By William Knoedelseder
You don’t have to be a car nut to appreciate the intrigue, artistry, and history behind Harley Earl, the man of whom Alfred Sloan said, “With the possible exception of Henry Ford, no other person has single-handedly contributed more to the evolution of the modern automobile industry.”
About the author: Bill Knoedelseder is a veteran journalist who honed his investigative and narrative skills at the Los Angeles Times, where his groundbreaking reporting on the entertainment industry produced a string of juicy exposes and two critically acclaimed books, I’m Dying Up Here and Stiffed: A True Story Of MCA, The Music Business, And The Mafia. from his website.
The book in a sentence (or two): Fins is the story of the birth of a cultural icon (automotive tail fins) and Harley Earl, the man whose vision and expertise brought styling to the forefront of the automotive industry.
Why did Knoedelseder write Fins?
Knoedelseder notes that if anyone knows Harley Earl today, it is probably as the “father of tail fins.” But a host of car collectors and historians think differently, they will tell you “that the American car industry’s rise to greatness began and ended with [Harley Earl]” (8). It could be said that his “touch” was felt on the nearly 50 millions cars that came out of Detroit during his twenty-nine years with GM. He “practically invented” automotive styling and, with Alfred Sloan, shifted the automotive production focus from engineering to styling. Harley Earl is a life and story worth knowing for we are still feeling his impact today.
Give me the quick take on Harley Earl:
1. He grew up in Hollywood (late 19th/early 20th centuries) when it was a “dirt-street village.” He worked in his father’s carriage company, the focus of which moved from buggy's to automobile bodies.
2. The movies and the automobile were both born in 1895. The movies came to Hollywood for the and easy filming. That move reshaped the city.
3. Harley saw the importance of individual styling when it came to the carriages and then the automotive carriage. He started Earl Auto Works.
4. Hollywood and Automobiles were on the rise. “The automobile is essential to comfort and happiness,” said Harper’s Weekly. There were a few thousand cars at the beginning of the decade; 500,000 million by the end of the decade.
5. Harley Earl became well known for his visionary styling and expertise especially among the Hollywood jetset. Cecil B. DeMille lived just down the street and the two became friends.
6. GM hired Earl (1926) to come to Detroit rather than send cars to be built by him in California. Earl’s first car for GM was the LaSalle which was a hit with GM CEO, Alfred P. Sloan. The two became fast friends which, coupled with Earl's expertise, gave Harley carte blanche styling control over all GM.
7. Earl enjoyed a 27-year reign as styling chief at General Motors. He influenced virtually every model at GM and styling in general across the automotive industry -- this even though he did not draw (109,110, 148). “Earl’s real talent lay in his critical eye . . . which was always focused firmly on the bottom line. He was an uncanny commercial critic with an extraordinary ability to anticipate the sales success of a design.” 148
8. He was arrogant (134, 205) and a publicity hog (112). Rule #1: ‘No one was to get publicity in his department but Harley J. Earl.”
9. He was a workaholic. (see below)
10. He left an amazing legacy of designers: Every studio was filled with—if not directed by—men he had trained, Eugene Bordinat (Ford); Virgil Exner (Chrysler); Elwood Anderson (American Motors); Richard Teague (Packard).
The author's central purpose: To give us a picture of the rise of Harley Earl and the impact of styling on the automotive industry.
My take on Fins:
Bill Knoedelseder provides an overview of Automotive American history in general, GM styling in particular, and Harley Earl as the genius behind the movement that changed the automobile industry. Perhaps few saw the rise of the automobile as did filmmaker Cecil B. DeMille:
“It didn’t escape him that the motion picture and the motorcar were born in the same year, 1895, and the subsequent rise of both industries reflected, as he put it, ‘the love of motion and speed, the restless urge toward improvement and expansion, the kinetic energy of a young, vigorous nation.’ 36
The author helps us catch a sense of that expansion on the automotive front, primarily through the lens of Harley Earl, the styling champion of Detroit.
