Oral history interview with Burton Freund, 1965 Apr. 20

Transcript

Preface

The following oral history transcript is the result of a recorded interview with Burton Freund on April 20, 1965. The interview took place in Los Angeles, California, and was conducted by Betty Lochrie Hoag for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Rosalyn “Betty” Freund also participated in the interview. This interview is part of the Archives of American Art's New Deal and the Arts project.

Poor audio throughout some of the interview led to some words being inaudible; however, the original transcript was used to clarify some names and words. These names and words are given an –Ed. attribution. The original transcript was edited. In 2022 the Archives created a more verbatim transcript. Additional information from the original transcript that seemed relevant was also added in brackets and given an –Ed. attribution. This transcript has been lightly edited for readability by the Archives of American Art. The reader should bear in mind that they are reading a transcript of spoken, rather than written, prose.

Interview

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  This is Betty Lochrie Hoag testing the tape.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BURTON FREUND:  And no matter how hot it gets outside seems to be [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You got a little breeze coming in from the ocean. This is Betty Lochrie Hoag on April 20, 1965, interviewing Burton Freund in his home in Los Angeles. His name is spelled B-U-R-T-O-N F-R-E-U-N-D. And do you use a middle initial?

BURTON FREUND:  No, I don't.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And Mr. Freund was on the Illinois Project and also on the city of Chicago Project.

BURTON FREUND:  Federal Art Project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Federal Art Project, as a sculptor and a painter, and also a puppet maker, which was part of both of these, I imagine.

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And has done some very fascinating work, still is doing beautiful work. Before we talk about it, I'd like to ask you something about your life. I wish you would tell us when you were born and where.

BURTON FREUND:  I was born in 1915 in Chicago.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did—were you educated—went to school in Chicago?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes. I went to Lindblom High School, A O Sexton Grammar School.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'm sorry. I didn't get the name. Emblem?

BURTON FREUND:  Lindblom. It's on the west side of Chicago.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Lindblom.

BURTON FREUND:  West—Southwest actually. And took art courses there.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  Started in the Art Institute when I was about nine years of age in Saturday classes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Taking painting or sculpture?  Or both?

BURTON FREUND:  Sculpture and—well, just about everything. By the time I was through high school they didn't know where to place me in their regular courses. And I took about six months of the general course at the end of that time, which I was working as a janitor in the place, as part scholarship student.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  And became ill doing the kind of work that we were asked to do, which was mostly sanding down furniture and janitoring and stuff, and had to drop out of it. I had taken a number of scholarships as a child working—you know, in the Saturday classes and did a considerable amount of research in the old Field Museum, which had a fabulous collection. All kinds of stuff from all over the world, enough to fill about five museums if it'd been properly displayed.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Enough to educate many people for a long time, I imagine.

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mr. Freund, you apparently always were interested in sculpture because you have an old newspaper clipping which is very fascinating with a picture of you at the age of 13—

BURTON FREUND:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —doing some work. What was it that made the paper at that time?

BURTON FREUND:  I believe it was a plaque for the Lying-In Hospital. The newspaper writes it up as honoring motherhood, or something to the effect.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Had this been a competition or how did you happen to do it?  Do you remember?

BURTON FREUND:  I don't remember exactly how I came to do it. I think it was just kind of a whim on my father's part to take their small emblem and blow it up to a larger size or something like that. They used it for publicity for raising funds, I believe it was, for the hospital at that time.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And Mrs. Freund was telling me that you still have the tool that you were working on at that time. [Laughs.]

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. It just broke the other day. [They laugh.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That's amazing. Apparently your parents were interested in your work then.

BURTON FREUND:  Yes. My father was a butcher who as a young man had done steel engraving and watch engraving, and always had a flare for the arts, and would have probably—if left to his own ways of working his life out I guess he probably would have been an artist, undoubtedly he would have been a painter.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, he must be very thrilled that you went on and have been a successful artist.

BURTON FREUND:  He was.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  He has long since—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  —passed away.

[Recorder stops, restarts.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, after you dropped out of school because of health, did you just go on working on your own?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. I wanted to do wood carving. And they told me in the Institute at that time that you had to go through a four-year course of general training first before you could start doing actual sculpture.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  My goodness.

BURTON FREUND:  And I thought that was kind of a long way to go.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Especially since you'd been working since you were thirteen.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. So, I got a hold of a man who was working in the Art Institute at the time, a guy by the name of Sylvester [ph], I believe his name was. He was in charge of teaching casting and proper use of tools and maintenance of various types of tools in the sculpture upper class. That's the more advanced class than the Art Institute.

[00:05:18]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  And he made me out a chart of all the various wood carving chisels to get. And I went down to a hardware store [inaudible] place called Stubbens [ph], I believe, or Stebbins, and picked up all the chisels I could get there. And he put handles on them for me. And I went out and started hunting up wood and started wood carving. And I've been more or less self-taught from that point on, just learning by the mistakes that you make. I've made plenty of them.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  What's interesting was that he never knew that you could buy wood, so he used to take off parts of the furniture in order to find—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, really [laughs]?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —a piece of—like a chair would be missing or a rung from a chair [inaudible] so they—we have quite a few of the little carvings that were made—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. There's a couple up there [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —from the—[Cross talk.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  These little ones on the shelf?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. They were whittled with a knife and a—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Charming.

BURTON FREUND:  —rasp and things [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  For heaven's sakes. You must have been a hazard around the house. [They laugh].

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, I used to walk down the street carving and stuff. I got scars on my hands from where I'd step off a curb and stab myself.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Why, Mr. Freund. [They laugh.]

BURTON FREUND:  My mother always used to complain when I was a small boy about my clothing because I'd carry this oil-based clay in my pockets all the time. And it used to go clear through the pants, through the long winter underwear, [Betty Hoag McGlynn and Rosalyn "Betty" Freund laugh] and you know.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Be almost impossible to get out of the laundry.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Course there were always the bread babies that he used to make which were very—

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The what?  What are bread babies?

BURTON FREUND:  You take bread, you know, and—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  White bread.

BURTON FREUND:  —white bread, and you take the center out of it, which is very soft.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  And you modeled it into little figures. [They laugh.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And then you eat them.

BURTON FREUND:  Then you eat them.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, have you ever done butter modeling like the Tibetans?

BURTON FREUND:  No. That I never did.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That would be fun sometime if butter came down [laughs].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yeah [laughs].

BURTON FREUND:  Done some soap carvings like—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Have you?

BURTON FREUND:  —the plaster. I used to cast blocks of plaster in old cheese boxes you'd get, and then carve it directly into the plaster.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you ever enter the Ivory soap contest?

BURTON FREUND:  I don't think so.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mother did one time and won a prize on that. She was very proud of it. It was amazing, some of the good things that came out of that. Very nice pieces of sculpture.

BURTON FREUND:  I found that plaster gave a little bit more resistance than soap and was easier to carve.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Matter of fact you have that piece that you made in plaster when you were 16.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah, but that wasn't carved directly in plaster. That was modeled and cast. That was part of a one-man show that I had when I was about that age, in the Art Institute of Chicago.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  In the [inaudible]—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, you were probably still very young when the Project started there then.

BURTON FREUND:  I was about—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You were both in 1915.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. I was about—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  20?

BURTON FREUND:  19 or 20, yeah, about that.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Uh-huh [affirmative]. Well, you hadn't been doing any other work then. You were still a student at that time actually?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  So then instead of starting asking you questions about it I'd like to jump up ahead until after the Project was over, which was roughly the time of the war.

BURTON FREUND:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Were you in one of the war industries?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes. I went into a foundry and started doing pattern work—wood pattern work in the foundries there in Chicago.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And that will hark directly back to some of the work you did on the Project, I know, so.  

BURTON FREUND:  Well, um, not—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The pattern design.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, the pattern design and working with wood, yes. But it—the whole approach is so much different—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, is it?

BURTON FREUND:  —[inaudible] to tolerances of a sixty-fourth of an inch. And it's very—you know, very fine sort of thing, and then they put it in a sand mold and wrap it, which means wiggling the pattern in order to give it a little—so they can pull the wood out of the sand pattern.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  And this usually threw it off all the way up to a quarter of an inch sometimes. It was wild.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Good heavens.

BURTON FREUND:  Then they would machine these things after they were cast.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see.

BURTON FREUND:  Were these done for airplanes or—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Some of them were gun carriages that we did in a grey iron and steel foundry. And later on, I worked in another foundry where they were doing lathe beds. And then a third foundry where they were doing bomber noses and things of that kind.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  There was a magnesium—

BURTON FREUND:  Magnesium.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —castings.

