In this episode Mark Golden is joined by his older brother Tom, who shares his recollection of spending time with his Dad, Sam Golden, and Uncle Leonard Bocour at the Bocour shop in Manhattan.
Mark Golden: Hi everyone, and welcome once again to my podcast I call Paint Stories. I’m Mark Golden, Co-founder of Golden Artist Colors with my father and mother Sam and Adele Golden, and my wife Barbara. In this podcast today I’m finally joined by older brother Tom Golden. Thanks, Tom, for joining us.
Tom Golden: Thanks, Mark, for having me.
Mark: There’s quite a few people that were real excited about you joining me, and you have quite a fan base. Tom is the Vice President of the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts, and a practicing doctor of clinical psychology for close to 50 years. During various gatherings both Tom and I have shared stories about the history of Golden Artist Colors, and the earlier history of Bocour Artist Colors and our Dad, Sam Golden, and our great uncle Leonard Bocour.
During the first two podcasts I had the opportunity to share some of those very early argent stories of Bocour and the place that these two companies have played within the community of painters since 1932. So literally today is our 40th anniversary since starting Golden Artist Colors. Actually couldn’t be a better time, especially since Tom is also homebound.
I’m so grateful to have my brother help me share these stories in a way that only he can. As much as I’ve been told some of the stories of the early days by my Dad, Tom was actually around during some of those early days with Dad and our great uncle Lenny. Tom, can we start with what was your earliest memories of Dad and Uncle Leonard?
Tom: Yeah, absolutely. I just wanted to make it clear I’m not homebound due to Alzheimer’s or some dementia. I’m homebound due to obliging the rules of COVID-19. Yeah, my earliest memories of Dad and Uncle Leonard. Clearly my earliest memories of Dad is as being big and very strong. Sort of that’s it, and working. Every day he worked and came home from work.
Uncle Leonard, obviously my memories of Leonard would be primarily prompted by my Dad’s involvement with his Uncle in Bocour Artist Colors. And any early on memories I have of Uncle Leonard, or “Label” was the name that we all had for Uncle Leonard had to do with the paint company, and also his closeness and relationship with my Dad and my Mom.
Mark: I know the early stories of Bocour began with a partnership with his childhood friend, Irwin Lefcourt. Did you get to meet Irwin and his wife Sarah?
Tom: I met them actually several times. The very first time I met was when I was an unemployed singer, performer in my early 20s. Was looking for work as a performer in the city, and on a particular day I knew about the Art Fair Gallery. I think it was around 14th Street off of 2nd Avenue in Manhattan.
The Art Fair Gallery, it was owned by Irwin Lefcourt. I had known about it, and I went down there on that particular day and on that day I know I spoke to both Irwin and his wife Sarah just about what I was doing in the theater. And they were quite interested in it and very supportive. Didn’t have any work for me singing at the store, but they said – this was in the ‘60s and the City of New York was really desperate for school teachers. “You thought of doing that at least for an income?” I said, “No, I never gave thought to it. I never took a teaching course. I never thought of teaching children.” She said, “Well go for it. I think you can get yourself some work while you’re still pursuing your career.” I did and I started teaching part-time.
And the Art Fair Gallery was a gallery that throughout the years of the Art Fair it was a place where young skillful artists would look to have their work shown for the very first time. And it really was a wellspring for many painters who eventually achieve notoriety in the City of New York and around the nation.
Mark: Leonard described himself as an artist, but I don’t remember that I ever saw any paintings by Uncle Leonard. Have you ever seen?
Tom: No, I’d never seen any paintings by Leonard, and nor had I ever heard him describe himself as an artist. I just knew that he was an artist because he was involved in the world of art, and he was very knowledgeable as in sort of an art historian. Certainly about the New York paint scene, but I never knew him – I don’t think any of the family knew him as a painter any more than my Dad was a painter.
Mark: I know you were born after Dad joined Leonard because he was just 22 years old. Do you know why Dad left the dairy store? The folks had to join Leonard in 1956.
Tom: Yeah, well I was born in ’38. And by the way, in a couple weeks is my 82 birthday.
Mark: Are you expecting a gift?
Tom: Right. Anyway, I was born in ’38, and early on in their marriage the folks bought this shop, or rented a shop on Blake Avenue in East New York, Brooklyn, and it was the Dairy Store. The Dairy Store meaning they sold butter by the barrel. They sold pot cheese and farmer cheese, and they also sold locks and herrings and things of that sort.
