Name/Title
Barn Door Mural, Gale PageContext
According to a Malabar Farm State Park, "Ohio Heritage Days" newspaper insert from the early 1980s, Louis Bromfield commissioned actress Gale Page to paint the original mural on the door of the main barn at Malabar Farm.
Gale Page was born Sally Perkins Rutter in Spokane, Washington, on July 29, 1913. She was working as a vocalist for the Ted Weems Orchestra in 1938 when she signed a contract with Warner Brothers Studio. Between 1938 and 1949, Page starred in 16 films. She appeared in the 1948 James Cagney film The Time of Your Life. She also appeared in four early Humphrey Bogart films; the 1938 films Crime School and The Amazing Dr. Chitterhouse, the 1939 film You Can't Get Away With Murder, and They Drive By Night in 1940. Both James Cagney and Humphrey Bogart were good friends of Louis Bromfield, and both men visited Malabar Farm many times. Humphrey Bogart married Lauren Bacall at Malabar Farm on May 21, 1945. Louis Bromfield served as his best man. Gale Page page died in California in 1983.
"In my boyhood nearly all these barns... had painted on the big sliding barn door a whole farm landscape for which the farm itself served as a model and in it appeared bulls and cows, calves and stallions, hens and ducks and guinea fowls, horses and sheep, and hogs."
˗ Louis Bromfield, Pleasant Valley, 1945
The tradition of painting farm animals on barn doors dates back to medieval Germany. Originally these "hex" paintings were done to safeguard against the spells cast on livestock by witches, vampires, and other assorted demons. It was believed that the magic would descend upon the animals represented in the painting and not on the actual animals.
- Research and text by Thomas Bachelder of the Malabar Farm FoundationLocation
Building
The Big HouseOhio State Park
Malabar Farm State Park