BURTON FREUND:  Which was a real hazardous place to work in.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  It explodes or something?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. It's what they make this firebombs out of is the—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  —magnesium bombs.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Good heavens.

BURTON FREUND:  And all you need is friction and the thing bursts into flame. So that when they would grind a casting a man would stand with a very heavy asbestos suit on covered with a raincoat, huge mask, and huge gloves on. And the grinding took place under water. They had the wheel going and the water pouring on it. And they would grind.

[00:10:13]

But in casting, if they broke the flux of the metal too suddenly in the cauldron the thing would explode. And then they'd just call the fire department in. And then they'd start putting out fires and rushing people down to the infirmary which they had right on the grounds of the place. 

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  My heavens. That was a very frightening period for you then.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, they had a lot of turnover in there. [They laugh.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, it's a good thing you turned out, [laughs] instead of over. Did you stay in Chicago after that?

BURTON FREUND:  Well, at about that time I got an offer from a Lou Bunnan [ph] who had done puppet work—I had worked with his brother, and he was familiar with my work.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I didn't get his name.

BURTON FREUND:  Lou Bunnan [ph].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Bunnan [ph]?

BURTON FREUND:  Louis Bunnan [ph].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Thank you.

BURTON FREUND:  And I came out to LA to work on an insert in one of the Ziegfield Follies pictures.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And what is an insert?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  The Great Ziegfield, I think it was called.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. 

BURTON FREUND:  And an insert is probably the opening section introduction to a whole bunch of—well, in this case it was like vaudeville acts.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  In it where Jimmy Durante, and Fred Astaire had a couple numbers in it, Lena Horne—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Fanny Brice.

BURTON FREUND:  Fanny Brice.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Billie Burke, I think [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  I believe Billie Burke was also in it too. They tried to—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Lucille Ball.

BURTON FREUND:  Lucille—yeah, Lucille Ball had a couple numbers in it. They tried to get W. C. Fields to let us make a caricature—small caricature of him also, which we were doing at the time. And he wanted to know what puppets were. And when we—they said, Well, you know, a puppet is a small figure, he said, Well, send me the puppet suit and I'll do it myself. [Rosalyn "Betty" Freund and Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.]

[Audio break.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Were these little puppets photographed?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. They were shot stop motion like animation is.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see.

BURTON FREUND:  And then they would be inserted into the live—with the live filming of the actual [inaudible] people.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And were you here very long with that?

BURTON FREUND:  I worked on that for about a year. And then from there I went over to work for Moray [ph] and Sutherland [ph], who were also doing three-dimensional puppet work at the time.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Puppetoons [ph]—Pal's Puppetoons [ph]?

BURTON FREUND:  No. I didn't work with Pal [ph].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Oh. What were they called?

BURTON FREUND:  I don't know exactly what he called them. It was just called Moray [ph] and Sutherland [ph] Studio at the time. They did three-dimensional stuff. He's still in existence doing flat [inaudible]. [Clears throat.] And, then from there I worked for a guy by the name of Wolfe—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  R. J.

BURTON FREUND:  —Ralph J. Wolfe [ph]. Raphael [ph] J. Wolfe [ph] or something like that. He was doing commercials—animated commercials. Then I worked for UPA when they first set up for a short time. And then I did some display work out here for a while, worked with displays. Did some stuff for [inaudible] company [inaudible] recorded some of their Christmas [inaudible] them. And then I went back to New York, and worked with Lou Bunnan's brother, who I had worked with before in Chicago, on a puppet show for television called Lucky Pup.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Lucky Pup?  Excuse me just one minute.

[END OF TRACK AAA_freund65_120_m.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I think we better try it, and see.

BURTON FREUND:  All right.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  This is Betty Lochrie Hoag on April 20, 1965, interviewing Burton Freund. Mr. Freund, you were just telling me about being in New York and working on Lucky Pup.

BURTON FREUND:  Yes. It was a TV program that ran for about three years, which I worked on only two. It was done for CBS, anyway.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Now, were these—was this an animated cartoon or was it puppets?

BURTON FREUND:  No, these were actual puppets. They were done every day live on TV. And—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  For heaven's sake.  

BURTON FREUND:  —for about—I think it was a 15 minute to a half hour program. 15minutes. And then on Saturdays they would recapitulate the whole thing leaving out the commercials.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  And I think they had—by that time they had it on film, so they could show it, you know, cutting out the commercials and running it as a half-hour program [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, could you use the same little puppets over again—

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —change—[Cross talk.]

BURTON FREUND:  Just regular hand puppets.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —moving them around?

BURTON FREUND:  Regular hand puppets. And I built props and puppets on that, did all the signs, misspelling everything of course. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.] After that particular job I worked for another marionette concern [ph]—I forget what their name is now.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Suzari.

BURTON FREUND:  Suzari. That's right.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You don't remember how to spell it, do you?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  S-U-Z-A-R-R-I.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Thank you.

BURTON FREUND:  For them I built a Christmas show for—oh, what's this gal who signs—used to sing "When the Moon Comes Over the Mountain"?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:   Kate Smith.

BURTON FREUND:  Kate Smith.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  Her Christmas show. All the figures and stuff for them. Also did some—a whole pile of stuff for shows that would go down South. During the winter she would send [inaudible] troupe down South to tour the South with a truck and do shows. And I remember building one set of puppets for her. I think it had about eight puppets and they were all controlled off of one set of controls [doing the square dance –Ed.].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, for goodness sakes.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, when she and I worked it, it worked fine. But when we'd give it to the troupe they'd tangle the whole thing up. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.]  It weighed a ton. These things were about this big.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, they were?

BURTON FREUND:  Almost about two—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Two or three feet?

BURTON FREUND:  two and a half feet tall.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Goodness.

BURTON FREUND:  So they could be seen by a large audience. And yeah, it really developed muscles swinging those things around from the top of a bridge and these things. They worked differently than puppets.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you work out the electronic controls?  Was this part of your designing too?

BURTON FREUND:  No. There's no electronics in it at all. It was—it was—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:   [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  —all string, hand-controlled from the top.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, hand-controlled.

BURTON FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I thought you said it was mechanical, so I thought you meant it had a—

BURTON FREUND:  Well, the mechanics had to be worked out so it would actually—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see.

BURTON FREUND:  —do all the things that you would do normally in a square dance. I don't think anybody else was successful with that thing but us. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.]  After that I started working again in the animation field and worked in most of the commercial studios in New York. Including working with John Hubley, and—let's see. Let's see, who were some of the others, worked for [Trans-Film, for Cinefex, —Ed.] for Pelican. [Inaudible] let's see—geez, I forgot all of them that I worked for. There were so many of them. There were about 20 or 30 studies at the time there.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Culhane. –Ed.]

BURTON FREUND:  [Yeah, Shamus Culhane is one. –Ed.] [Inaudible.] Famous [ph]—did                             some storyboard work for them.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Famous—the same as [ph] Famous Lasky [ph] [inaudible]?

BURTON FREUND:  I don't know. They did the Popeye series and they did Betty Boop and all that junk. And then I worked for CBS. I did some stuff for CBS [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  You also did a piece of sculpture for one of these programs—

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, working on—I worked for CBS doing titles [in which Alfred Scutro used a title for a play of his, called "Man with Two Gods" –Ed.] And they had a figure on a rotating table and they'd run their titles over in front of it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  Superimposing. And worked out there for about 12 years, and then came back here to work in cartoon studios [inaudible].

[00:05:02]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And you've been here ever since—

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —haven't you?

BURTON FREUND:  The last four years.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You're a freelance artist here then after working—

BURTON FREUND:  No. I've been working for Ed Graham for the past year. He's recently out here from New York and he has a TV program on now on CBS Channel Two at 11 o'clock Saturdays called Linus the Lionhearted. 

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Who the lionhearted?

BURTON FREUND:  Linus.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Linus.

BURTON FREUND:  L-I-N-U-S, I believe it is.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Linus, L-I-N-I-U-S or U-I-S?

BURTON FREUND:  I don't know, something like that.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And this involving puppets again?

BURTON FREUND:  No. This is straight animation.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Straight animation.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'll have to watch it on Saturday morning [laughs].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Very cute show.

BURTON FREUND:  They have some very sophisticated stuff. Carl Reiner is one of the voices that they have. And Jonathan Winters is another. And the stories are a little sophisticated for kids, but they're fun.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Teenagers love them.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Certainly an interesting life. It sounds like you've animated the whole screen for [laughs] [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  This is only part of it. Because this is just the—

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, this—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —this is just to make a living. But then of course there's all these—

BURTON FREUND:  Somebody has to support the sculpture end, you see, so we—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And the sculpture end has been going on—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Oh, yes.

