Watching an early scene from All About Eve, something on the wall seemed familiar.

Have you ever watched a film and wondered why something about a particular scene made it feel familiar and made you feel warm or uncomfortable, but you couldn’t quite figure out what it was?

Watching All About Eve for maybe the two-hundredth time, it occurred to me for the first time that my mom, who loved movies and fashion, may have purchased wallpaper for our home from the same order book as the set decorators for All About Eve.

My parents and me—the Brockelman Family at home, 1325 West Main Street, Council Grove, Kansas, 1950.
All About Eve, filmed on the 20th Century Fox lot in Los Angeles, was released in 1950.

Apparently, vertical florals were a big deal in the late 1930s and 40s. Most were created in soft pastel colors, and I suppose, comforting and homey during the war years. But man, talk about busy and just too sweet for words—today, the designs creep me out.

You know what’s really scary? Companies are printing those patterns again!

Norwall Rose Garden 2

By Stephen Brockelman

As a Sr. Writer at T. Rowe Price, I work with a group of the best copywriters around. We belong to the broader creative team within Enterprise Creative, a part of Corporate Marketing Services. _____________________________________________ A long and winding road: My path to T. Rowe Price was more twisted than Fidelity’s green line. With scholarship in hand, I left Kansas at 18 to study theatre in New York. When my soap opera paychecks stopped coming from CBS and started coming from the show’s sponsor, Proctor & Gamble, I discovered the power of advertising and switched careers. Over the years I’ve owned an ad agency in San Francisco; worked for Norman Lear on All in the Family, Good Times, Sanford and Son, and the rest of his hit shows; and as a member of Directors Guild of America, I directed Desi Arnaz in his last television appearance— we remained friends until his death. In 1988 I began freelancing full time didn’t look back. In January 2012 my rep at Boss Group called and said, “I know you don’t want to commute and writing for the financial industry isn’t high on your wish list, but I have a gig with T. Rowe Price in Owings Mills…” I was a contractor for eight months, drank the corporate Kool-Aid, became a TRP associate that August, and today I find myself smiling more often than not.

Leave a ReplyCancel reply

Discover more from BrockelPress

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading

Exit mobile version
%%footer%%