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Tape-recorded interview (transcribed below) by local Detroiter Stanley Brams and Harley Earl that took place inside GM Styling Section during January, 1954:The following interview is printable. Interviewer: Would you like to go back and tell me just how this all began back in 1927? Earl: It’s a little hard…I just gotta draw a breath. You know…you’re aware of our plight here with this moving around that we’ve got. So anyway, I know we’re trying to get it on the road, so we can get this art down to New York (HJE's referring to his Motorama Show Cars that are about to debut at the Waldorf Astoria event) and locate it, but still we’d like to bring this out for O’Leary. We thought we’d give him the first copy of your draft. Well, I’ll just give you a little spotting. The boys could probably fill it in. They’re younger and their memory’s better. But, originally, how I came into contact with General Motors, let’s say. In 1922, Fred Fisher…I think it was in 1921 or ’22, Fred Fisher, the oldest of the Fisher Brothers, started to come to Los Angeles to spend, oh, let’s say, three to five or six weeks, with a friend of his by the name of Jimmy Baldwin, who used to live in Toledo. They knew each other years and years ago. Well, it so happened that Jimmy Baldwin was the Chevrolet dealer out there. That was just one of the things; he had a lot of property. And his son and I were in school together at Stanford. And we both belonged…all belonged out to the Los Angeles Country Club. So one day the phone rang, and Jimmy—that was Andrew Baldwin…was the boy’s name; the son that I was in college with – said, Could you have lunch the day after tomorrow and play golf? He said, I’ve got a competitor of yours coming out from the East…kinda jokingly, and I said, Fine, and I said, who is this? And he says, Well, when you get out there you’ll see. So I went out and it was Fred Fisher. Well, I liked to fell over, you know [chuckles]. Competitor! I had a little hole in the wall with about 400 to 500 men, and he was, of course, the head of the fabulous Fisher Brothers. Well, to make a long story short, we played, and it turned out that he was my partner. Well, while he was out there, we played about every third day. So we played a lot of golf together, and this [yearly routine] went on for sever years. And then each time he’d come back and [would] tell Larry Fisher, who was head of Cadillac…president of Cadillac…that he had met me and that we had this little body plant, and he’d go through it and did a lot of nice favors by sending men out that maybe their wife couldn’t live out here in the East, and so he’d recommend that they’d go to California. So one day, Larry Fisher…I’d sold my plant in the interim to the Cadillac people, Don Lee, so Larry Fisher phoned Don Lee and said, Gee, I wish you could send Harley Earl back. We’re going to build the LaSalle car, and we’d like him to…we’ve had several bodybuilders and designers work on it, and we’d like to have him come right to Cadillac and see what he could do. So
after a little monkey business back and forth, I got on a train and went back to
Cadillac Motors Car Co. That was January 6, 1926. And, I ended up designing the
first LaSalle car. Then I finished that and went on to Europe to see the motor
shows. And when I came back…I went to California, through (finished) with my
assignment… PAGE
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Interviewer: This was just one-term, one-shot deal? Earl: Yes, I still had…was running the body plant for the people I sold…to the people I sold the body plant to. Well, then they (Larry Fisher) asked me to come back and do the Cadillac for 1928…the 1927 Cadillac rather. So I did that. That was during the early part, I guess, of 1927. Interviewer: Probably would have been the 1928 Cadillac now? Earl: Yes. And then I was all through, naturally, with it and went back about my business when Mr. Sloan phoned from New York, and I happened to be playing gold that day, out at the L. A. Country Club. They sent out on the course. And I went and answered the phone, and it was Mr. Sloan. Well he and Larry and Fred Fisher were in his office, and Mr. Sloan had suggested that General Motors have a central designing staff. And Mr. Sloan had consulted with Larry and Fred Fisher, and among them they decided they’d ask me to start this activity here in Detroit. So I left the next day for New York to discuss it with them. And finally I agreed to come back and start it, and in May of 1927 we started the General Motors Styling Section here in Detroit. And of course, it started over on the 10th Floor of the General Motors Building; I’ve forgotten the numbers—they boys can supply that—with three offices. And naturally I didn’t have any pattern