BURTON FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —[inaudible] saw these lovely things in the living room that you've been doing.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, some of those that you have seen have been—some of them were done in Chicago, some were done out here, and some were started here and completed in—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  New York.

BURTON FREUND:  —New York.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  And—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Some you started in New York and completed in California [laughs].

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. Back and forth [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Do you have them handled by a gallery here particularly or—

BURTON FREUND:  I am connected with the Los Angeles Art Association.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Cowie Gallery.

BURTON FREUND:  Cowie Gallery had some of my things for several years there.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  C-O-W-I-E, isn't it?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  Right.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Are they the Biltmore or the—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No, the Westmoreland.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Westmoreland.

BURTON FREUND:  And I've been exhibiting up and down the coast, San Diego and the Orange Show, and around Los Angeles.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, I would like to spend more time asking you more about it, but we have so much to talk about on the Project we probably should get to it. Excuse me.

[Audio break.]

BURTON FREUND:  We watched them shoot a sequence once over at MGM lot, remember that? They stopped the film—stopped the shooting about six times. Every time they'd get all set up and ready to go, an airplane would go over and they'd [inaudible]. And it seemed like these pilots would take them over MGM studio—take people over it, you know, so the—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, sight-seeing tours?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah, sort of a tourist-type thing as you're flying over the [inaudible] now there's the MGM studio down there and [inaudible]. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.] And this would come in every time a flight would—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  $500,000 gone down the drain for the studio probably. Oh, you remember where you were when you first heard about the Project?

BURTON FREUND:  Well, the only way you can get on a Project in Chicago at that time was to be on relief first and then apply for—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  —your—for one of the projects that you could get into. The first project that I got on was a puppet project in Lincoln Park.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Now, this was not for the state?

BURTON FREUND:  This was part of the City Project setup—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  City.

BURTON FREUND:  —I believe at that time. I was on that project for about—close to about a year I think before I got onto the Federal Art Project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  And we were doing puppet shows for—in the city parks and building puppets at that time. And once I got on the Federal Art Project, I was designing for the wood carving section, we did various things. I think one of the first jobs I had there was designing panels of—for some of the junior high schools and high schools around Chicago.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Now, are these the interesting ones that you simplified using the plywood on [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  Well, they came a little bit later. The first ones I think I worked on were these zoo markers, which were directional signs carved in wood, usually depicting either animals or people to illustrate what sections of this huge zoo, which was for Brookfield Zoo out there, where you could find, for instance, a parking lot or a picnic grounds or the washrooms and so on all through the place, and the various animals in the cages and stuff.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  These were freestanding sculptures on about—you said a four-foot high—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. They were about four inches thick.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —two by four or something?

[00:10:06]

BURTON FREUND:  About four foot high, and about three—two to three feet wide. And then they were mounted on four by four posts. First they were created so as to protect them against local weather and insects and so on. And they were placed all over the zoo to give directions to people that would come out.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The photograph you showed me is charming of that one, [inaudible] great addition to—

BURTON FREUND:  Well, I guess it helped some.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mr. Freund, was this for the Chicago Project or the Federal Art Project?

BURTON FREUND:  That was part of the Federal Arts Project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And about how many people were working on those?  Or was it a one-man job?

BURTON FREUND:  Well, I did a good deal of the designing on that stuff. I guess there must have been about—close to about 15—10 to 15 people I'd say easily working doing carving and stuff there. Let's see. There's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, [inaudible] 10. And I think there may have been a couple of others, I'm not sure, that aren't in this photograph.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The photograph we're mentioning is one that's going to be microfilmed. And Mr. Freund is going to point out the different people he'll tell us about. Now, was this the project that Burr Tillstrom—

BURTON FREUND:  No. He was on the—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —was in charge of?

BURTON FREUND:  —puppet project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What?

BURTON FREUND:  Burr Tillstrom was on the puppet project, the one that was—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, I see.

BURTON FREUND:  —doing puppets for the city at that time. He was not in charge of it. He was just one of the people who worked on it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Was Misch Kohn?

BURTON FREUND:  Misch Kohn was one of the graphic artists on the Federal Art Project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I better not start reading these names. I'll just let you tell me about them instead. Because I have them all mixed up. This photograph, however, is not making of making these, is it?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, it is?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Good.

BURTON FREUND:  As a matter of fact, I think the one that you see here—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  —may have been either one of these or it might be one of these on the back wall. I'm not sure. But there are a number of them. They were drawn up to this size so they could be traced off directly on the wood. And then they would use an electronic drill to cut through these various holes that you see in them, and then start carving from there.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And you did the designs initially?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  They're the ones they worked from?

BURTON FREUND:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And what—how did you mention plaster?  Didn't you say something about the use of plaster?

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, no. This was—the plaster ones were for these other panels that you see here—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  —of these children. And these were modeled in clay and cast in plaster. And then the wood-carvers were given the plaster casts to work from on these.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And what were these done for?

BURTON FREUND:  These were done for a junior high school, I believe, an auditorium decoration on either side of the stage.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What wood did they carve them from?

BURTON FREUND:  These were carved in pine.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Were they colored afterwards or varnished or—

BURTON FREUND:  No. I believe all they did was shellac them. Probably darkened them a little bit so the modeling could be a little bit easier to see.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And this was one pair, for one school?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And you did no more of this type?

BURTON FREUND:  That's right.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  These panels ran about four feet by about close to five to six feet high and were about four inches thick. And we'd fake these depths in here by cutting on an angle so as to give you more of—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  More shadowing [inaudible]?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. To give you a feeling of thicker wood actually.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Isn't that interesting. And a hammered effect on some of the wood.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, that is the marks the carving tool would leave by matching your cut. It looks like a hammered effect actually, but—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  —almost—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  It isn't hammered at all?

BURTON FREUND:  No. It's all very closely cut.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You were talking about one of the young carvers, I believe, on this project who did so much work because so many of the older men at this time who were professional wood-carvers were going blind.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. There was a wood-carvers union of which the youngest man was 45 years of age. And their books were closed. They weren't taking any more guys into the union.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Why not?

BURTON FREUND:  They felt that they just couldn't find enough work evidently for them. There was no point in training more people into this type of work. The older men were slowly going blind and coming on such an age that they just couldn't carve anymore.

[00:15:12]

I believe there's one place left in the country, the last time I heard of it, which was out in Jersey where they still did hand-carved panels mostly for churches and things of this [inaudible]. It was in Jersey [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  In Jersey?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah, in Jersey.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, the project absorbed some of these men in probably—

BURTON FREUND:  Well, at the time of the projects there were still a few of these guys around. And they used to do models for furniture which would then be set up in multiple machines and carved. But there were, even at that time, very few of them left. And from them I learned how to carve right, instead of the, you know, kind of hit and miss way.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. Well, the project then was actually a wonderful training ground—

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —for you as a young man—

BURTON FREUND:  It was.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —in some fields, wasn't it?  Before we get to some more of [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. These other panels here are the ones that were worked up and developed for very low-income areas in the lower part of Illinois that just couldn't afford to lay out—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Is that farmland or something?  I don't know if [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  Well, I think it is—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Mining communities.

BURTON FREUND:  —mostly mining communities—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, really?

BURTON FREUND:  —in the lower part of—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Coal mining.

BURTON FREUND:  Coal mining and [inaudible]. And some farming too, I believe.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  There was a lot of corn raised out in the Middle West at that time.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And these were for grade schools I think—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:   [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  Grammar schools and kindergartens. And the way they were worked with, after the panels were designed, they were traced off on plywood or on white pine and cut out on a bandsaw and then mounted on pressed wood and carved, and then shellacked and sent out to these places that could afford about three dollars for a panel or something like that.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Is that all [they had to pay –Ed]?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. And these panels were about four—three by four feet.  

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Three by four?  [Inaudible] that perfectly charming. They're just delightful. But how—did you cut sideways to get the depth in these, too? 

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Because they certainly look like they're—in fact they look three—

BURTON FREUND:  On some of them—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —dimensional. You can't believe they're that—

BURTON FREUND:  Actually there were two sets here.  As you can see, these are—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  —straight cutouts on plywood and just put up that way.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see on one of the elephants, the drawings of the parts, was that cut in deeper?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. That was cut in through the plywood.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did it give as much—this isn't plywood [inaudible]?

BURTON FREUND:  No. That is white pine.  Yeah, no.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You couldn't cut in too far in plywood really.

BURTON FREUND:  No, not really. Because the ply being all laminated and glued together would give you different kinds of grain and stuff.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I wonder if Disney got some ideas for Dumbo from these.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. [Laughs.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Laughs.] Do you think he saw them?  Because they predate Dumbo. Don't they have that character?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. They were a little bit before that [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Were they colored then [inaudible]?

