Sunday, March 05, 2023

The Mysterious Zephyr - The Legend of the lost "Tandy" - Nancy Drew

The Mysterious Zephyr - The Legend of the Lost "Tandy"

This article was originally run in the Summer 2020 issue of The Sleuth

You've often heard of Nancy Drew illustrator, Russell H. Tandy's muse for Nancy Drew, the model Grace Horton, whose curly blond locks and sophisticated looks graced the covers of some of the Nancy Drew books. The curiosity in those covers lies in which ones did Grace influence and pose for? We've heard about Grace for years and Tandy using her as a model, but it was only recently that I sat down to think about Nancy Drew and her image on the covers and try to piece it all together. From my research and newly uncovered evidence, Grace did not model for the original Nancy Drew covers that Tandy painted. Grace would have been only 10 in 1930, too young to have been the original Nancy Drew. 

Grace Horton, born Grace Evelyn Horton on April 21, 1920, was the daughter of a commercial artist. Her family - the Hortons - were of the Horton Ice Cream fame. She began modeling around 1937 and was hired by the Harry Conover Model Agency. An article I discovered from 1941 featured her and described her as such, " Grace Horton, a practically perfectly formed and featured slightly smallish blond girl who is one of the most active models today. She's 21, the daughter of a commercial artist, graduated from high school in New York City, and studied fashion design for a year. Her first job, four years ago, was modeling in a wholesale house a regular eight-hour-a-day job at $15 a week. In her first year she had sixteen jobs and worked up to $35 a week. Then she went into advertising modeling." 

Whether Tandy knew Grace's father, both being commercial illustrators, or whether he hired her from the agency she worked for, at one point it was rumored she was dating one of Tandy's sons - Russell Jr. This may have been an exaggeration and he may have just taken her for ice cream, notes Tandy's granddaughter Pam. Either way she began modeling circa 1937 according to this article and it's around that time in the series of Nancy Drew covers that Nancy begins to look a lot like Grace.  Possibly as early as the fourteenth book, The Whispering Statue, and definitely by the seventeenth book, The Mystery of the Brass-Bound Trunk


Grace Horton

So who in the world inspired Tandy when he set out to portray the plucky heroine who has become America's daring teenage sleuth for over 90 years now? There's another muse entirely that likely influenced the style of Russell H. Tandy when it came to painting the original covers for the first three Nancy Drew books - and beyond. And possibly his work before Nancy Drew. The infamous French artist, Maurice Millière.

Born in 1871, Millière was a successful artist whose talents ran the gamut from drawings to illustrations to sculpture. His "little doll women," the "petite femmes de Paris" were great novelties in Paris from illustrations to dolls to little statuettes at around 14" to 16" tall on average, featuring charming little French women, often blond with curly hair. These sophisticated mademoiselles were illustrated pinups during the Great War, or as we call it, World War I. American soldiers brought pictures home as souvenirs. They were featured in magazines and sold in shops. In the 1920s Millière produced the statuettes.  Even in America there were replicas by artists and novelty houses.  

Millière Portrait

I was contacted by a fan who had seen one of Millière's statuettes - specifically the Zephyr - which is shown here with this article. Created in the 1920s in both painted Plaster of Paris and a brass version, the Zephyr looks strikingly like Nancy Drew from the cover of The Secret of the Old Clock. Too strikingly similar. My research into this artist and this statuette led me to Millière collector Nannette Rod who published an informative article in the June 2014 issue of Antique Doll Collector on Millière. I reached out to Ms. Rod and asked her about the likely coincidence or perhaps flattering similarities between Old Clock and Millière's Zephyr and she sent me this reply:

"I do think it's possible that Tandy was influenced by Millière's statue. Millière was an influential artist and widely copied. He was the father of the Boudoir Art genre, being the first to represent a "modern" woman--one who is confident, playful, adventurous, yet sexy. Millière's women could be found in most of the mildly erotic men's magazines of the time, but also in fashion catalogs, and advertisements for women's beauty products. Tandy could have encountered Millière's work any number of ways.

Possibly he studied in Paris (many artists did) or served in WW1 or had friends who served. Returning US soldiers brought back magazines, books, and even statuettes of Millière's art. Since Tandy was a fashion illustrator, he must have seen Millière's work in French fashion catalogs and American magazines."


Tandy was a commercial illustrator doing fashion layouts and even sewing pattern covers and would have been aware of Millière's famous work - and like many illustrators, likely inspired by these styles. While we can't say for sure, it's certainly interesting to speculate and note the similarities. While Nancy Drew is not a copy per se and has her own sophisticated and mysterious style - a Tandy signature - there's certainly some influence in the clothing and the color and especially in the windblown pose of Nancy Drew on the cover of Old Clock. Her scarf is also blowing in the wind on the cover of The Bungalow Mystery. This was a famous style of Millière's - the windblown pose - and often featured a scarf or stole, a cloche hat and featured the girl's arms clutching something - like Nancy does with the clock on the cover. Ms. Rod noted, "His poses were widely copied by rival boudoir artists and even by artists in America."

If you'd like to see more of Millière's work, Ms. Rod has a Pinterest Board which features a lot of his work and his influence on the flapper generation and the boudoir style.

Uncovering the history behind Nancy Drew and finding intriguing pieces of the puzzle like the Millière Zephyr, just adds more layers to the mystery that is Nancy Drew. 

Special thanks to Sleuth Jackie Fry for helping me uncover some genealogy on Grace Horton and her family, to collector and fan Ann Bergin who pointed me to the Zephyr and to Nanette Rod for her information on Millière and images of the Zephyr. 

1 comment:

jeffhanna7 said...

Agreed - more than a coincidence that the statue IS virtually identical to Nancy with the clock. Very interesting - and good sleuthing on your part. Thanks for sharing the story.