Edward Joseph "Joe" Dreany was born on the 29th of February in the Leap Year 1908 in North Bay, Frazer, Ontario, Canada. His father was Joseph B. Dreany, a merchant of Irish ancestry. His mother was Elizabeth Ada Bell. They were married on March 21, 1906.
In 1926 he graduated high school.
In 1928 he began to work as a staff artist in an agency doing graphic layout for newspaper advertising.
In 1941 he recieved freelance assignments to paint magazine covers for Canadian editions of Stag and Yarns.
In 1938 he married Freda May Johnston Dreany, a portrait artist, and they moved to 38 Glenlake Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. They had two children.
During WWII he had a wife and two small children and was therefore not eligible for military service in the Canadian Army, but he instead worked for the war relief effort.
On April 28, 1946 he immigrated to the United States of America. His passport records indicate that he was six foot tall and weighed 190 pounds, with medium complexion and brown hair & eyes. He moved to 22 Woodland Avenue in New Rochelle, a suburb of New York City, and a town whose glory days had almost passed as a prime location for top-notch illustrators, many of whom were soon to move to the Westport Connecticut area.
By 1947 he found work illustrating juvenile adventure novels such as Hank Winton:Smokechaser by Montgomery Atwater for Random House, and Up the Columbia For Furs by Cecil Dryden for Caxton Publications.
In 1947 his wife and children also immigrated to the USA as a permanent residence, and they moved to 18 Edgewood Avenue in Stamford, Connecticut.
From 1947 to 1953 he worked steadily drawing interior story illustrations for pulp magazines, such as Astounding Science Fiction, Exciting Western, Giant Western, Golden West Romances, Masked Rider Western, Popular Detective, Popular Western, The Rio Kid Western, Rodeo Romances, Texas Rangers, Thrilling Sports, Thrilling Ranch Stories, Triple Western, and West.
During this same six-year period he also painted many tripartite covers for the pulp magazines Triple Detective and Triple Western.
From 1956 to 1959 he painted covers and illustrated stories for several Little Golden Books produced by Whitman Publications.
Joseph Dreany died in Stamford Hospital at age fifty-three on May 6, 1961.
© David Saunders 2009 |