BURTON FREUND:  No. They were just used with the actual plywood themselves and mounted up on the pressed wood that way. Pressed wood being sort of a dark brown color, sort of set them off a little bit.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And how do you—how many do you suppose were made?

BURTON FREUND:  Gee, I have no way of knowing.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Dozens or hundreds or—

BURTON FREUND:  Quite a few of them were made and sent out.  

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you ever see any of them installed?

BURTON FREUND:  I never saw any of them installed, no.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You're going to have to go back to that whole area and [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  I doubt they're even there or you can even find them anymore.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  They're very beautiful. They should be. Were there any other carving things you [inaudible]?

BURTON FREUND:  There were some other panels that I did for a—for Crane Junior High School—Crane—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Crane High School.

BURTON FREUND:  —High School.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  In Chicago?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  And these panels were carved in wood from the old Chicago Columbian Exposition. This would have been sitting around in basements of the school for quite a long time.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Forty years, wasn't it?

BURTON FREUND:  Geez, at least that.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  1895 to [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible] in 1940.

BURTON FREUND:  During that conversation with one of the artists from the Project, the principal had said that he had this wood there and they were going to make tables out of them to use. And this artist suggested, Why don't you have some panels made out of them, maybe [inaudible] of paper making or books or something.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:20:05]

BURTON FREUND:  And the principal thought it was a good idea. And I was assigned to do it.  The wood was—one was redwood, I believe. And the other one was sugar pine. Both pieces of wood had been laying around so long with the surfaces unprotected that they became quite infectious to the wood-carver that worked on them. He would—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, really?

BURTON FREUND:  —work for a short time and break into boils all up and down his arms from infections from the wood.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  How terrible. You mean from splinters from the redwood?  Would that cause it?

BURTON FREUND:  From—yeah. Well, the—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Because redwood will give you—

BURTON FREUND:  —wood was quite deteriorated as I remember [inaudible] and kind of—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Just leaning on it even [inaudible]. [Cross talk.]

BURTON FREUND:  —would break away as you carved it so that your tools had to be razor sharp.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was it buckled and warped?

BURTON FREUND:  No. The wood was four inches thick and about four feet wide and 12 feet long. And—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That must have been a very difficult thing to work with.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  You have photographs of that that you'll have to pick up.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. The photographs—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible] and give them back.

BURTON FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  How many people worked on those with you?

BURTON FREUND:  I believe just one carver—one—let's see, two carvers.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  One worked on each panel. Yeah. And McGrory I believe worked on one. And Sarner worked on the other one. He ran into a bad accident one day working on [inaudible]. The one he worked on was mounted upright on a rack, so it stood straight up. And he was working with his chisel digging the ground out this way. And [came down with the hammer –Ed.] in his hand here and the chisel sticking out of his finger up to about the first joint.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  But he survived.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

He lost the use of the one joint here on one of these fingers.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was he able to go on working in woodcarving?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. Oh, we had one elderly wood-carver there that couldn't carve anything but pine or maple, or any of the light-colored woods, from any of the dark woods like mahogany or walnut, or cherry. He would break out immediately. He was allergic to it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And he'd been this way all of his life?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Poor fellow.

BURTON FREUND:  He just suffered through those dark woods whenever he had to work with it.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  There were also some other panels [inaudible] the Iroquois—the Indian panels that—

BURTON FREUND:  No, those—that was a monument [inaudible] that was supposed to go—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  What were the other two panels, the [inaudible] panels [inaudible]—

BURTON FREUND:  That was the monument that was to be carved in granite that they never did. [They spend the money on the zoo instead. –Ed.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was that on the Project?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. It was for the Marquette and Joliet—it was supposed to have been erected in a—in a very charming place where they had swans and a—and a little kind of—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  —[inaudible] way. A lagoon was at the bottom of it. And these two panels were supposed to have been carved in granite. Quite large, about 15 feet or so.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  They were all designed and accepted and approved and everything [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  Then they switched the funds over to the zoo instead. [They laugh.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  We had photographs of that too.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. Of the scale model.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  But weren't there two other panels that were done beside the one for Crane?

BURTON FREUND:  No. That was [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  I wonder [inaudible] long, narrow panel.

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, yeah. It was an early American history thing that was done in [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And [inaudible] had Indians, did it?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. It was carved in oak, which is one of the worst woods you'd ever want to work in.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Very hard?

BURTON FREUND:  Well, it's a very unsatisfactory sort of [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  It's too light to really see [here depth of carving –Ed.] [inaudible] in color. And it's very tough stuff to carve.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was this for a school?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  American Indians?

BURTON FREUND:  It had covered wagons and [inaudible] all kinds of stuff. They were just a whole series like little vignettes carved one after the other. It was large [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.] [Cross talk.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  You also have photographs of that too.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible] you've got to call them about [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I hope we can borrow those too. I didn't get—ask you the subject of the Crane High School panel.

BURTON FREUND:  That was the history of paper, I believe. It was one of them, and the history of the book was the other.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. How'd you carry them out?

BURTON FREUND:  They were carved in bas relief and sort of almost like in a—sort of a mural technique carving.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And they were what, about three by four feet would you say or?

BURTON FREUND:  No. They were about 12 feet long—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, my goodness.

BURTON FREUND:  —and about four feet wide and four inches thick.

[00:25:07]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And you've never seen those up either.

BURTON FREUND:  No. I never saw those installed. [Rosalyn "Betty" Freund laughs.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, I think you have to get back.

BURTON FREUND:  I think the only ones I actually saw installed were the two with the kids jumping, playing leapfrog, and the other two that I showed you.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  One of those?

BURTON FREUND:  The reading of—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  —reading books.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  Education and Recreation, those were called.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well now, these were all decorative things done—commissioned by the buildings or the schools. And you also did, what would you call it, freelance sculpture—individual sculptural pieces on the Project, didn't you?  Because—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Exhibition pieces.

BURTON FREUND:  Exhibition pieces.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Is that what you call them?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Exhibition pieces. What is the one you have several pictures of here?

BURTON FREUND:  It's a window washer.  Trying to experiment on—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, for heaven's sakes. It's strapped on to his [inaudible]. Oh, this is a—it's plaster?  It was cast or—

BURTON FREUND:  Yes. It was cast in plaster.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And then was it later cast in bronze?

BURTON FREUND:  No. It never got beyond plaster stage. I don't think anybody in Chicago got anything cast in bronze or metal.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Is that because it's so expensive to have it cast?

BURTON FREUND:  It was. I believe they—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No foundry in Chicago either.

BURTON FREUND:  There was no foundries that did—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  —fine artwork there.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  But they did have them cast in the—in the stone aggregate.

BURTON FREUND:  Stone. In cement. They had also stone carving that was done there.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  They had—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And you had one very interesting one that was a medium all your own, didn't you?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  One of the [laundress –Ed.], wasn't it?

BURTON FREUND:  No. That was a—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Aggregate glass and cement.

BURTON FREUND:  That's this industrial figure here sitting on this wheel. [Inaudible] on the back of it. This is cement with the surface of it in different colors of ground glass embedded in the cement.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  How did you happen to invent a surface like that?

BURTON FREUND:  Well, it was something we—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  This is unique, isn't it?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. It was a little bit different way of—it was a way of doing a polychrome form of sculpture. And it was a little different approach to it. At that time they were playing around with a number of things like carving in firebrick.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, really?

BURTON FREUND:  And mounting them directly into the sides of buildings. They also were doing some stuff with tile in this way too. Different colors.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Didn't Saarinen's wife [Lilian Swann Saarinen] do some in Chicago in a school that way, about this time?

BURTON FREUND:  I think so.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  I know—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible] school had them.

BURTON FREUND:  —there was one chap there by the name of Winters [ph] who was doing quite a bit of this kind of thing.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was that Carl Winters [ph] [inaudible]?

BURTON FREUND:  I don't think it was Carl Winters [ph]. What is his name? It might be in one of these catalogs that we have here. Who is that one [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You said that the colors came out very brilliantly because—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —of the glass. I suppose catching the light, that would—

BURTON FREUND:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —intensify it too.

BURTON FREUND:  Just a little on the garish side, I'd say.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Laughs.] That's what I thought you said. I didn't know if you wanted to repeat it. This is one of the anti-Hitler things. A very, very strong piece.

BURTON FREUND:  That thing was about six feet tall.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Seems impossible. It looks like it must be at least 20. Is it because of these small figures below that gives you the—

BURTON FREUND:  Well, it's partly that and it's partly the way it was photographed, being shot from below, looking up at it, which would give you the feeling of height also.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mrs. Freund, did you photograph these or—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —a professional photographer?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  I didn't start photography until a good many years after that.