My Mom and Dad worked in it. I don’t know, either their background was that they know anything about pot cheese any more than you and I. But they started the store on Blake Avenue and some short time after that, I don’t know how long it was, that store burned to the ground. So it wasn’t that he left the Dairy Store. There was no Dairy Store to leave. They had no insurance either.
So this young couple, this particular tragic event in the business world was not only painful, and distressing, and causing grief, but it probably also did something to their spine in the sense of this happened. It didn’t go right, we’re sorry that it happened, and they went beyond that and continued their life and didn’t become just a depressed sorrowful couple. Well, actually they were joyful when I came along. I’m sure that was helpful.
Mark: Yeah, reason to be joyful. Do you remember when you first visited or worked at the Bocour shop and how it went for you?
Tom: I’m sure it was during high school years. Because I know we moved from East New York, Brooklyn the summer of my 13th birthday. I just had had a bar mitzvah in the city at Rappaport’s Dairy Restaurant. When we left that summer we moved to Hillsdale, New Jersey, and prior to that I don’t think I ever did anything in the factory.
But subsequently, in summer time and on holidays, I frequently went into and worked at the Bocour shop. So that would have been during my high school years. And then clearly during summer time during my college years if I wasn’t doing something else I did some of the part-time work. After my 13th year I spent time at the Bocour plant.
Mark: So like ’51, ’52?
Tom: Yeah, it was about ’51, ’52. Before I went off to Cornell in ’55 I perhaps did summer time there, too, during my Cornell years as a college student.
Mark: Do you remember how many people were working at Bocour at the time?
Tom: At my very first involvement with the factory I think there was maybe were six or seven persons. I’m thinking of two or three of the men who actually made the paint. Several women who worked doing the labeling and boxing, and doing the supply side of the finished products.
Mark: I thought one of the Bogdanoffs.
Tom: Bobby Bogdenoff, he was the nephew of Lenny Bocour and was as a youth, literally youth, 17, 18, 19 years of age, was obviously a extremely skillful trombone player. And, as a consequence, I don’t know how it happened, he got to work with Tommy Dorsey, Harry James, major American bands as a trombone player.
At some point in time he got into difficulty. He and along was playing the trombone and at some point he came to work as the directorship for Bocour Artist Colors. A lovely, lovely guy. Great anecdotes about his musical history. I knew his folks who were uncles and aunts of his. I knew them through my grandmother, Becky.
Mark: Did you get to work any of the equipment at the shop?
Tom: Yeah. Oh, I worked whatever equipment I was allowed to work. Initially I would be just a gopher, go pick up this, go do that, go get a corn beef sandwich or whatever. But early on, even in the high school years, I would be allowed to put X gallons of linseed oil in a stainless steel tank or tub and some other kind of ingredient, some baking soda and whatever, put it in the mixing machines and have it mixed.
And it wasn’t until I was a little bit older, probably in my high school years, or may early college years, that I was allowed to actually stand behind the mills, pour paint into the grinding mills while they were spinning away. Once the well was filled with paint and the mills were turning, go to the front end of the grinding mills and along this trough would come this magnificent folds of cadmium red, and orange, and black, and you’d be able to move that paint into five gallon buckets.
Once in a while the mills would have to be tightened or loosened depending upon the grind of the particular pigment. I never did that because I – people who knew, Sydney, Birdeye, my Dad obviously. And in hindsight I never saw Leonard operate any piece of equipment whenever I was there. Now he may have when I wasn’t there. Maybe at night he went in and tried to make stuff on his own.
Leonard would primarily be in the office and come down to the factory floor once in a while saying hello, but when he would come to the factory floor clearly the demeanor of everyone would be spit shine and attentive to their work. Everyone respected Leonard Bocour. Everyone, including myself obviously.
Mark: Did you have to fill paint by hand?
Tom: Yeah. In the early on this was in the shop on 42nd Street right down from the Lincoln Tunnel, from the McGraw Hill Building. You would fill the lead tubes by hand. There would be a pile of paint in front of you that had been hand mixed by Dad typically. You had a pile of Ultramarine Blue, and with a long spatula knife you’d work the paint so that there was just a thin, long line along one edge of the spatula. And then you would put that line against the open end of the tube, and you would then move the knife across the lip of the open end of the tube, then you’d tap the tube. Moving paint again, you’d pretty well fill a two ounce tube.