to work from, because they never had any Styling… Interviewer: There wasn’t a thing… Earl: The interesting thing; Fisher Body would draw up the body and the hood, and then they would model the body, and it would be up on saw horses, maybe two-three feet high. No wheels or a thing. And then the divisions would take that drawing, and they would put on their front end and their fenders and wheels, and then they would all go to work and make it and put them together. Well, when I worked on the La Salle, we didn’t do it that way. We made it all one: built it right together as one unit, rather than separate it… Interviewer: Chassis as well as front end and body? Earl: Yes. And that’s what we went ahead with when we started the Styling Section (Art & Colour), and that is…throughout the United States, that’s a common thing now, making it out of modeler’s clay. And the we take templates and make a fiberglass [mockup] today, but it used to be a wood prototype that we could get into and check the headroom and the seats and all, and paint it, and it looked like an automobile. Then it took a little while for us to get acquainted. You see, I didn’t know anybody except the Cadillac group, so we had to…we didn’t have any orders. Mr. Sloan never gave orders that you had to do anything. That was his way of operating. And he made it very clear to PAGE 3me that he would give me a good recommendation, but from there on I was on my own. And it might take several years to get all the divisions into the fold, but not to be discouraged…that they were…it was a pretty tough assignment. These people kind of liked the idea of doing it themselves, and they like to the secrecy of having it up there in their respective divisional engineering departments. Well, O.E. Hunt was then chief engineer of Chevrolet, and Mr. Sloan was very fond of Mr. Hunt, and I presume in talking to him he said, Well, gee, it would be nice if you would kind of be bell cow and go up and give him a little encouragement. So first thing I knew, O.E. Hunt came up and asked us to go to work on the next year’s Chevrolet. Well, it wasn’t a complete car, it was sort of a face-lifting. So we worked, and O.E. Hunt was very nice, very helpful, and we got away to a nice start. Interviewer: You don’t recall what year that was? Earl: Yes, that was in the fall of 1927. And when we started, of course, I was in the…arrived at the offices of the building, and they took me up to my new quarters. Well, naturally I was there by myself, and it was a pretty lonesome feeling to be starting an activity, and stand there and you don’t have any customers or any employees [chuckles]. So they…first man that we had, I’d actually got ahold…Ernest Seaholm was chief engineer of Cadillac, who I worked with in doing the first LaSalle car. Wonderful character, and was fun working with. He phoned me and said, Now there’s a fellow named Ralph Pew that we gave you to do as much sketching and engineering on the LaSalle, and if you’d like to have him, we’d give him to you; at least to help you get started. So Ralph Pew came over to work for us. He’s now back at Cadillac. And then they had a fellow who was an awfully good handyman in modeling and making the wood construction to make your model on. When he heard Pew was coming over, he went to Mr. Seaholm and said, Gee, I’d like to go over there. That looks like a very interesting assignment. So he was next. And that all happened within three or four days after I arrived in Detroit, you know, to start the Style Section. Then Mr. Fisher—W.A. Fisher, who was president of Fisher Body heard that I was down in the office. His brothers told him, so he dropped down to visit me, and he said, How are you getting along? And I said, Well, I don’t know who to call, I don’t know a soul in the building… certainly happy dropped in. Well, he said I have a man working for me that goes between plants. He’s been doing it for a couple of years, and he’s a very smart young fellow and knows everybody…at the divisions and in our plants and subsidiaries. He knows where to find everybody, and his name is Howard O’Leary. I’ll send down a letter to you, sealed, and you tear it open and read it and ask him some questions, and if you like him, just write “Yes” on the paper and seal it and bring it back up and I’ll take care of it. So that’s how O’Leary came to work for me. So he was the third man. So it went on and on, and by…let’s say that was May… by November we
had, I’ve forgotten how many…we must have had, by November, we must have
had…oh, I’d have to check, but several employees. And by the very first of
1928, we…I imagine we PAGE