BURTON FREUND:  There was one little guy there that used to help with the—with the casting and stuff. He was a Belgian fellow. He used to smoke his cigarettes but never dropped them on the floor. They'd get kind of soggy and he'd just flip them up on the ceiling, all lined up. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.] And periodically a guy would go through with a broom and sweep the ceiling off.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, how horrible [laughs]. [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  He thought it was a great joke.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Well, not as funny as the—as the Limburger cheese one though.

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, yeah.  

[00:30:02]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What was that?

BURTON FREUND:  When I first got into the—onto this Project working in the wood section in woodcarving, Al Sterner, who was a great practical joker, pulled the same gag on everybody who started in there new. They had break times in which you'd go out for milk or a sandwich of something. And at this point he would wait until you were out of the room, go over to your bench, take from his own sandwiches which were usually Limburger cheese or head cheese or some kind, and take just a wee bit of Limburger and rub it all along the edge of your desk, and a little bit on each handle of each tool.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, how awful. [Laughs.]

BURTON FREUND:  So, you'd come back after you'd eaten, and you'd start working and you'd smell something that didn't smell quite right. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.]  And then you'd smell your hands and you'd run out and wash your hands and come back and start. And you were all day running back and forth. And then around about just before quitting time you'd suddenly notice that your apron also had a peculiar odor to it.  

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  That was the initiation. Once that happened you were in on it and everyone else was initiated. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That's one good way [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Who are you looking for?

BURTON FREUND:  Winters, was who we were looking for. [Looking through catalogue. –Ed.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was he painting or sculpture?

BURTON FREUND:  He was in ceramics. And I think he also did some painting too. But I think you'll find him mostly under ceramic.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [This laundress –Ed.] is another plaster—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah, that was cast in plaster. Never got beyond that stage. And [the little tailor –Ed.] was also cast in plaster although the modeling of it was designed for stone.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was your Red Cap sculpture [Phi Beta Red Kappa] in the other room done on the Project?

BURTON FREUND:  No, it wasn't. This was done during that same time though. I also worked on things at home as well as—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I think because its story is so apropos of the period it would be nice to tell them anyway on the tape about the title for it.

BURTON FREUND:  The title for this piece, which was carved in ebony and has a Phi Beta Kappa key on its vest, is called Phi Beta Red Kappa, which was submitted to the Art Institute for show for two years in succession and just didn't get anywhere. And one day when Gropper [ph] came into town, I had him over to the house and showed him the piece and told him about not being able to exhibit this piece. He suggested just dropping the title and entering it as Porter, which I did, and it was exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago at the Mississippi Valley artist show immediately following that, and then several local exhibits around town at that time.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And it was accepted with no reservations then.

BURTON FREUND:  That's right.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Quite a story. I wanted to add this one thing about this Al Sterner who's the Limburger joker [laughs], you said before we were on the tape that he was the youngest carver of the wood-carvers, that he was Danish? Is that right?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes. He was of Danish origin.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And that he was about 45 at the time?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  He was the youngest man on the [inaudible]. The others—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Quite a gifted carver too.

BURTON FREUND:  He was a very, very clever guy. And he did a lot of furniture carving before that, as well as industrial carving.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And I don't understand whether you didn't stay on the sculpture project or whether you were on it simultaneously with the painting. Because I know you were an easel artist on the Project too, weren't you?

BURTON FREUND:  No. I didn't do any easel painting.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, I thought you did.

BURTON FREUND:  No, I did wood engraving while on the project, but I never did any actual painting. I was always—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You did lithographs, didn't you?

BURTON FREUND:  No. No, I did some etching, but no lithographs. Just wood engraving mostly. Which one of them—one of my wood engravings is—was accepted and is hung in the Illinois—what is that, the—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  University of Illinois.

BURTON FREUND:  University of Illinois Teachers College.  

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  In the Teachers College there?

BURTON FREUND:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What was it of?  Do you remember?

BURTON FREUND:  It was of an old man with a pipe, slightly on the humorous side. And it stood—it was about—oh, about a foot wide and about almost two feet high.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  We don't have a print of that, do we?

BURTON FREUND:  We don't have a print of that. It was spoon printed. And I think there were only about three or four—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Spoon printing. Do you know what spoon printing means?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  No. I wondered.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, you—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  You get on the dining room table—[they laugh]

BURTON FREUND:  First you carve your block.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  And then you mix up your ink on a sheet of glass, and take a roller and put your ink onto the block.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

[00:35:03]

BURTON FREUND:  Then you take your rice paper or Japanese paper or some sort of thing. You lay it on the block itself, directly onto the ink, and then take a spoon—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Back of a spoon.

BURTON FREUND:  —and rub it from the back side.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, my.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And your wife stands there with one spoon rubbing and you stand there [inaudible]—[Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.] and you work for hours until your back breaks and your hand falls off, to get a good print, without flooding it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Do you keep a block like that? 

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Have you kept your blocks so you could—

BURTON FREUND:  I think there's still some of them out in the garage there over at—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Didn't my father use them for lamp bases?

BURTON FREUND:  Something like that. Could be. We have some prints [inaudible] on the shelf.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  We have prints, yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And the etchings were done on metal plates [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. Etching is usually—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Copper?  Zinc?

BURTON FREUND:  Copper. And then what you do is coat it with wax. And you scratch into your wax and use—then put the whole thing into an acid bath which cuts into the grooves cut in the wax and this eats into the metal.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And did the Project have the equipment for this?  Or were these things you did at home?

BURTON FREUND:  The etchings were done at Hull House, I believe. It was set up over there for handling etching and lithograph work, which we had the use of.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And then you also did some—

BURTON FREUND:  The wood engraving I did at home, yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  On the table. [Laughs.]

MS. FREUND:  On the dining room table, yeah. John Winters did both—

BURTON FREUND:  John.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —watercolors—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —and ceramic—glazed ceramic tiles—

BURTON FREUND:  That's right.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —for fireplaces.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  All right. Thank you for looking that up. Were there very many people on the etching project working there?

BURTON FREUND:  I believe there were. I don't know how many there were exactly, but there were quite a few of them that started doing it for the—did lithographs and etching. And a few of us, very few of us, were doing wood engraving.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And Misch Kohn was on the wood engraving project.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. He did wood engraving, and he also did etchings and lithographs. And—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And he's the man who has things at the LA County now, you mentioned.

BURTON FREUND:  That's right.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  As well as many, many other places.

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, he's got them all over the country, I think [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see. You mentioned some other people, one of which sounded very colorful, and I wish you'd tell the tape what you told me about Julio—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Julio.

BURTON FREUND:  Julio de Diego.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —de Diego.

BURTON FREUND:  Who, I believe, was of Spanish origin. And he did some very beautiful painting on the Project. He eventually married Gypsy Rose Lee and used to hang around the Modern Museum of Art, in their patio there for days on end, I guess, all dressed up in costume and an earring in his ear and—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  A beret.

BURTON FREUND:  No, he didn't wear a beret.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No beret?

BURTON FREUND:  He wore a—one of these scarfs tied around [inaudible]. He was a real crazy guy.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Sounds a little like the old man down at Laguna Beach who comes out to greet everyone, [inaudible] made the same impression at the new museum there.

BURTON FREUND:  Siporin and Millman were both easel and mural painters. And they did some—they did—they got a couple of the largest commissions I think that were ever done.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Those were probably Treasury Department.

BURTON FREUND:  Treasury Department commissions, working on post office jobs mostly.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Millman is dead now, isn't he?

BURTON FREUND:  I don't think so. I think he's still alive.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did they do the St. Louis—

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  They did the St. Louis [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That's the one that all the artists entered in. [Laughs.]

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Practically everybody. I think over a thousand artists entered that competition and then the runners up were given post office [inaudible]. Almost anyone who did one tells you about that competition [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Wasn't that the competition where Millman and Siporin both entered, and they thought it was—

BURTON FREUND:  Gropper [ph] was on the jury.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  He couldn't tell one from the other.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  One from the other.

BURTON FREUND:  Their work was so much alike.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  They worked together on it. They [inaudible] they won a joint commission on that.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You mean their entry was done together?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No. Their issues entries done separately, but their style was so close—

BURTON FREUND:  So similar that the guys on the jury—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —the judge—

BURTON FREUND:  —thought it was one man's work, so they both got work.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  I think that—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And that was the one, wasn't it?

BURTON FREUND:  That was the one, yeah. And before—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  So, then they did do it together.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That was interesting.

BURTON FREUND:  And before they went down to do this thing, they spent—they took off about a year to two years and they did nothing but a whole bunch of small paintings. And they took crates of them with them. So, the people would come in seeing them working on this thing and then they would sell them their paintings.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Why, the rascals. [They laugh.]