But Knoedelseder does more than give us “just the facts.” He introduces Harley Earl in a way that provides a glimpse of America, our excesses (tail fins and chrome and Tom Mix, 56-57), our sacrifices (USA and WWII), our triumphs (Detroit and GM’s manufacturing dominance) and our failures (Blacks were “blacklisted” from buying Cadillacs, 119; and many necessary to our success in WWII were dismissed after the war without recourse despite the efforts of Dreystadt and others, 164-167). Knoedelseder shows us that great innovations take time and never occur in a vacuum. And in unveiling a portrait of Harley Earl that is both favorable and critical we get a better picture of our subject, but also of our times and ourselves.
My Takeaways:
1. Leaders must pay attention to their organizational structure and their cultural milieu: GM CEO Alfred Sloan saw and corrected, i.e. changed GM’s divisions competing for the same customer by focusing each of his five divisions on a different customer. He also shifted the manufacturing impetus from engineering to style. "Style should drive the industry!" Henry Ford, for his part, “remained defiantly committed to his original business model of building a simple, durable, and economical car with no extras, no trimmings, no color even, only black, because black paint was the cheapest and dried the fastest. . . . [H]is stubborn resistance to change was beginning to put his company at a disadvantage. 47,48 Harley Earlworked in his father’s coach company, but shifted the focus from “guaranteeing satisfaction” to “express your tastes and ideas so that your coach may be an expression of your individuality.”
2. Recognize what you need from your administrative assistant: When Harley Earl went to GM in 1927, he had no secretary, no staff, and no studio. His did not understand the company’s organizational structure or people. William Fisher of the Fisher Body division said, “I have a man (Howard O’Leary) working for me that goes between plants. He’s been doing it for a couple of years, and he’s a very smart young fellow and knows everybody at the divisions and in our plants and subsidiaries. He knows where to find everybody.” Earl hired O’ O’Leary. He would serve as Harley Earl’s administrative assistant for twenty-seven years.
3. The importance of sticking with it. Today, no one would think of “killing the Corvette.” It is America’s super car, but were it not for a couple of individuals, Harley Earl being one of them, the Vette would have suffered the same fate as the Thunderbird. When cost-cutting Robert McNamara took control of the books at Ford, he trimmed the bird’s wings. Earl was not going to let that happen. Even though GM lost money on the Corvette for a few years, it survived because one person utilized his influence to save it.
4. Beware of “hubris born of success.” Jim Collins gave us that great line How The Mighty Fall. In later years, Harley Earl (and the GM design team) – like Henry Ford before them – thought he/they could do no wrong. “The company’s postwar dominance had led to an atmosphere of arrogant complacency, a feeling among the designers that they were ‘so far ahead of Ford and Chrysler that we weren’t even breathing close to them. [We] could almost trot and stay ahead’” (250). At just that time (1959) Chrysler had crept up on them and passed them. When GM engineers saw the new Chrysler models, one quipped, “My god, they blew us out of the tub.” 249
5. Tell the Emperor he/she has no clothes: Pride and egotism was a fault line running through the life of Harley Earl. “Harley had one rule that was never stated but that everyone came to learn nonetheless: ‘No one was to get publicity in his department but Harley J. Earl’” (112 131). Earl signed off on one press release that described him as a man of “towering genius” (205). Not only was he prideful, he did not tolerate pushbacks. Consequently, when a design idea went sideways, silence – not criticism – prevailed.
None of the young Turks expressed those [critical/negative] feelings to Harley, however, not even Bill Mitchell. . . . They said nothing at the time because they all knew what happened to people who broke Rule Number One.
6. Workaholic leaders impact everyone around them, not just themselves. About his workers: Designer Thomas L. Hibbard said, “It’s tough to be creative around the clock” (107), but 25/7 was what Harley lived and expected. There were no personal/professional boundaries. Weekends, holidays, and religion all disappeared din the crunch. Bernie Smith remembered working three months straight without a day off. About his wife: In exchange for his putting in however many hours it took to provide them with an enviable standing of living, she did practically everything for him except pick out his wardrobe: household problems, nightly dinners, manage social arrangements, navigate corporate relations. 263-4
Conclusion:
Today’s cars are engineering marvels though many appear to have been taken from the cookie cutter design studio. Where there is design, however (and there is still much design to appreciate), we can look with gratitude to the life and influence of Harley Earl.
