'Nose Art' Artist of World War II Featured in Documentary

Wow, he lives just down the road from me! One of our offices is in Rocky River.


Back when World War II aviators flew on a wing and a prayer, often with a good-looking gal attached, Don Allen was one of the guys who put them there.
The women, that is. Allen was a Cleveland Institute of Art graduate and U.S. Army Air Forces fighter crew chief who used planes for his palette during the war.

For $35, pilots commissioned Allen to paint designs on their aircraft, in fanciful depictions of their wives, girlfriends, kids or favorite cartoon characters. The works of Allen and other artists became known as “nose art,” for the common location of these designs was near the front of the planes.

Allen is featured in a new documentary, “Nose Art and Pin-Ups,” made by British filmmaker Gail Downey, who traveled across America in search of artists like Allen and the former U.S. flight crews of World War II.

Downey said in a recent email that some of the designs — particularly the racier, scantily clad, suggestive versions — may not be “politically correct” by today’s standards. But to those flying this artwork into harm’s way, “when they were facing the possibility of death every day they flew, these images were a comfort to them,” she added.

Allen, 93, now living at the Lutheran Home at Concord Reserve, in Westlake, said the nose art is one way of keeping alive the legacy of his unit, the 4th Fighter Group. He described the pastime as a creative break from his usual routine of readying fighters for combat. Unlike other nose art painters, Allen avoided depictions of nude women, opting instead for occasionally daring but always discreet images.

Each of his 65 designs — primarily painted on P-47 Thunderbolt and P-51 Mustang fighters — has a story behind it. A pilot who was a former Golden Gloves fighter from Missouri got a boxing mule painted on his plane. Maj. Duane Beeson flew the “Boise Bee.”

An irate monkey drawing that Allen dubbed “Old Red Ass” represented a common complaint of pilots who flew on long missions. But on a sad note, “Miss Dallas,” will always represent the pilot who never came back.

Reproductions of his designs are now displayed at the Seymour Johnson Air Force Base in North Carolina. Allen said he was surprised by the documentary and interest by new generations in nose art. “After all these years, people are still interested,” he said, “which is kind-of strange but kind-of nice, too.”

(“Nose Art and Pin-Ups” is available through www.amazon.com for $25 plus postage, or www.noseartfilms.co.uk.)




Don Allen displays reproductions of his nose art at an exhibit at the Rocky River Public Library.

 

Here is a youtube link with Don Nose Art: Don Allen - YouTube

 

What a man, I love those nose art paintings

 

very very cool Ike, so my friend does time permit you to go see and interview him............. ? one of your links : ....... I note a friend and his nose art on his 356th fg Mustang, Robert Barnhart, interviewed and called on the tele to both of them at length, his wife was a riot on the phone. Robert shot down an Ar 234 confirmed as one of his 2 aerial victories.

 

Oh, now that is an idea Erich. I would not know what to ask. Guess first step is to locate and get in contact with him.

 

Ike

a simple question is why him for picking out to do up 8th AF fighter nose art ? many of the 9th AF Jug groups had their own personal artists that did much of the overabundant nose art on the big engine cowlngs of those birds.