[00:40:03]

BURTON FREUND:  A couple of businessmen on the side.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Have to make a living somehow.

BURTON FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  They made a living from their art, which is more than I have ever done.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you know either one of them on the Project?

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you?

BURTON FREUND:  I used to deliver laundry with Mitchell Siporin, for his father.  I drove the truck and he would go run up and down the stairs with the laundry bags. He was scared to death of dogs. And we'd go pick up these bags of laundry at about five or six in the morning, and I would sit in the truck and imitate dogs howling. And all the dogs would gather from [inaudible]. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.] And he'd have to wade through maybe 10 or 15 dogs to get back into the truck.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, shame on you.

BURTON FREUND:  It used to scare the heck out of him.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Laughs] did it get him over being afraid of them?

BURTON FREUND:  No. He's still afraid of dogs, I think.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  There were some other people that you mentioned.

BURTON FREUND:  Charlie White [Charles White, Jr.], I think I told you about.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  He's the Negro artist who shows at Horowitz?

BURTON FREUND:  Right.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:   Heritage now. Wish you would tell that story.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, the—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  He didn't tell us that on the tape. He wouldn't.

BURTON FREUND:  The head of the Project at that time was a woman by the name of—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  He wouldn't have known that actually, because that was inside stuff.

BURTON FREUND:  He—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, he knew about it because he was directly involved [inaudible]. He was the first Negro we got on the Project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  He had been—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible.] [Cross talk.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —having this problem right along with his school.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  He told me that.

BURTON FREUND:  Increase Robinson was the head of the Project and came out very blatantly—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Increase was a woman. I want to put this—

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Mrs. Increase Robinson.

BURTON FREUND:  Quite a character, that gal. She was a real terror. She built that union just on her stupidity. [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs.] They had to protect themselves against [inaudible] so they banded together and formed a union.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Grew strong because of her.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah, she had a guy like Siporin working on—at one point I think he was working in the parks, working on men's—you know, signs for men's and women's rooms in the—you know, toilets and stuff of this kind, until they got into this Project [inaudible] fight for materials. And I think at one point she took a whole bunch of artists' work out and sold them for frames, or traded them off for frames in order to get frames to hang an exhibit. But this—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, how could she get by with it when she was—

BURTON FREUND:  She just did it, I guess. And wound up with the frames for a bunch of paintings that—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  For the Project. I think this was done for the Project.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah, it was done for the Project. But this was—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  But even then, you can't sell a painting.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No, she exchanged.

BURTON FREUND:  She exchanged the paintings.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  She went to a framer and said, I'll give you so many paintings for a frame, or whatever.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, but that's the same as selling them.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. It's a form of barter actually.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  Anyway, she came out very strongly saying that no Negro could possibly be an artist and be a Negro at the same time. So, the union at that time staged a picket line out in front of the place. I think the picket line lasted for about three or four days. And we finally won out and got Charlie White on the Project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you have signs specifying his name or just for Negro people or—

BURTON FREUND:  Negros generally.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Negros generally.

BURTON FREUND:  We felt that everybody should have an opportunity if they have a desire to be an artist, [inaudible]—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  And this was the opening gun actually in getting a whole bunch of other Negros that were darn good artists on the Project. Nobody knows who Increase Robinson is today, but they sure know who Charlie White is.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And you said also there was another Negro artist who became well known.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  I'm trying to find his name.

BURTON FREUND:  There were several that were—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Who came—

BURTON FREUND:  —very good.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —in at that time.

BURTON FREUND:  Very fine painters.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, they started a Federal Project center for the Negro people just, I imagine, about then. I know Mrs. Roosevelt dedicated it.

BURTON FREUND:  This was a Negro theater, I believe, that was started. But I don't think this branched out into any of the other branches of the arts.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Burt, was that Sebree, Charles Sebree?

BURTON FREUND:  Charles Sebree was one. And then there was another one besides he, that was very good. A big, tall guy.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible] remember the name.

BURTON FREUND:  Do you remember him?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  I'm trying to get a [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  There was one very good one who died quite early, I think, on the Project—

BURTON FREUND:  No.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —I read about who had—he was rather young, but he had been a teacher for many of the other men too.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  Perhaps if I do look at [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Well, these are the oil—he was an oil painter [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

[00:45:07]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  It goes on to the next page too.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You used to jury a lot of shows?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. I learned an awful lot about painting that way too.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I would think so.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Wasn't that also jurying for people who were coming into the Project?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes. Both for people that were making application to get on the Project and for actual shows that were sent out from Chicago to various places in Chicago and outside of Chicago throughout the state.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, then, so be on the Art Project they not only had to qualify by being on relief, but they did have to bring paintings in or something to show that they—

BURTON FREUND:  Definitely. They had to show that they had talent. [inaudible] find his name.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Someone told about San Francisco Project that when it first opened that it was a tremendous line blocks long including little old ladies bringing lampshades that they painted, you know. [They laugh.] That must have been a very difficult thing, to have a say in that if someone had work that you didn't think was good if you knew they wanted to be an artist or wanted to be [inaudible]—

BURTON FREUND:  Well, we'd just tell them if we didn't think they were quite ready, they should try again at a later date.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Go back and study a little more.

BURTON FREUND:  I think they had these trial jury of work about once every month or something like that.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  So, if a person, like Carling [ph] for instance, his parents were on relief, and he was trying to get on the Project using their relief status. But I think he was a little underage and it's the only thing that kept him off.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What was the age limit?  18?

BURTON FREUND:  I think—no, I think—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No, it was older.

BURTON FREUND:  —21, you had to be 21 and older.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Well, no, you could get work on the projects earlier. Because I started working on the Project when I was 19.

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, you were a girl. 18 or 19 for a girl [inaudible] 21 for a man.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Like getting married.

BURTON FREUND:  Legally [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  You were—you were younger than 21 when you were on the Project. What are you talking about?

BURTON FREUND:  So, I had to fake my age. [They laugh.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was there an older age?  I mean, could they get too old to be on the Project? 

BURTON FREUND:  No. There was no age limitation in that way.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That was a good thing because I imagine that many of the older artists probably were suffering a lot more because their style wouldn't be as [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, some of them were doing real old style [inaudible]. And at this point the Bauhaus group was just coming into Chicago. And they were getting off on the more abstract approaches to things—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  —and getting quite way out in everything.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  Mort Goldsholl, who is a top designer in the country today—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mort Goldsholl?

BURTON FREUND:  Goldsholl.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  G-O-L-D-S-H—

BURTON FREUND:  He never was connected with the Project itself, but he was connected with—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Bauhaus.

BURTON FREUND:  —the Bauhaus group.  And he was just—he was a commercial artist. He was just getting into the design end of it at that time. He's won I don't know how many national awards—international awards for his design work.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And he was an influence on the work being done?

BURTON FREUND:  Well, actually he was being influenced by Bauhaus, at that time. It was taking him out of doing straight commercial stuff into designing work. And his wife [Millie Goldsholl] became very interested in the stuff too.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  Working with different materials and [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Moholy-Nagy, or whatever his name was.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah, Moholy-Nagy also at various times was sitting with the Project people.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, really?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  For what purpose?

BURTON FREUND:  For exhibit purposes, for working out the various types of approaches on possible shows, and little projects of one nature or the other. He would give up his time, occasionally, for those.  

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That must have been a very beneficial thing because he was quite terrific, wasn't he?

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, yeah. He was.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Do you—did you have any influence from the Midwest Iowa school of painters?  Did any—you know, Wood, Benton, and who's the other one?

BURTON FREUND:  I imagine some of these people were influenced by them.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I wondered if any of them came up and worked there at all, or if they stayed [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  No.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

[00:50:00]

BURTON FREUND:  They—these things were peculiar. I think at that time there were more regional than they are now, [they're all slurred together –Ed.] but at that time you found various things like there was—there was one guy by the name of—what was his name?  Bob White [ph]?  I think he was from Iowa or something up in through there. He did some very beautiful paintings. He was also a Project person, but from that particular region.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You mean he worked in Chicago?

BURTON FREUND:  No. But we would see work of his on exhibits—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I see.

BURTON FREUND:  —and stuff occasionally where they'd have exhibits from other parts of the country.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I have felt that that was one of the most important things of the Project. I don't know whether you do, but trans-pollination of cultures were—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —a chance to see.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, one of the main things was getting materials into the hands of people so they could go ahead and actually do some work, and giving—paying them, you know, for their time to do it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Just because they couldn't afford to do anything [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  Not at that time.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  Used to get something like—what was it we used to get on those projects, about $94 a month?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  $82. $84 a month.

