These cute pictures of little Scotty weren't unfamiliar to me ... I'd seen them before, and they are saved in Dropbox (1964). While going through the "kid boxes" from the folk's house, I stumbled upon the originals. They were still stored in the initial envelope, which added some interesting information ...
Pixy Pin-ups! I did a Google search of Dunbar-Stanley Studios to see what was available about them, and found some unusual results. There were several lawsuits listed, although they all seemed to be the same one (
Dunbar-Stanley Studios vs Alabama) dealing with licensing and taxes. There was another article on an antiques/collectables blog that gave some additional information on the company (
Portraits by the Pound) indicating a gimmick for sales, where they would weigh the child, and that was the basis of the cost! Looking at the envelope holding Scotty's pictures, it looks like here in 1964 at this location they had switched to a flat rate for said photos.
Dunbar-Stanley Studios were the exclusive photography studio of the J.C. Penney department store franchise. Some larger stores may have had a full-time photo studio, but the smaller stores made appointments with Dunbar-Stanley to send out a photographer for a few days at a time, several times a year. J.C. Penney actually made the sale, sharing a portion of the profit with Dunbar-Stanley Studios, and all the film was shipped off to North Carolina for processing.
According to an interview in the Victoria Advocate (TX) in 1960, the business was tightly controlled to make baby photography as effective as possible.
The company would only employ “…young and unmarried women, many of whom are recruited from airline hostess schools”, and their training went beyond just clicking a shutter. Training included child psychology, and by the end of their training, whether literally or figuratively, the employees are “required to dismantle and reassemble the camera with her eyes closed.”
A 1966 “Help Wanted: Female” listing from Eugene, Oregon, listed requirements as “Single and over 18; High school graduate; Have good character references.”
The ad outlines the benefits as well: salary during training, a company car with all expenses paid, and after 3 years a free trip to Europe to employees with ‘satisfactory service’. This army of young ladies, high-tech camera in hand, cruised the backroads of America from J.C. Penney to J.C. Penney, trying to get kids to smile. They were certainly successful with young Scotty!
The ‘Pixy’ name remained well into the 1990s, but the current J.C. Penney portrait studios aren’t run by Dunbar-Stanley anymore. Still, when I Googled "Where can I get portraits taken" today... JC Penneys was the first option to come up!
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