Phillip Renaud, 77, Renowned Playboy artist; gave Jimmy Stewart a wake up call and watched as Marilyn Monroe flubbed lines
Matthew Kruk
Renowned Playboy artist; gave Jimmy Stewart a wake up call and watched
as Marilyn Monroe flubbed lines
BY MAUREEN O'DONNELL
Staff Reporter/modo...@suntimes.com
Last Modified: Sep 3, 2011 12:16AM
There aren't too many artists around who've made a wake-up call to Jimmy
Stewart; watched Marilyn Monroe blow her lines as Robert Mitchum sought
comfort in whiskey; illustrated articles in Playboy by some of the world's
finest writers in the magazine's Chicago heyday; taught students who
went on to acclaim, and had work hung in the Pentagon.
Phillip Renaud, a dapper Canadian-born Chicagoan who sprinkled his
conversations with "the devil you say" and threw merry parties when his
night-blooming cereus plant flowered roughly once a year, will be
memorialized Sept. 10. He was 77 when he died in June from liver cancer
at Swedish Covenant Hospital.
Mr. Renaud grew up in Edmonton in the province of Alberta, and his
creativity was evident early on. To evade his parents' curfew, he put on
a cape, covered up his face and cavorted outside with the neighbor kids.
"He used to run around and they wouldn't know who he was," said his son,
Bret Renaud.
Mr. Renaud's father had a trading post near Edmonton in Slave Lake, then
a trapping-and-hunting town named for an aboriginal group called the
Slavees. His dad traded furs and other items with Native Americans and
anyone passing through.
Alberta is the gateway to the Canadian Rockies and the site of the Banff
Springs Hotel, the castle-like resort that looms over Bow Falls, where
Marilyn Monroe and Robert Mitchum were swept away in the 1954 movie
"River of No Return." An 18-year-old Phillip landed a job at the hotel
and was able to watch some of the filming. It was like watching sausage
being made.
"Mitchum would get his lines perfect every time," Bret Renaud said, "and
Marilyn Monroe kept messing them up. He'd [Mitchum] go back and do a
shot of whiskey and come back and do his lines perfectly. This went on
like 10 times, and each time he came back and got his lines perfect."
On top of that, Mitchum began dating the teenager's girlfriend, Bret
Renaud said.
Another time, Phillip Renaud had to make a wake-up call to movie star
Jimmy Stewart, who said "uh-huh, yes, all right, uh, yes, all right" in
his charmingly halting delivery.
Mr. Renaud studied at Chicago's Academy of Fine Arts and graduated cum
laude from the Art Center College of Design in Los Angeles. At the
academy, he met Carol Cooper, who became a WGN-TV courtroom sketch
artist. They were married 54 years and raised their sons Bret and Peter
in the Ravenswood Manor neighborhood on the North Side.
Mr. Renaud started working for Playboy in the swinging '60s, back when
it had a global circulation of about 7 million - nearly five times what
it is today. He was hired by Art Paul, who designed one of the world's
most iconic, enduring logos - Playboy's bunny-in-a-tux. Soon Mr. Renaud
was illustrating articles by Ray Bradbury, James Baldwin and Gore Vidal.
"He did wonderful pieces of art for Playboy," Paul Renaud said. His
depictions were "a very engaging kind of thing - you couldn't go by it.
You'd have to look at it again.''
Mr. Renaud's illustrations were featured in traveling exhibits of
Playboy art, alongside works by Dali and Warhol, Paul Renaud.
In the 1970s and 1980s, Mr. Renaud's drawings were often used in - or
on - Scott Foresman textbooks. As schoolboys, "The first thing we did
when we got a book," Bret said, "was look in the credits and see if my
dad's illustrations were in there - and half the time, they were. Peter
had a book where he did a cover."
Mr. Renaud was a 30-year member of the U.S. Air Force Art Program, which
has a long tradition of hiring artists to record daily life. He traveled
with the Air Force to Singapore, Thailand and Europe. Nearly 20 of his
paintings have been displayed at the Pentagon and other Air Force sites,
Bret Renaud said.
He taught at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts; the Illinois Institute of
Art, and Palette & Chisel Academy of Fine Arts. He could demonstrate how
to capture nature with virtuoso brush strokes, or how to mimic the
fleshy style of Rubens, or the torsion (twisting) in the works of
Michelangelo. He told students to loosen up, have fun, and trust their
talent.
With his 1966 Jaguar, an appreciation for 12-year-old Scotch and an
innate elegance, "He was the kind of guy you'd expect to step out of a
cocktail party in a James Bond movie," said Scott Gustafson, a former
Renaud student whose illustrations of fairy tales and fantasy made a fan
out of singer Michael Jackson.
"He never seemed to walk - he strolled into a room," said artist Gary
Gianni, another former student. And no matter how old he got, he had a
curiosity and joie de vivre that made it seem "he was perpetually about
45 years old."
Mr. Renaud painted in an attic studio filled with light, plants, a
couple of cats and a bathtub with 10 big goldfish swimming around - he
took them in every winter.
His memorial was delayed to await the availability of the Palette &
Chisel for an exhibit of his art. The memorial and opening of the
exhibit will be from 5 to 10 p.m. Sept. 10 at the Palette & Chisel
Academy of Fine Arts, 1012 N. Dearborn. Remarks are at 7 p.m. The
exhibit will continue until Sept. 20.
Copyright © 2011 - Sun-Times Media, LLC
Brad Ferguson
Matthew Kruk <nob...@home.com> wrote:
He had a website, where you'll find some of his art: