Major Herbert M. Dawley Book

Coming Soon! A new book and DVD!

Major Herbert M. Dawley
An Artist's Life
Dinosaurs, Movies, Show-Biz, and Pierce-Arrow Automobiles

 

Major Herbert M. DawleyHerbert Dawley lived from 1880 to 1970. He was a man with a remarkable passion for life filled with creativity, love, and lifelong friendships. His unique artistic vision was integral in everything he was involved with. Born with an innate mechanical and artistic talent, Dawley was instrumental not only in the fledgling automobile industry as a designer for Pierce-Arrow, but was also a pioneer of stop-motion model animation for silent motion pictures. As an artist, he was both a painter and a sculptor. He was a masterful puppeteer of marionettes, an actor, writer, and director of over 400 stage plays.

Dawley's involvement with dinosaurs began in 1917 with the making of his first film, The Ghost of Slumber Mountain, which was distributed to theaters in 1919. The movie was a huge box-office success. Without Dawley's dream fulfilled of creating the illustion of realistic living dinosaurs for motion pictures, the history of motion pictures with dinosaurs in them would not have started as it did, and classic movies like the silent 1925 version of The Lost World, or King Kong in 1933 may never have been produced. In a twist of fate, Dawley has gone uncredited for his achievements in motion pictures. New information in this biography corrects that unfortunate error and restores Dawley's proper place as the significant pioneer of stop-motion animation that he was. A complete filmography of the many films that he produced further demonstrates his important contribution towards special effects in motion pictures.

Herbert Dawley sculptingAfter nearly a decade in the making, this biography on Major Herbert M. Dawley is almost completed and is expected to be available later this year. The book consists of 350 pages filled with rare photographs, most of which are published for the first time, from Dawley's personal scrapbooks. The information recreating Dawley's life is based on material from various archives, his own newspaper clippings, personal letters, and diaries, as well as interviews with friends who still remember him as their "Beloved Maje." In addition to the book, there will be a collection on DVD of his "lost" films, including Along the Moonbeam Trail, several animated shorts from the Tony Sarg's Almanac series, early color tests for an unfinished animated series, and behind-the-scenes footage from a series of Biblical films.

Check back for further updates on availability and more information.