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We were putting, doing modeling. They gave me then a place downstairs for a big shop. That’s where Chevrolet is done now. Interviewer: I’ve been hearing about those quarters down there. Earl: So then it didn’t take very long until it got started, and then when the divisions saw that we were helpful, Fisher Body gave us a lot of help: Al Fisher and Ed Fisher and W. A. Fisher and the whole Fisher family were very, very helpful. As you know, they’re builders, not tearer-downers. So I can’t say that anybody…you couldn’t have found a group that would help you any more than the Fishers, and I’ll never forget it, how helpful they were to me. So I’ll try to get the total number of cars, when we complete…we’re
through making cars now, for this year, and I’m going to get what the
production of cars that we’ve designed in General Motors since the Styling
Section was formed…it’s over 30 million, and I thought it would be well to
put that in here. And we grew, from May of 1927, when there was just one
employee—that was me—and we’ve got over 600 now. Of course, if it’s a
factory, that’s different, but for this kind of activity, that’s a terrific
increase. Interviewer: Yes, essentially this is a perilous operation. Earl: We have worked on…designed the first Holden car that was built back in Australia. We’ve done a number of cars in the past since 1929, not altogether, but we’ve had the chief engineer and the chief body engineer from Opel and Vauxhall come over here, and we’ve done a number of cars for them. Then we got branched into trimming. You see, we started of…we didn’t do any trimming and painting. That was all done by Fisher Body, the selection of paints and trims; that and the divisions did it all. About 1928, Mr. Sloan saw that we really were…had taken hold of this General Motors Styling, he and Mr. Lamont duPont decided that it would be a good thing to put trimming selections and paint selections and trimming designs into our studios…into the Styling Section. So in 1928, Mr. Sloan called me from New York and said that Mr. Lamont duPont had offered that services of Capt. Ledyard Towle, who was head of duPont Duco service in New York. He’s an artist. And, they realized that I had a lot to do, getting this other thing going, and he’d be very helpful. So he came out, and we moved…that place then had moved up to the 10th floor of the General Motors Building…our offices. Shops were downstairs. Interviewer: You had that wing over there… Earl: Yeah. In other words, we moved around from back in theree and took that whole wing ouver that faces out here. And we built a studio for Cap Towle next to me, and he did a remarkable job of organizing it and getting the colors and the trims and all that, and about 1931 or ’32, I’ve forgotten which, he resigned to take a job with Ditzler and Pittsburg Plate Glass as their art director. And then, taking his place was the chap that used to be in PAGE 5charge of color and trim for Cadillac Motor Car Co. when I first did the La Salle car there, by the name of Chester Hill. And after I started the Styling Section, the export company needed some someone at their different plants. In thouse days they were assembling a lot of American cars throughout Europe. They didn’t have all that restriction thing before World War Two. And they…Export took Chester Hill to handle that whole thing for all of Export, because he was used to that models, and had a lot of experience, did an excellent job. Well, then, when the company started to dry up financially a little bit and bunny barriers were built, they commenced to know us down on shipping stuff, and we commenced then to put the Opel and Vauxhaul into these places, in place of the American cars. It seemed…it worked out better with the money in the exchange thing and all. I’ve forgotten just what the details were. And so then we bought…when Towle left, I thought, Well, we’ve got to have someone to take his…carry on; he’d started it. So, I got Hill to come and take his place. So he took Towle’s place and carried on for about three-four years when we did the first…I think it was the 1936 or ’37, when we did the first Parade of Progress. When that was first done….We designed it, the inside and out. And, we put them together out here at the city airport. It wasn’t near as big. They had the building but they didn’t have very many planes, we rented some of the hangars and put all the trucks…they were all finished but we put all the things inside of them out there. Well, naturally we had had a date to start, and gee, everybody had to work night and day, and this chap ended up with pneumonia, and by God, died on us. So then it was followed up by Steve McDaniels, and the we branched out and put ino our own shops after World War Two. During WW II, we were all broken up here, you know, everybody doing something in the war, and Fisher Body used to do all that work. Well, it made it a little inconvenient for them, and for us, so we put our shown shops in. Well, McDaniels had been our contact man along with that, so McDaniels then took that over, and Henry Lauve moved in on the creative end. So he’s here now, so that kind of finishes that end of the thing up. Well, it was sort of an evolutionary affair. Then right after the war, in 1945, we here got an idea. They’d moved Sy Osbourne in from Opel, who was manager of Opel before the war, and after the war they put him in over at LaGrange to run the streamlined train plant, as a part of Electo-Mototive. So, you know, during the tail end of the war, LOOK and LIFE all had projections of crossing America in an airplane in eight hours, and you remember fascinating stories. So, one night I thought, Well, gee, I think I’ll go over and see Sy Osbourne and said, Sy, why don’t you give us a little money and we’ll maybe make up some designs of a minature train with a fantastic approach to it to combat all this airplane thing. And then, if it’s got anything, you can show pictures, and if they want to put it in magazines and write a story, fine. Well, that was the Train of Tomorrow. And after we…they were a little reluctant to go on it, but we offered to pay half the bill. So finally, they let us go, and we did the Train of Tomorrow. PAGE 6
After Mr. Sloan saw the model, which was modeled about from here to there (12ft), we…Mr. Sloan says, Why don’t you show it to the railroad people, I’ll come out? So we did, and they were fascinated by it. And…so Mr. Sloan said, Well, why don’t we make one? So, you know, that’s Mr. Sloan, so by God we made one. Hobin built it, and we had our men right on it all the time. I was over there about two or three days a week, and MrDaniels practically slept on that job. But you know the answer to that. Then, we built…then the next thing we did was the double-decker Greyhound bus, which was sort of stealing the Astro Dome effect. You see, the Train of Tomorrow was the first car to ever have the Astro Dome. Or some call it Vista Dome. So we did that on the Greyhound which, as you know, they’re building some of them. (Greyhound would build over 1000 during ’50s.) Well that…and, of course, we worked on…I forgot to tell you back in 1932 or ’33, I’ve forgotten which it was, we worked on the original streamlined Union Pacific train. Interviewer: Oh, I didn’t know that. Earl: Yes. That was the first…I was called down on that one, and we got into the train designing business. We designed a lot of them. Now we didn’t do the Burlington. We didn’t design the Burlington. We designed the Union Pacific. Now on ours, that we did ourselves—we modeled it right in our place here, in miniature, and then took it over and modeled it full size—we did a kind of an automobile front, setting the cab back from the front about 14 feet, for the looks. The Burlington put a streetcar front on theirs, if you’ll remember. Well, when they came out…they came out within a month of each other. There was a lot of competition there. The railroad brotherhood safety department, when they saw the two trains, said you can’t build any more like that Burlington, because the crew are right up there when they hit anything. You’ve got to do it the way General Motors has designed the Union Pacific. We really copied an automobile, kinda to do it. But it worked out that they saw the safety…So all of them are patterned after that today, as you know. Interviewer: Tell me, how did it happen that Union Pacific came to General Motors and came to you? Earl: They didn’t come to me. They came to General Motors because we made the Electro-Motive 2-cycle diesel that Ket (Charles Kettering), when he was at Research, along with Winton, which we own at Cleveland…together they got the 4-cycle and made it into 2-cycle, which made it much lighter and better, more power, more economical. And when they heard about it, and we had them running, and we put them in the World’s Fair in Chicago, the engines. They were on display, but they supplied the power for our activities over there; had a little assembly plant…Chevrolet assembly plant at the Chicago World’s Fair. They came up and asked if they couldn’t put that in. PAGE
