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George McQuerry Jr. was the staff designer at Walter M. Murphy in the 1920s.
In the meantime, Murphy managed to bring together some of the finest young
design talent on the west coast. Wellington Everett Miller began his
apprenticeship as a part-time artist under Murphy staff designer George McQuerry
Jr. Two other marvellously gifted young designers who started with Murphy were Franklin Quick Hershey and Philip O.
Wright. Hershey arrived at Murphy in 1928, and Wright joined later that year. They learned from each other, Wright
teaching Hershey a watercolor illustrating technique, and both contributed to the coachbuilder's greatest designs
during that golden age when Murphy put more bodies on Model J and SJ Duesenberg chassis than any other body-maker in
the nation. Hershey's low, luscious designs on the L-29 Cord included the sweepside dual-cowl phaeton (three built),
and Wright designed a pair of L-29 town cars for Lola Montez and John Barrymore, plus several other magnificent L-29
Cords.
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George McQuerry Jr.'s father was head bookkeeper of the company, and it
was natural that his son was drawn to the fascinating arena of custom body
construction. Like Miller, he was in his teens when hired by Frank Spring as
a body draftsman. Murphy agreed to sponsor some special education toward a
design career, and so the company paid for his courses in "mass and color"
at the Otis Art Institute. Not all of George's work was on the drawing
board, and occasionally he was called on to deliver a customer's car, for
which he was paid an additional standard fee. No matter whether the
customer lived in San Francisco of Pasadena, it was always the same: $.55.
Once in a while, this extraordinary responsibility would meet a severe
test, as for instance on the day before one of the annual coachbuilders' Los
Angeles Salons. The exhibitors' entrance to Biltmore Hotel was supposed to
close at 3:00 p.m., and George was handed the keys to a very special
Rolls-Royce at the coachworks in Pasadena some 10 miles away at 2:55 p.m.
The Murphy display was assigned the choice first four places next to the
grand staircase, and early visitors to the show that year may recall that it
was distinguished for awhile by the authentic aroma of very warm metal.
George continued as a designer and layout man until 1932, being responsible
in many cases for determining the practicability of new design suggestions
and seeing that their subsequent development was carried through.
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