The daughter of Norwegian immigrants, Carol McCallson (1928-1988) grew up on the West Coast, and started out with Dorothy Prebble’s Hollywood model agency in the early Forties. She made the leap to Manhattan, and to the Fords, three years later – and quickly became a success, working regularly with Frances McLaughlin, William Claxton (her high-school boyfriend) and Francesco Scavullo – whom she would marry in 1952, and leave 18 months later.
Following her divorce, McCallson continued to model for a couple of years, predominantly in advertisements. And then she married well, but briefly (as so many of the Ford Agency’s early faces did), to a Manhattan stockbroker. It’s not a desperately interesting story in itself, and the world of junior modeling was only ever glancingly recorded – but McCallson (a wistful figure with a passion for jazz – and a weakness for jazz musicians – what one magazine called an ‘over-determined mouth’) deserves, at the least, a larger footnote in model history.
Take a look at these fabulous photos to see portraits of young Carol McCallson as a model in the 1940s and ’50s.
Carol McCallson on the beach, St. Augustine, Florida, photo by Frances McLaughlin-Gill, 1948
Carol McCallson on the beach, St. Augustine, Florida, photo by Frances McLaughlin-Gill, American Vogue, 1948
4Carol McCallson in fly-away beachcoat over bathing trunks-and-bra in green and white cotton by McMullen, photo by Frances McLaughlin, Vogue, December 1, 1948
Carol McCallson in summer fashion photographed for Vogue by Horst P. Horst, Oyster Bay, New York, 1948
Carol McCallson in white shirt and blue Crompton corduroy shorts by Carolyn Schnurer, photo by Horst P. Horst, Vogue, May 1948
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