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Interviewer: I see. Earl: Both of them [Burlington and Union Pacific]. I don’t know who was first, but they were so close to each other, someone must have been phoning back and forth, because whoever did it, the other one had it within a few weeks. So they both used the same engine and all that, because there wasn’t any other…all the 4-cycle were way too heavy. For instance, those had a 600-horsepower engine in them. And a 600-horsepower engine of a 4-cycle diesel, the one before that…hell, the train couldn’t have carried that hardly. So the Electro-Motive was a small thing there, and a man by the name of Hamilton, who was in Cleveland and had his own business, made these railcars. We bought them with the idea of building parlor [?] cars for them. We were furnishing them a few. So we…Mr. Sloan saw that General Motors bought it and put Hamilton over it. So that’s when they asked me to come down there and work on the first of them. That’s before even that happened. That was when we were just sort of getting ready. We took almost a freight car and made the first test job of it, to run. So that was kind of the story of the train. And of course this Motorama thing, it just started last year. We kinda started that here. And it’s going to be a big thing. Looks like it’s kind of a new way of merchandising, at least exciting our customers. Well, getting back…we’ve had an awful lot of people in the Styling
Section that have been here and retired. Some of them have left. And as I’ve
said, we’ve got 600 and some odd now. And after it got big, there’s more
fellows that can tell you about it than I can; I mean, in detail, because they
don’t have as many things to worry about. I hope I’m giving you the right
kind of a…anything… Interviewer: I have a lot of questions I want to ask. Earl: Now I think we save time if you…I’ll try and answer any kind of question. I don’t know if I can or not. Interviewer: Let me go back right to the beginning. This bodyshop that had in the 1920s out in California: What were building there? Special jobs? Earl: You see, it was the Earl Carriage Works. My father had a carriage factory out there with about 500 bodybuilders and painters and, you know, the people that go with that enterprise. And then, after the war – World War One – I started in that business, and he retired, and I took it over and ran it for a very short time, and then we had an opportunity…for about six months, my dad was a little sick, and he went away, and I put it [the carriage business] into the motorcar business; started selling bodies, interesting [?] movies. So I didn’t really…I had taken engineering at Stanford, but I
didn’t know, other than growing up in the business and watching my father
design carriages…and I liked PAGE 8
know, like young fellows, you know, who hadn’t been over a golf course, don’t know where the traps are. So that’s kind of what happened with me. So when my dad came back after six months, gee, we must have had a half million dollars’ worth of special bodies in our place. Interviewer: Who were some of the people who were your customers? Earl: Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Tom Mix and Wally Reid and, well, all the movie picture…Fatty Arbuckle and Viola Dana and all the old crowd; Pauline Fredricks, Cecil deMille, and we were really in the business. Well, that attracted…[side A of tape ends here]…and I was putting the bodies on. Well he [Don Lee] thought, Well, I might as well make that profit, so he came over to see us and bought the body company, in 1919, with the agreement that I’d run it; do the designing and run the body plant for him. Which I did. Well, it didn’t take long until we had…we were turning out about 300 bodies a year, custom, bodies, and shipping some to India and Europe. And the motion picture business was big. In fact, I shipped some to poor old Bob Greenlease. You know, his did was killed there in Kansas City. I’d known Bob since about 1921 or ’22. So the Cadillac dealers took some, and the Cadillac factory bought some of them. And that’s kinda how I kept getting into it, and that’s when, first thing you know, Fred Fisher had come out there, and I told you the story on that. You see, I kinda come by it rightfully, and I had a terrific advantage over the boys that come in here, particularly the Americans. In Italy and France, they still do this custom bodywork, but these boys have natural abilities of designing, but they didn’t have the opportunity to grow up in the body plant and see how it ws done, talk to the customers, and build it and then make the mistakes and get the criticism from the outside people on it, and keep improving. So, I look back…when I arrived, I made it a point not to bring anybody with me from my plant, because I realized that if I was going to come here, I had to have local people. And if I brought anybody with me, they’d all say, Well, no matter how hard you try, he’ll naturally favor, as his assistants, the men he brings from California. So it’d be a little discouraging. So I didn’t bring anybody. I thought, Well, by God, if I can’t do it alone, I better find it out. So that’s… Interviewer: Was there any other company of that sort that amounted to anything in those days? Earl: Where, in the West? Interviewer: Or anywhere? Earl:
Yes, Fleetwood Body Co. in Allentown, Pa., Fisher Body bought the Fleetwood.
