Reposted from Sarasota Magazine

The Sarasota artist colony of painters and writers who flourished here in the ’50s and ’60s is long gone, and with it a remarkable group of men and women. These people set the tone of the town and did it so well that, today, the arts remain as central to Sarasota’s identity as its beaches. There may be one or two of these individuals left, but, as a group, they are fading into history.

Some ended up world famous. Syd Solomon’s paintings are in most major museums, John D. MacDonald is credited with creating modern crime fiction and MacKinlay Kantor’s story The Best Years of Our Lives is firmly embedded in our national psyche due to the classic movie based on it. Burl Ives, meanwhile, remains integral to the Christmas season thanks to his “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas.” And Julio De Diego, one of the more interesting of the painters, married Gypsy Rose Lee, the most famous stripper in the world, and spent the next several years managing her burlesque show.

And then there was Ben Stahl. In his heyday, he was one of the most famous Sarasota artists of all. One of the country’s top illustrators, he was so good he could almost cross the line into fine art. He had an entrepreneurial streak a mile wide and was always trying something new and potentially profitable. He set out to write a novel and it became a bestseller and then a Disney movie. He co-founded the Famous Artists School with his pal Norman Rockwell. He even opened his own museum, the Museum of the Cross, in which he exhibited a series of his own paintings depicting the stations of the cross—the final hours of Jesus’ life.

For three years in the late ’60s, the museum was one of the town’s major tourist attractions. Then, on April 16, 1969, it became something else—the scene of Sarasota’s most baffling mystery.

When Ben and Ella Stahl moved to Sarasota in 1953, the town had already acquired an arty reputation. The stage had been set early. Bertha Palmer had brought her favorite Monet down to hang over her fireplace at the Oaks and John Ringling’s art collection, both eccentric and eclectic, opened to the public in 1936.

Artists like Ben moved here for the simplest of reasons. It was a great place to work. The weather was beautiful, as were the colors of the Gulf and the tropical vegetation. Life here was also relatively cheap, there were many kindred spirits and there was even the circus to liven things up. People still talk about the social life back in those days, and some of the tales get quite racy. The alpha male artist or writer with an inflated ego and a drinking problem—we had our share.

Ben was not like that. I knew him during the last year of his life, and found him charming and great company, yet always a little reserved. Unlike most of the artists, he didn’t talk much about himself. He was the sort of person who, when he left the room, everybody started talking about him.

There was a lot to talk about. He had been one of the top illustrators in the country at a time when illustrators were in high demand. It was the golden age of magazines, and it was men (they were invariably men) like Ben who drew the illustrations that accompanied the articles and the ads. Ben illustrated more than 750 stories and covers for the Saturday Evening Post, the gold standard of 1950s mainstream media.

And it wasn’t just the Post. His work also appeared in Vogue, Ladies’ Home Journal, Collier’s and more. He even drew Coca-Cola ads. He was the guy who got the plum assignments. Esquire hired him to do 12 portraits of beautiful young girls, each one typical of her European country.

He had his own style, or rather a style that pulled from the work of many famous artists—a little Renoir, a little Degas, a little Picasso and, when he was getting serious, a little El Greco. But he had a happy view of life. His favorite subject was a voluptuous nude, blissfully plump and smiling. I happen to know, because I own one. I won it from him in a poker game.

Of course, the Saturday Evening Post would only publish so many nudes, so he had other specialties. He had an affinity for religious paintings, very dramatic in color and composition, with figures posed to suggest the Old Masters. But he could please anybody. Even the Air Force, which hired him to do a series of paintings for their academy in Colorado Springs. His work even hangs in the Pentagon.

Ben became a leader in Sarasota’s artist colony, perhaps the most vocal. “He was a domineering presence in the community,” wrote Marcia Corbino, “a catalyst who was stimulated by obstacles.” He was always advocating for increased funding for the arts and getting into spats with politicians. He raised a terrible ruckus when members of the Florida Legislature refused to pay him for a portrait they commissioned of Gov. Claude Kirk.

His talent was not limited to painting. After an argument with John D. MacDonald about which was more difficult, writing or painting, he set out to write a novel. How hard could it be? The result was Blackbeard’s Ghost.

And, since he happened to have an appointment in California, he decided that while there he should talk to Walt Disney about his book, as yet unpublished. Walt was intrigued by this person from Florida who somehow managed to get his phone number and invited him to lunch at his studio. Three days later, Walt bought the movie rights and William Morrow called, looking to publish the novel. The book won prizes and the movie was a success. Everybody was pleased, except Ben, who told people, “The movie was horrible.”

The reason for Ben’s trip to Los Angeles was just as unlikely and just as thrilling. He was to paint a nude portrait of Ursula Andress—the original Bond girl—that would hang over the bar in a movie called 4 for Texas, also starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Anita Ekberg. Stahl’s work was often used for movie publicity. He did a series of paintings to promote Ben-Hur in 1959.

The Stahls had four children, whom many old timers around town remember from high school. The family was well known for their lavish home. It was designed by Sarasota School architect Victor Lundy and is credited with being the first of the Siesta Key showplaces. Ben did his best to adjust to modernism, but all those glass walls bothered him. There was nowhere to hang paintings. “It took us 10 years to rework it and make it livable,” he complained.

But life was glamourous. There was always an exciting, lucrative project to work on, many of them abroad. Neighbor MacKinlay Kantor suggested the Stahls spend some time in Torremolinos, Spain, where they hung out with Hemingway and Jacques Cousteau. During a stay in Hong Kong, they discovered a 4-year-old girl who played the piano like a pro, only cuter. Her name was Ginny Tui. They arranged for her to come to the States, where she appeared on Ed Sullivan, created a sensation and then went on to a successful acting career that included appearing in Girls! Girls! Girls! with Elvis Presley.

Ben had been somewhat of a child prodigy himself. His grandmother saw his talent early and took him to museums. But he had no formal education and never went to art school. At 16, he began working at a commercial art studio. That same year, he placed a watercolor in a prestigious exhibit.

To Ben, the role of the artist was not that of a tortured soul but rather an explainer, a guide. The artist was there to entertain, delight and inspire. It was this attitude that made him such a great teacher. Practically all the visual artists in the colony taught. Sarasota in the ’50s was clogged with art schools. There was Syd Solomon’s school, the Hartman school, Hilton Leech’s school, Jerry Farnsworth and Helen Sawyer’s school—they were everywhere.

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