and Jazz Ages

America's Prolific Romantic Writer from the Ragtime and Jazz Ages

America's Prolific Romantic Writer from the Ragtime and Jazz Ages

America's Prolific Romantic Writer
from the Ragtime and Jazz Ages

America's Prolific Romantic Writer
from the Ragtime and Jazz Ages