They had…in fact, they built a lot more on production that we did, due to the
fact that they were back here and had a helluva lot bigger market. And they were
building some PAGE 9of the car division, where…shipping things were very expensive. To ship the chassis way out there and then ship the body and the whole thing clear back here again… Brewster, in Long Island. There was Healy in New York. And there was New Haven Carriage Co. in New Haven. There was Kimball in Chicago, Rubay in Cleveland. Judkins in New York or Connecticut; I’d have to check. Goddam, I forgot! And then there was Waterhouse in Albany or someplace up in there. And then there was the people that are still in business right out in Philadelphia…I’ll have to get that name [Derham, in Rosemont, Pa.]. They’re the only ones who are still going. I send them business. I know the two brothers. Interviewer: There was LeBaron? Earl: LeBaron…LeBaron started kinda after I got back here. That wasn’t one of the old ones. Interviewer: There were quite a few. Earl: Oh, they were good. They were good, but they don’t date back as far as this. Interviewer: I didn’t realize there’d been that many of those. Earl: Yes, and there was a lot of work in those days. Brewster was always the top one. They really had the top trade. Interviewer: It was more a matter of customizing a body then than building a new piece of sheet-metal. Earl: Well, they built the whole body. You ordered it without…just with front fenders. They furnished the rear fenders and all. Interviewer: Oh, I didn’t know that. Earl: Yeah. I’ll see if I’ve got…just for fun…if I’ve got that catalogue of some of my…just a matter of interest there, and I think I… Interviewer: When did the Art & Colour Section become known as the Styling Section? When was the name changed? Earl: Mr. Sloan changed that. It was first called the General Motors Art & Colour, and O’Leary could get that off the records, because it’ll show over across the street. It’s been at least 15 years. After we got to a certain place, they had the patent section, the engineering section, and different sections, so that’s when he tried to make, on our chart, a level of sections rather than next to the divisions, see. Like staff operations. And it was Mr. Sloan that did that. PAGE 10Interviewer: There was a period, wasn’t there, in the early 1930s, when the Art & Colour Section became a part of Fisher Body? Earl: Well, I’ll tell you how that operated. I remained with General Motors, but during the recession period, or let’s call it the…1931 and ’32, Fisher closed the Fleetwood plant. And things were pretty tough, as you know. We built, due to my experience…Fred Fisher came up and said, Well, Harley, you’ve got quite a place here, and we’re closing the plant…can’t afford to run it…why don’t you build…It’s only occasionally they want one, or it’s a build-over, changeover from a standard Fleetwood body, our regular body, why don’t you do it in your shop here? So I did. Well, all our workmen then were transferred over onto Fisher’s payroll, because it got too involved. And that way it meant if we got a few jobs in, we could pull some of those old Fisher men back in, and it wouldn’t ball up their seniority, see. They wouldn’t have to go into General Motors and have everything confused. So it was during that period that we ran, for about two years, I think it was, as I recall it, our workmen as Fisher….under Fisher Body. But the activity remained, we’ll say, independent, because I was always, personally, in General Motors, but we did that, as I explained, just to keep it, so that…Otherwise, we’d borrow a draftsman fro two days and , gee, you’d have to stand over there in General Motors and go through all that routine… Interviewer: For all of two days… Earl: Yes, it was terrible. And then the funny part of it was, a lot of them didn’t want to leave Fisher Body and go…They were suspicious that we were, you know how workmen are. So, but…it worked out all right. And then when that cleared up, then we went back to the way we were formerly. Interviewer: How many people did the operation shrink down to in the Depression days? Earl: Actually, we didn’t shrink down very much in the Styling Section because we weren’t too large. We were coming up. Interviewer: Pretty much at a minimum… Earl: Yes, we were; pretty much. So, then with Fleetwood taking that over…I put it this way…We got the men together, but not the designers. We didn’t let any of the designers go, except fellows that we’d naturally let go anyway. But we got the men in and let out the fellows that really didn’t matter. It was a good time to clean house, because we were just starting as far as the fabricating end of the business… So we said, this depression, from all looks of things, is going to last
for a while, and it got pretty severe, as you know. So we worked out, with the
men that…the men with families…we would try and give them steady employment,
as much as we could. PAGE 11
only be four days a week. Then married men came next in turn, and the single men. They were so fair. O’Leary will tell you it was wonderful, how they stepped. There was no union or anything. We just asked them, and they just sat in that room and said, We need…I’m in a helluva fix, but my God, George is a lot worse. I’m alone. He’s got a wife. The guy who had just a wife said, Well, I’m a damn sight better off than that fellow there with eight kids. And they really wrote their own ticket. Interviewer: Pretty nice. Earl: And then every once in a while, when we needed to pull a man on, they’d come and say, Gee, whatchamacall him is having a helluva time. Supposing, why don’tcha give him a crack? And gee, the fellows, they just wrote their own ticket. We’ve still got a lot of them down here. They’ve never forgotten it. Interviewer: Mighty nice. How big had the department become when WW-Two broke out. Earl: Well, then it was a pretty big department. I would say when World War Two broke out, we had about…my guess is it would be over 300 men, 350 to 400 men, around in there someplace. Then during WW-II, we started with a drop of the cannon…we started a school here immediately for designing schematic weapons. Interviewer: Oh, I hadn’t heard about that. Earl: And I took the…got the fellows in here, and we screened everybody, looked up their records, had a regular committee…fellows I knew were goddamn good Americans. We went over every record. We changed the locks on our room here, took McDaniels and said, Now Mac, you have to take a bunch of fellows, and let’s screen them, and have the army send a man out and let them screen, and let’s apply and do exploded drawings. We did a lot of that. McDaniels headed that up. Bombsights and a lot of stuff like that.
