Illustrator Neysa McMein (1888-1949) was born Marjorie McMein in Quincy, Illinois in 1888. She left Quincy and the name Marjorie behind as soon as she could.

After high school, Marjorie  left Quincy for Chicago where she studied commercial art at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1913, she moved to New York, where she changed her name to Neysa, reportedly on the advice of a numerologist. (She chose the name of a racehorse she admired.) Neysa tried her hand at acting for a short time–she worked occasionally as an extra at the Metropolitan Opera at a pay rate that kept her in popcorn and not much else.  But she didn’t have the passion or the talent to succeed and soon returned to art. She paid for studies at the Art Students League by working as a sketcher and clothing designer for Ebenezer Butterick, who, as we recently learned, is one of the contenders for the title of the first person to mass-produce paper sewing patterns.[1]

Neysa sold her first commercial illustration to the Boston Star in 1914. A year later, she sold a cover illustration to the Saturday Evening Post, which was a really big deal for any illustrator .

When the United States entered World War I, she created posters for the United States and French governments and the American Red Cross. In 1918, she went to France where she entertained the troops, drew cartoons for them and painted insignia on the airplanes of the 93rd Bomb Squad.

Back in the United States after the war, Neysa flung herself into Jazz Age life, complete with homemade wine made in her studio bathtub.. She became part of the Algonquin Round Table, thanks in part to her close friendship with Alex Wolcott. She kept open house at her studio, issuing casual invitations to stop by to friends and strangers alike. On any given day Jascha Heifetz would be pounding out music on one of the two pianos that stood back to back in the corner, egged on by Irving Berlin; members of the Round Table would be playing poker on a rickety table; and aspiring actresses would be screaming to make themselves heard over and contributing to the general noise. Through it all, Neysa stood at her easel in the middle of the chaos, creating one of the pretty-girl magazine covers for which she was known, using the pastel sticks that were her favorite medium.

May 13, 1916

Neysa was considered one of the most beautiful women in New York and the subject of plenty of attention as a result. Although she was married in 1923 to successful engineer, Jack Baragwanath, whom she met at a party at the home of Irene Castle, she had numerous affairs with prominent men, and earned a reputation for promiscuous behavior. Harpo Marx quipped that “the biggest love affair in New York City was between me—along with two dozen other guys—and Neysa McMein.”[2]

Her public persona aside, Neysa was a highly successful commercial artist, known for drawings of chic young women that graced the covers of, and illustrated stories in, magazines such Collier’s, McClure’s, Liberty Magazine, Women’s Home Companion, Photoplay, Liberty, and most notably the Saturday Evening Post, for which she created almost sixty covers between 1916 and 1939, and McCall’s, for which she painted all the covers from 1923 and 1937. (Unlikely as it seems, she also served as the McCall’s film reviewer in 1932 and 1933.) The “McMein Girl” was as distinctive as the Gibson Girl had been several decades earlier. She also illustrated ads for products like Palmolive soap[3], Lucky Strike cigarettes, Cadillac, Colgate and Coke. Probably her most influential drawing was the first image of the fictional Betty Crocker, which General Mills commissioned her to create in 1921 and which she updated several times over the years. ( Ironic, given that the Betty Crocker brand was based on middle-class domestic values —as far away from McMein’s personal style as it was possible to be.)

McCall’s canceled their contract with Neysa in 1938. New four-color printing technology allowed magazines to use color photographs for their cover art at a much lower cost than expensive illustrations. As it became harder to get illustration jobs, McMein pivoted to painting portraits, a difficult transition which she made largely with the help of her famous friends including Dorothy Parker, Charlie Chaplin, Ferdinand von Zepplein, who she met during the war, and Janet Flanner.

Neysa died in 1949 from an embolism that occurred during surgery for cancer.

[1] The man appears to be tracking me down. If I stumble across him one more time I may have to give him a blog post of his very own.

[2] It’s only fair to point out that her husband also had a number of extramarital affairs, but the double standard being what it was his affairs don’t seem to have generated the same public commentary.

[3] I just realized that the name tells you what the original bar soap was made from: palm and olive oils! Rabbit hole!