SS United States - The Curious Case of the Castrated Bull - Part III
Still, the question remained: where had the original offending sculpture been installed aboard the ship? It’s worth noting here that we mostly see the same photos of the SS UNITED STATES' interiors over and over again, and in all the available images, I’d never seen a picture of a bull anywhere aboard, and certainly not one that had been neutered. To further obscure the mystery, a bull is referenced in the famous 1984 Guernsey’s auction catalog as part of lot A539 described as: “TWO ALUMINUM SILHOUETTES, Pegasus and Taurus, by Michael Lantz.” Pegasus the winged horse is shown in a photograph, but alas not the poor overlooked Taurus the bull. And now we’ve gone from Purves to Lipton and now Lantz. It appears Guernsey’s got it right. Michael Lantz did indeed created the metal bas relief silhouettes that adorned the walls of the Cabin Class Dining Room, and one of them was a bull. Could Braynard have gotten his facts wrong? It’s worth noting I briefly considered the theory that the piece might have been severed from Pegasus. As you can see in the photo below, there’s a bit of a “nub” where certain parts would normally be, but unless all the images of this sculpture have been flipped horizontally, the puzzle pieces definitely do not fit.
I then wrote to my friend Noelle, who has carefully curated her father’s archives. Here’s my query:
“In the "Big Ship", your father wrote that the sculpture was a bull by artist Seymour Lipton on the wall of the Tourist Class Dining room, but research indicates that the TCDR had wall art of a much more mid-century abstract nature (in keeping with the style of Lipton’s work). The Guernsey’s catalog from the auction lists sculptures by Michael Lantz from the walls of the CCDR, one being Pegasus (and there’s a picture), the other is Taurus (a bull!), but just to really frustrate things, there’s no photo in the catalog and I’ve never come across one in all my research. I can’t help but wonder if this Taurus piece by Lantz was the original owner of the purloined phallus in question. So I’m still trying to get a little more information into what I believe is, arguably, the crown jewels of SS UNITED STATES collecting (sorry, couldn’t resist)!”
Noelle wrote back promptly, and included a photo she’d taken of an earlier draft of the paragraph from the book, this one with penciled cross outs and handwritten notes:
The Case of the Bull: One of the Austin Purvis (here Braynard has crossed out Purvis’ misspelled name and substituted Seymour Lipton) Seymour Lipton aluminum sculptures (?) was a bull (question mark from Braynard’s notes). The aluminum bull was featured in the Cabin Class Dining Room (where?) (Again, Braynard’s note). It had a most obvious male organ and on the trial trip this caught the eye of the sedate New York Times ship news editor, George Horne. George questioned the taste of the decoration with this feature. Public Relations Director of the shipyard, Bob Hopkins, found himself the center of a storm. The matter went all the way up to WFG. Some weeks later in his 3rd floor ship news office at 229 West 43rd Street George Horne was surprised to receive a large package from Newport News. Opening it, he found the offending member affixed to a polished plaque – a gift to him from the shipyard. He gave it to the author twenty-five years later when he retired. The emasculation brought something of a tempest down on Gibbs and Cox, because Seymour Lipton objected strenuously and quite naturally to the decision to alter his work.
As Noelle explained to me, Braynard made some revisions to the manuscript after an interview with Ann Urquhart in 1978 (one of the ship’s original interior designers), changing the artist from Purves to Lipton, and the bull’s location from Tourist to Cabin. Though curiously, in the 1981 edition of the published work, the bull’s been sent back down to steerage but is still attributed to Lipton. Further muddling the mystery, Noelle said the handwritten notes were neither her father nor mother’s handwriting. Still, an intriguing if frustrating clue.
I was inclined to chalk this all up to human error. It’s possible Urquhart got the names muddled, but the result was that both Swann and Braynard mixed up various combos of artist and location. By this time, I was leaning closer to the theory the elusive sculpture was in fact Taurus by Michael Lantz. With the metal bull’s junk as my only clue, I scoured my books and the internet for images, hoping to find a match as if reenacting a bizarre spin on Prince Charming and Cinderella’s slipper. No such luck.
Enter author, historian, preservationist, passionate devote of the SS United States and all around good guy, Stanton Daywalt, one of the authors of the exceptional SS United States: An Operational Guide to America’s Flagship. We became acquainted while he was putting the finishing touches on his book, having reached out to me for some images of items in my collection. I told him the tale of the gelded bull, and he enthusiastically joined the hunt, also confirming the sculpture was no doubt the work of Michael Lantz.
A few months later, Stanton texted that he’d found the desexed bull. Well, a picture of it anyway. He had access to a treasure trove of seldom seen photos, including many taken aboard the ship by John DeVenney. And good old Taurus the bull was among them! With a quick bit of Photoshop wizardry, I was able to reunite the bull with his manhood. Not only was it a perfect fit, it also made clear the origins of the scandal. As originally envisioned by the artist, the piece really does seem wholly inappropriate for a public family dining room.
And with that mystery solved, a bigger question has emerged: who bought the impotent bull sculpture at the Guernsey’s auction and where is it today? Are the current owners aware of its missing bits? Is it in pieces gathering dust in a box in someone’s garage? Displayed on a wall somewhere people have long forgotten its origins? I hope to find it someday, and if it’s for sale at the right price, I’ll make the reunion permanent.
Comments