So I thought, with the camouflage thing and Europe being in this thing ahead of us, I thought, well, I know some Canadian aces that were flying back, and I knew the fellow that was head of the Canadian Royal Air Force, so I went up to see him. I said, What could you do…These fellows come back, and you let them have a little rest. They’re kinda gunshy; they’ve been shot at and they deserve a rest; maybe they’ve dropped a lot of planes down there in Africa. This was when it was just getting started. Would you mind letting them come down if we paid the expenses and lecture to us down there in our auditorium? I’ve got a camouflage school I’m starting. You know, everybody’s talking camouflage, you remember? Thought the Germans would be over here. So we did, and the Air Force then, it wasn’t the Air Force, it was called the Flying Corps. Well, they operated kinda independently, in a way, through an activity that permitted…when we went our own and built this up in about a month. These boys were enthusiastic and, Christ, we got the goddamnest place in here, and we had ladders you PAGE 12
climbed and looked through reduction glasses at 10,000-20,000 feet, and 5000, and these boys worked night and day. And we put on…in about two months, we had the goddamnest bunch of drawings of the gadgets you’ve ever seen! One of them was the Wildcat [tank] that Buick built. Only this boy, Art Ross, had a 90mm gun on it, and to point it, you could only swing it 15° either way, but you had to point it, and tanks, you know, you maneuvered; you ran it around. And they had a peashooter that wouldn’t tip the tank over. Well, this fellow had a bucking bar back of it, and you’d run it up, and then as you’d get your range at that 15°… well they came up, and I had the man’s picture, the general, Bruce over there, Major General Bruce, who headed…oh, well, I’m getting ahead of my story… So we got it and it was very fascinating, so the colonel who cleared us,…see, I used him, and he came out and had to clear everybody that worked in this stuff, in the exploded drawing, and the government put in restricted areas and signs, and if anybody did this and that, they’d be arrested by the United States Army. It got to be quite a place. Well, I let a lot of our workmen go different spots temporarily, to work on war work. But with a string on them. After, oh, I’d say two months, I invited the colonel out, and I said, I don’t know how much good this thing is. I’m conducting these classes, or I’m just heading up and split these up, and have these boys from Canada come down and lecture, and we have a school going. And we have a manual. We had a committee write the manual, and there it is. You can take it with you and send it back to me, it’s the only copy I’ve got left. Well, I showed him this, and he said, My God, this is…I’m in another branch entirely. I’m just doing what I do for you. I’m in the listing to run this office. But I’ve been in the Army a long time. My God, this is actually valuable. It certainly out to be great thought starters. So he got a hold of Washington on the telephone, someone his superior, and said, Maybe I’m crazy, but these fellows…it’s fantastic what they got. They must have 90 kinds of weapons in there, and they’re so beautifully rendered. They were…it was, really. You can charge $10 to get in just to look. I mean they were beautifully rendered; all kinds of stuff: models…We had these camouflaged cities built, and our boys would have studies, and they’d camouflage them, get up on there and try to detect them at 10,000 feet, see? And then we were using the infrared camera on it and all that. We were, of course, tipped off…the Canadian Air Force gave us a lot of their data. Well, they came up here, and said, Well, day after tomorrow morning they will be eight generals from different activities, and about 30 colonels, and a bunch…100 in all. [SIDEBAR, this is really important for it clearly proves Mr. Earl was a one-of-a-kind industrial observer consulting to top leaders in the U.S. military as well as powerful members of the Ordnance movement]. And, by God, they arrived here and stayed all day. I had a luncheon for them. And the top man, a general…I’ve forgotten his name now [Harley knew the name...but just didn't want to reveal it in this interview!]; I’ve got it here someplace…turned to this colonel and myself…He said, I want the Army officers on each door until we decide what we’re going to do. I don’t want anybody to come in or out of this place. I want to lock it up! P
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