BURTON FREUND:  $84?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  You were rich.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, for those times I guess it was for everyone because there wasn't anything else [inaudible]. Did—you very kindly got out the names of these people who were in charge at the time and I wondered if you knew either George Thorp who was a state supervisor, or Charles Hoeckner [ph], who was the—

BURTON FREUND:  No.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —supervisor of graphic [inaudible].

BURTON FREUND:  Hoeckner.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What?

BURTON FREUND:  Charles Hoeckner.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Hoeckner.

BURTON FREUND:  It was pronounced Hoeckner.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Thank you.

BURTON FREUND:  Yes. I used to meet with George, geez, I guess it was once every so often. I was—I became one of the leaders in the union there at the time. And then part of my job was to take all the various grievances to him and discuss them and work out ways of working so these people would be able to work a little easier. For instance, they discovered that some of the artists could sit down and knock out a painting in a couple of days. Others would take as long as two or three months to do a single painting. And others would take even longer, even up to six months to a year. And you just couldn't set a norm and say you had to turn in so many paintings a year to these people because they had different ways of working. Some worked very loose and very rapidly, and other artists would work in a slower fashion or in more of a meticulous fashion or more detailed fashion. And consequently, they had these problems come up like this. Then there were always questions of media and artist materials and things of this kind.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  And working conditions. Like for instance working on the [phone rings]—on the Project itself, working out things like what do you do when you have snowstorms and stuff and you work at home and—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You get paid by the hour or—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. Well—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —kind of thing, you mean?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. You got paid by the month actually. And you put in 48 hour a week or something like this. And at the end of the month you picked up your check for the entire month.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  Eventually it was worked out where a lot of these people were working in their own homes. Where you got into larger pieces where you couldn't do them in your own home, then you'd work on projects. This is in relation to sculpture. Most all of the painting itself was done in—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  At home?

BURTON FREUND:   —at home.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  And so was all the lithographs and stuff. You could work at home and then cart your stones over to one of the various places, like Hull House—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  —where they would print—you know, work there. Sometimes they worked directly at Hull House itself. So, instead of reporting at the central spot, they would report there for the work [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. You'd mentioned Hull House, was that Helen Hull, the settlement house?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. That was down on a—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I don't know Chicago, so I'm just curious.

BURTON FREUND:  It was on the West Side of Chicago. Southwest side of Chicago.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Is that where the Project headquarters was?

BURTON FREUND:  No. The Project headquarters was on near north side of Chicago up near the lakefront, but not far from Navy Pier.

[00:55:00]

And in the wintertime, it would get kind of cold and you'd be—you'd have to get down to the Project and the streets were quite icy and the wind was blowing through that town. If somebody didn't stand in the doorway and catch you [Betty Hoag McGlynn laughs] you'd wind up out in the lake.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, that, geographically, is quite a large area to work out a center for, wasn't it?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Like Los Angeles. It was—

BURTON FREUND:  It was really—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  It was quite spread out. [I had people from all over town working –Ed.] and bring you—were working directly on the Project. In the case of where we had wood carving and stuff where you'd have a joint effort, in many, cases where one person was design, another would execute the carvings, couldn't be done any other way but that.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BURTON FREUND:  And it was fun [inaudible]. Looking back on it, it was fun. I guess at the time it was kind of rugged.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did you know Charles Hoeckner—is that the supervisor of the graphic art division?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Am I saying it right this time?  Hoeckner?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes, Hoeckner. He was of German extraction, did beautiful work, a very detailed [inaudible] old school and was quite good. The head of the woodcarving section was Peterpaul Ott.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  And the head of the sculpture section, which got into stone carving and plaster and so on, was Edward Chassaing.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Let's see. That's the man with a French name—

BURTON FREUND:  Right.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —we found a little while ago. That's C-H-A-S-S-A-I-N-G. Can you tell me anything about them that's interesting or—

BURTON FREUND:  Well—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Seems to me you did a while ago and I can't find my notes here. Yes, [inaudible] worked with you on the Kate Smith.

BURTON FREUND:  Oh, that's—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  No, no, that was in relation to the Suzari marionettes which—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, [laughs] the name looks the same. I'm sorry.

BURTON FREUND:  Chassaing was a fine sculptor. Not too well-liked by the other sculptors on the Project, but in charge. And I guess in those particular days anybody in authority was always more or less—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Considered [inaudible] [laughs].

BURTON FREUND:  Because they were used to quite a bit of that. I know when there were a number of very unpleasant things that occurred when people would go in for relief, which they would run into social workers in those days who hadn't had too much contact with people until then, evidentially, and made it very unpleasant for everybody. And some of them were beaten.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Some of them were what?

BURTON FREUND:  Beaten up, in the course of—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, actually beaten up?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. [Inaudible] in the course of interviews for relief and stuff.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Oh, gee.

BURTON FREUND:  They actually got—who was it—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You mean the people interviewing them were beaten up?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Because they wouldn't put them on?

BURTON FREUND:  Well, partly that.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Both ways.

BURTON FREUND:  And—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, really?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. They—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  They used to have a big—

BURTON FREUND:  It would get pretty vicious at times.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And then they also had big demonstrates, groups of people in front of the welfare offices trying to get relief, trying to get help.

BURTON FREUND:  Demanding.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And then the cops would come out and try and break it up.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  Then later on, what's his name, got a black eye, remember?  Osgood [ph]?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Rae [ph].

BURTON FREUND:  Rae Osgood [ph].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Who was he?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No, she.

BURTON FREUND:  She.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  She was a social worker.

BURTON FREUND:  In interviewing some of these people would get—she had a very off-hand sort of manner of addressing people and talking to them in a very snobbish sort of way and wound up one day with a black eye. Somebody had hauled off and socked her.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  She was a very sincere social worker. She really—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —tried. It was just one of these things apparently. They were hungry.

BURTON FREUND:  They were hungry. There were starving.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  They were desperate.

BURTON FREUND:  If they had asked them a normal ordinary question, they figured it was so obvious you were an idiot to ask it and smack. That was it. [They laugh.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Terrible times.

[01:00:02]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Oh, yes. Our children nowadays just have no [inaudible], no idea.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  No.

BURTON FREUND:  [Inaudible] through the [inaudible] we would [inaudible]. [They laugh.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  You get on that and we're dead. What else can we think of in relation to Project [inaudible]?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What do you think in general of the Project, as you look back on it in relation to American art?

BURTON FREUND:  They were a pretty wonderful thing, and they should have been continued. There's no reason in the world why they should have been—I think this country has lost out so much culturally by letting them go down the drain. Along with all the collections of art that also has slipped through their fingers—the government's fingers and out to God knows where.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  You were telling me a while ago about the end of the Project, things were carted away and burned. Was that right or—

BURTON FREUND:  No. They were carted off and sold for—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  —for weight, of canvas and frame. By weight. And they were bought—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  This was not right after the project. This was a number of years later—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —when they began to clear the store houses.

BURTON FREUND:  They had—they had store houses full of this stuff.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  This was New York.  

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was this really true or have you just heard it?  Because I've been—someone brought up this question that they couldn't trace the story down with someone who actually knew of it.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  We also—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  We heard it—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  We heard of it in New York.

BURTON FREUND:  —in relation to New York. Somebody had told us that this is what happened to a great—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm.

BURTON FREUND:  —amount of it. Now, when they—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  I can't—

BURTON FREUND:  When they disbanded the Federal Project in Chicago and made it the Illinois Art Project, stuff was also just gathered up in piles—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Taken out.

BURTON FREUND:  —taken out. What happened to it?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  We don't know.

BURTON FREUND:  Nobody—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Some of it was stored in Washington.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. We heard that this one piece here got into Washington. What happened to it from there we never [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  That's the Laundress? Or the Tailor.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  The Tailor.

BURTON FREUND:  Tailor.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, they all belong to the government.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  If they weren't destroyed, these things are all—

BURTON FREUND:  If the government—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —a nice heritage—

BURTON FREUND:  If they had hung onto—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —for the American people.

BURTON FREUND:  —all of this stuff they would have had enough stuff to fill a couple of museums easily. And they would have had work that would now be worth a small fortune.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Because quite a few of the people had become very well known.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, yes.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  Let's see if we can find these other catalogs up here?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  In fact, it's amazing to me that—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible] the first [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —almost all the people I've talked to who were—[Cross talk.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Up on the top shelf.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —artists on the Project are still working away, you know. And almost all of them got an education of a sort [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible] and some of them have gone on to teaching—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —at various universities. There's a—did you—well, did you get a chance to talk to Albert Wein?

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  No. I don't know.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Well, he was on the New York project.  

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  He's here in Los Angeles?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No. He just was down to—is it—he's got a teaching position. He's connected with the Heritage Gallery, too. I think you can get the information from them. He just had a show—one-man show there.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  But he's moved away from Los Angeles?