And also at that table a stamping machine that you would put the open end of the tube in the stamping machine and stamp it. And then you would make a fold and then stamp it again on that fold, and then stamp it again on the fold. And then at some point when the tube was finished there would be another implant, a metal implant that would have a date on it and a lot number. Something to that effect that you’d put in the machine. And the final stamp would identify the tube with a particular number or a lot number.
Frankly, I don’t know what it – it may have said made in China for all I know. I know I had to put it in place. That was what the final look of the folded tube did, but every one of those was done by hand.
Mark: That was when Dad was still making the paint by hand.
Tom: Yeah. All of it was made by hand.
Mark: Before the mill?
Tom: Yeah. I think it was hand ground, too, as a matter of fact. I don’t remember there being mills. I actually don’t recall that. Maybe there was a mill.
Mark: Right. So this was on 40?
Tom: 42nd Street. That’s when I – I went in with Dad on a pretty regular basis.
Mark: There’s actually very little information about them being on 42nd Street. I think this is the first time I’ve heard about that shop on 42nd Street. I don’t know how long they were there.
Tom: I don’t remember either other than I typically went to that shop by subway, and take a train to the subway and get off at 42nd Street and walk from 8th Avenue to 42nd Street past the McGraw Hill Building.
Mark: Can you confirm the story – there’s a big legend about Leonard and Dad buying a coconut crusher. And I couldn’t understand through any of the work, and even speaking to Dad, whether they actually fixed the coconut crusher to work as a roller mill, or did they buy a real paint mill. Do you know?
Tom: No. When you had mentioned to me about the coconut crusher, well that’s an interesting aspect of that comment, Mark, is that Dad, despite a lack of an engineering degree, or a carpenter degree, or an electrician’s degree, he was truly skillful on his own in that he could figure out things and he was curious.
So I wouldn’t be surprised if they did have a coconut crushing machine, which they got for pennies on the dollar or for nothing, and he attempted to make that into a mill to grind pigment.
Mark: Did Dad or Uncle Leonard ever ask you if you were interested in joining Bocour?
Tom: No, they never asked me if I was interested in joining Bocour. They would ask me to join them for lunch, but that was about it. And I never voluntarily, or on my own even suggested to Dad that someday I’d like to be part, come in. That may be due to the fact on one occasion. When I was quite young, not – well, I was sort of in high school. I was doing tubing, and Uncle Leonard came by and I was putting labels on a tube.
And on this one particular tube you put the label through a little wet machine so the glue got wet, and then you wrap the label around the tube at a certain location, in a certain way so it looked very neat. And Leonard saw me wrapping one and he said spontaneously, much to my pain, “Tom, this isn’t a pushcart,” and he said it in that demeaning kind of way. And I knew pushcarts were a schlocky way to sell oranges and apples on Blake Avenue.
So I knew if someone said you’re doing something like a pushcart probably you were doing something less than professionally. He then showed me what I did wrong on this tube, and he probably was right, but I had done many tubes before then. And fortunately, he didn’t look in the box and see how many I’d screwed up on.
But I know I was so upset. And perhaps the lack of an offer to participate in the company is rooted in my labeling mishap. I doubt it, though, but anyway.
Mark: I want to talk about Dad when he began working in the shop. Obviously he wasn’t trained as a chemist, but he was certainly an inventor, a tinkerer, and willing to do so much of what he did by trial and error, which is actually the case in so much of paint technology. Do you remember any of his experiments?
Tom: Yeah. Well, I remember vividly when he came home on one evening. We were still living in Brooklyn in East New York and our cars were parked tail light to bumper on the street. Forgot what car it was. Not the Empire, not the biggie one, but our first Studebaker, which was a unique car to have in that neighborhood. No one had a car that looked like the Studebaker. It was like a car out of Buck Rogers, out of, you know, the science fiction. Where people were buying Chevys and Dodges, Mom and Dad bought a Studebaker with a bullet front.
Anyway, he had this jar of product and I guess it was Magna. He wanted to protect the bumpers on the car so he coated the bumpers on the Studebaker with Magna. I didn’t think anything of it other than that it was interesting. And it reflected for me in hindsight, not at the time.
The curiosity, the spontaneity and the sort of, if not inventiveness, the desire to do something different, which was not reflected in my Dad being a talker, or explaining things fully about what he was doing. He just was a doer. In any number of ways he clearly was someone who had to do and try, and then try again. And didn’t seem to be particularly dismayed if the last try didn’t go well. He just was comfortable in his skin with doing the next.
When we had our home – we left Brooklyn to Hillsdale, New Jersey, at one time in repainting the house my Dad used our Aqua-Tec Cobalt Blue on the trim of the house and the garage. Well this was a stunning color for the neighborhood. It obviously was a standout to have. Cobalt Blue is a magnificent blue on the trim of the house, and he did it with absolutely no hesitancy.
Adele, my Mom, not that I’m aware of, never seemed to query what Dad was going to do next with whatever he decided to do. I don’t remember them having a major conversation, let alone an argument about Cobalt Blue on the house, or Magna on the bumpers of the car, or even getting the car. They seemed to be simpatico in terms of that aspect of Sam’s desires. Nor do I remember him interfering very much with her totally running the household and every part of our lives.
Mark: Leonard in so much of the recorded history, talks about the Bellini king sized tube that really made Bocour’s success. Certainly it was an important new product because artists at that time after the war were really painting in huge scale. But it wasn’t the Bellini king sized tubes that really made the success, financial success for Bocour, it was really the paint by numbers.
Tom: I remember that vividly from the very onset of the paint by numbers history because I was old enough to be party to it, spoke about it. In New York City on 14th Street there would be a toy fair where people from all over the world, certainly the United States, would present their latest toy invention and have it be seen by vendors.
These two fellas, Al Segal, I remember one name, but two guys had a small operation and they had made a particular item that they introduced. And according to Al they had went down to Miami, Florida to go on a fishing trip, and when they came back to their plant in Long Island City the offices, whatever they had there, they had canvas bags. These large postal bags that have heavy duty rope and locks on the top of them.
But they’re bags that are like could take a whole body, or at least a small body, full of orders for this item that they introduced at this toy fair, and that item was a paint by number paint set. And the paint by number paint set became like the hula hoop being major successful, unique hobby toy item in the United States of America.
And as a consequence they had a need for paint to be made for these paint by number sets. Clearly they made contact with Bocour and directly with my Dad, and he was then put in charge to produce thousands of gallons of paint for the paint by number sets. So much paint for the paint by number sets that Bocour, a five day a week, forty hour work space to a seven day a week, 24/7. Crews in the evening making paint for the paint by number sets.
Well, the making paint was actually the easy part. It was a cheap paint, the colors were not very expensive, they set up formulas. What was critical, and this involved once again, Sammy Golden’s sort of curiosity, or experimental mindset, the paint had to be put in tiny little cups. I don’t know, Mark, what was it like a quarter ounce? I don’t know how much paint.
Mark: Yeah, I think so, yup.
Tom: Maybe a quarter ounce in a plastic cup, which got covered with a plastic cover and put into a set which maybe had 12, 15 colors into a box. They had not any particular technique to do it at this point. My Dad took on the responsibility to find a way to generate the individual cups filled with paint for the paint by numbers set.
He contacted a Mr. Hensler who was an older machinist. They invented the machinery to both fill the cups, then put the cups with a cover on it into another machine, bang, and a blade would come down and cut 144, however many cups it was, which dropped into a big bucket, and that was the successful packaging of these tiny little cups. It was no small potatoes what allowed the paint to be put into kits.
Mark: I know they were selling the paint by number paints to a lot of different manufacturers of the paint by numbers.
Tom: So that aspect of the benefits for Bocour were major. It one it allowed us to move from Brooklyn to New Jersey for paying for school. I mean it was a major, major financial boost for Bocour Artist Colors. Absolutely.
Mark: Bocour was late to making water based acrylic paint. This was first introduced by Liquitex in 1954, and Dad didn’t make water borne acrylic, the Aqua-Tec until 1960. He shared that this was a pretty disastrous time as the original formula was built on an acrylic product from a manufacturer that didn’t use the same source of water as the original successful samples, and all of the product they produced shipped out and hardened within months. They purchased back all the product from customers in 1960.
So it wasn’t until they started working with Rohm and Haas chemist Al Lamy that they were able to finally make a workable product. It was just before this that Leonard married Ruth Hirsch in 1960. And Ruth had some knowledge of Chemistry as I guess a pre-med student, and Leonard asked her to assist Dad. Ruth was in the shop assisting with drawdowns and sharing new ideas.