BURTON FREUND:  But he—yes. He's teaching in Arizona, I think it is, or one of the western states.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Because we have a—we have a researcher in that area. So, that's the reason I wanted—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yeah. And he just moved down there. But I'm quite—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I'll ask Mr. Horowitz [ph].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —sure that Mr. Horowitz [ph] will give you the information on that. He also worked for many years in New York project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And Chicago or—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No, New York.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  New York. Thank you very much. As far as I know there's no list intact [inaudible].

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And Umlauf is teaching—in Texas. Charlie Umlauf. Did you give her—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  —that information?

BURTON FREUND:  I think I did.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Yes, you did. University of Texas. He's a sculptor.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Mm-hmm [affirmative].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Mm-hmm [affirmative]. [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  These things you may be able to get information out of too. Now, these—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  New York catalogues?  

BURTON FREUND:   —are the Sculptor Guild and United American Sculptors.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Okay.

BURTON FREUND:  These two. And they are lists of names in there and photographs of work. And maybe by cross-checking through with your other people in New York you may be able to find quite a few of these guys on the Project there.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Wonderful. Thank you very much.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  That's '39, that's during the Project time.

BURTON FREUND:  The others are much later. They're '57 or so.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Well, I think I have covered my questions unless you can think of more things to tell us. I'll think of more questions when I go out the door and you'll think of—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  More answers.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  —more things. [Laughs.]

BURTON FREUND:  All I can think of right now is the artist ball that we used to run.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Artist ball?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  That wasn't for the Project though [laughs].

BURTON FREUND:  That was for the union in order to raise money to continue their—paying their rent for their gallery—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  —which they would do once a year.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh.

BURTON FREUND:  And it—the Artist Union was mostly made up of people from the Project. And the last one they had was the biggest one I think they ever had. It was taken over by Chicago gangsters and [inaudible].

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, no [laughs].

[01:05:03]

[BURTON FREUND:  They walked in and took over the whole thing. I think the union had hired Pinkerton detectives or policemen to sit around and, you know—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Excuse me, we're going off the tape. –Ed.]

[END OF TRACK AAA_freund65_121_m.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Betty Lochrie Hoag on April the 20th, interviewing Burton Freund. And we were right in the middle of talking about the artist's ball in Chicago with the Pinkerton men who didn't Pinkerton, I suppose [laughs].

BURTON FREUND:  Well, not too well, anyways. It was after a while the Chicago gangsters moved in on it. They'd evidentially gotten all the copies of the tickets and printed up thousands of them and sold them on their own.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, no.

BURTON FREUND:  And then moved into the ball after it was going and just took over. And it was a real wild affair that night, do you remember that? They busted light bulbs on the stage. There were dancers on the stage, from the rec group, I guess, dancing barefoot or something.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, good heavens.

BURTON FREUND:  And they broke these light bulbs all over the place, and they had metal shavings too, which they dropped all over the dance floor.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, what an awful thing to do.

BURTON FREUND:  And they took over the various concessions that were in the place and ran them, like the life study concessions. You remember that? [They laugh.] They wouldn't let this poor model go home. They kept her there for hours. They just took over.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did the Project itself ever have any parties or sociable things?

BURTON FREUND:  No, they never did. The only things they ever had—the only things they held were exhibits, primarily.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  And were those well-attended? In Chicago?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. They were quite well attended, and they were always covered by critics. And as a matter of fact, I think there was one critic from the Chicago Tribune that was extremely anti-project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Anti-project?

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. And I think at one point the students from The Art Institute of Chicago hung her in effigy. And she had a nervous breakdown or something shortly afterward from it. She was violently anti-project. Actually anti-art. How she got to be an art critic, I wouldn't know.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Laughs.] I was going to say, that's a funny combination.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, anything that was new or different, she was definitely opposed to. It was the old school, primarily, that she was interested in pushing.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  In art as well as—

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. And at that time the groups were very strongly separated. Remember, there was—[Cross talk.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yes, there was the[inaudible]—

BURTON FREUND:  The realistic group and the more modern—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And the Impressionists and the—

BURTON FREUND:  Especially with Moholy-Nagy—

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  And then the Cubists and the—

BURTON FREUND:  —setting up the school there, and so on.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was there any attempt within the Project itself to bring the groups together?

BURTON FREUND:  Well, they came together quite naturally on the Project—

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Did they?

BURTON FREUND:  —because we had all kinds of approaches and all kinds of painters and all kinds of ideas there. It was a real melting pot, really.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The reason I was asking, Mr. Fietelson told me something interesting about the Project here in Los Angeles. He had of course the same situation. And he had seminars, I think it was every Monday night, and would have artists from the different groups present their work and explain why and let other people ask questions, just in order to try to get them to understand each other. And it must have been quite a wonderful thing. I wondered if this was done on your Project.

BURTON FREUND:  No, I don't think it was ever done actually that way in Chicago. It's just that they—in working together and exhibiting together—they would mix the exhibits thoroughly, so that you had both in the exhibits.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  But you also had some of that on the jurying.

BURTON FREUND:  Well, it came through the jurying. [Cross talk.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BURTON FREUND:  We had a good deal of discussion on the juries. I sat on the juries for years there as—from the sculptors' section and also as a representative from the union. We also had, I think, Siporin was on that jury. Millman was on it.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Who was the second you said?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Edward Millman.

BURTON FREUND:  Edward Millman.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Nulman [ph]?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Millman.

BURTON FREUND:  Millman.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, yes.

BURTON FREUND:  Winters I think was on it for ceramics. And of course, we had the heads of each section on it, like Peterpaul Ott and Chassaing. Hoeckner. and George Thorp, after he took over—when he took over from Increase Robinson. She was elevated into a position where she couldn't harm anything further on the Project.  They just sort of kicked her up the stairs, put her in kind of an honorary position or something.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  One other thing I wanted to ask you about, whether you ever had anything to do with children's teaching groups, or did they have classes for them?

BURTON FREUND:  I don't whether they did or not. I don't think they did.

They had a children's school in The Art Institute of Chicago, which was very well established, went on for years and years and years there.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Probably took care of that need in the city.

[00:05:08]

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah. They had lectures with—what was the name of that guy I used to go to lectures with? Watson, wasn't it?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  George Watson?

BURTON FREUND:  No.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was he the man who did the magazine?

BURTON FREUND:  Dudley Crafts Watson.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Dudley Crafts Watson, yeah.

BURTON FREUND:  Dudley. And they had the regular children's school Saturday classes. And they had scholarship classes, I think, were in the afternoon, and in the mornings were their regular paying classes, of which I attended both for years, from the time I was about nine until I was about 17 or 18 years old.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Have you done any teaching at all?

BURTON FREUND:  I taught a little bit at the Hull House for a short time.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, this was not Project?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  No.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I would think that there would be a marvelous field for teaching—

BURTON FREUND:  Wait a minute, yes. [Cross talk.]

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  It was Project, sure it was Project.

BURTON FREUND:  Yeah, it was part of the Project.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, it was it?

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Sure.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Was this adults?

BURTON FREUND:  Yes.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  Yes.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  What were you teaching? Sculpture?

BURTON FREUND:  I was teaching composition in stone, I believe it was. Or composition and design in stone carving.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I would think there'd be a marvelous field for teaching puppetry today. As far as I know, it isn't taught any place, and it would be a wonderful thing for art students to learn.

BURTON FREUND:  It would be. And it's like—well, it's the best way that I can think of learning theatre.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Theatre and sculpture and—

BURTON FREUND:  Because you create your entire theater, you create your characters, and then you act, also. Without ever being seen. [They laugh.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  It must be fun.

BURTON FREUND:  It can be fun, and it can also be very unfun too, depending on the pressures you work under.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  I certainly have appreciated this interview. It's been wonderful to give me so much time, both of you.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  It's been a pleasure. [Cross talk.]

BURTON FREUND:  [Inaudible.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  [Inaudible] all these things.

BURTON FREUND:  I'm glad we're able to help in some way.

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  Oh, you certainly have.

ROSALYN "BETTY" FREUND:  What is going to be done now with the—

[Audio break.]

BETTY HOAG MCGLYNN:  The third voice heard on this tape is of course that of Mrs. Freund, who was sitting with us during this interview and added several comments. We talked about the aims of the Archives, and both the Freunds, afterwards, got many boxes out, which had been packed four years ago when they moved to California again. And they found many more items, old brochures, booklets, news clippings, having to deal with the Federal Arts Project, which they have loaned us for microfilming.

[END OF TRACK AAA_freund65_122_m.]

[END OF INTERVIEW.]