Tom: I was still doing some work at Bocour when Ruth joined. I remember her in a white smock, sort of a surgeon’s smock as opposed to wearing street clothes that you got paint on. She had two sons, Chuck and Paul. I’m sure that he was disquieted about it, and I’m absolutely positive that he probably reflected that to Mom at home.
Mark: I think that was part of Dad’s pronouncement, “I might be ignorant. I might not be a Chemist, but leave me alone and let me get this done.” I know the relationship with Leonard and Dad broke off in 1971, but before that my brother Steve began working at Bocour. It was Steve who helped negotiate and plan the move of the Bocour shop to Garnerville after the city took over the rights on 52nd Street building to build a Boys Club.
Did you ever get to Garnerville?
Tom: No, I never saw Garnerville. I wasn’t ever at the factory when Steven was there, but I knew he was party to the company for a block of time, and then eventually it went elsewhere.
Mark: Yeah. You know, Steve was responsible for a bunch of new contracts that they were able to negotiate. He was certainly instrumental in, one, being able to grow the company, but also help with the move. That was pretty significant moving out of New York to Garnerville. The shop was about twice as big.
I do think that it was probably that moving, leaving Manhattan as artists would very rarely visit the new shop over the bridge, I think really led to incredible disappointment, and also to the break in the relationship with Dad. That’s when Dad left and sold his share of the company back to Leonard, and headed up to his farm in Upstate New York.
Tom: The Garnerville move, Garnerville in Rockland County, has zero to do, the New York City flavor, the flow, the dynamics of being in midtown Manhattan for since the early ‘30s at least for Leonard, and then for Dad that change had to be traumatic. Although from a business point of view I guess they thought it was appropriate, but it had to have its historical consequences, and emotional consequences for everyone involved. Nothing would be the same.
Now they happened to be a company making paint in a warehouse in Garnerville.
Mark: Mm-hmm. So it was just 10 years later Leonard sold the company to Zipatone, which moved the production to an outside firm in 1982, and he stayed a consultant while he still lived in New York for the next five years, and Leonard passed away in 1993.
Tom: Leonard’s death was a tragedy for all of us. It had to do with the profound presence of Leonard Bogdanoff, Lenard Bocour in the lives of all of us, the children, the relatives, the nieces, the nephews, my grandparents. He was a special man, and throughout my life I only had the fondest feelings for Leonard. And even when my Dad and he left, then leaving was not comfortable, or a happy time, my feelings about Leonard really never changed. He was a special influence on all of us.
In my sophomore year at Cornell he gave me a Plymouth convertible for free, for nothing. He just told Dad one day, they were still partners, and he said, “Have Tom come into the city,” and I came into the city on 87th Street and west end Riverside Drive where he lived. He came down from the building and he gave me the keys to this beautiful baby blue Plymouth convertible. He said, “Here Tom. This car is for you.” I would have never had a car.
I remember driving it up to Ithaca to Cornell, this convertible. Everyone would say, “Where the hell – how did you get this car?” To have gotten an automobile from Leonard that came out of – it’s some level of affection that he felt for me. We spent a great deal of time with each other. He visited frequently in Brooklyn and it would be a great, great day.
It was sort of a festival day when Uncle “Label” would come to have dinner with Sam and Adele and myself, and whatever sibling had been born at that point in our little apartment. This major-domo Uncle Label was coming for dinner was seen as a holiday festival. Everyone loved him, and he was warm and interested, and just great to be with, and he was the most famous person in the Golden clan.
My mother’s family we had Uncle Sidney who was a doctor, who was the best doctor on the whole east coast, but that was on my mother’s side. On the Golden side Lenny Bocour was the most famous person we all knew. He lived in Manhattan. He was married to a movie star. He went all over the world. It was a treat.
The rest of us were just sort of schlepers who lived on Essex Street. I mean what can I tell you? We never got the chance to be as famous as Leonard. Including the move to Garnerville, the falling out, the relationship with Leonard changing, the presence of Ruth, the Steven firing, any number of factors got in the way of what was the joyous relationship of Sam and Leonard for so many years.
A very protected, not just familial like bloodline, a protected Uncle and Nephew, and that’s how we felt about Leonard, too. And adored by my Mom, by us, and Dad loved him. And I know that to the day of Dad’s death he had a real profound affection for his Uncle Leonard.
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