The Collection of Richard Dorso
October 9, 2011
more information
Richard Dorso
An Impeccable Life
Richard John Dorso was born in San Francisco in 1909, the same year that Joan of Arc was declared a Saint. Also born that year were James Mason, Jessica Tandy and Errol Flynn. The average life expectancy in the United States was 47 years, 90% of all doctors had no college education, the average wage was 22 cents an hour and there were 230 murders reported nationwide. Richard remembered watching the great city’s gas lamps being turned on by hand each evening.
His first job was that of an elevator operator at the Spalding athletic equipment company, an environment that would nurture his life long love of and expertise at the game of tennis, a sport he approached with great style and sparkling precision until he was well into his sixties. The quality of his play in later years would earn him frequent matches with the game’s icons like Don Budge, Bill Talbert and Pancho Gonzales.
He married his first wife, Mary Alice Thompson, a Daughter of the American Revolution, in 1934 and subsequently welcomed the birth of two daughters, Francesca and Bianca. A move to Carmel, California precipitated the start of a lifetime of collecting art, a relentless personal passion, and the subject of a thousand scholarly conversations. Always more generous than pedantic, his great joy in life was sharing his love of art with his friends.
In Manhattan in 1951, having already made his mark as an agent to such luminaries as Duke Ellington, Artie Shaw and Lena Horne, Richard began work at Rogers & Cowan, the great PR firm, and was responsible for guiding the careers of a galaxy of stars that included Ethel Merman, Jerome Robbins and Doris Day.
1955 would celebrate his marriage to Betty Downey, one of the world’s great fashion models and later, a respected editor at Glamour magazine. Betty was mother by previous marriages, to sons Robert and James and daughter Nancy. In 1969, after closing the chapter that included successes as a producer and writer for the hit television shows, Sea Hunt, Stoney Burke, The Fugitive, Get Smart, The Patty Duke Show, Bat Masterson and more, a partnership with David Susskind, as well as the start of a close, lifelong friendship with Norman Lear, he and Betty moved to LA to begin another adventure.
The new Beverly Hills clothing and art boutique called Dorso was soon known to all the local cognoscenti as a unique combination of Richard and Betty’s sartorial acumen and their highly evolved decorative and design sense. One couple, after spending a leisurely afternoon being dressed to the nines by the Dorsos while partaking in scintillating conversations about the stunning art hanging on every inch of every wall, were heard to say the experience was like going to Dick and Betty’s for dinner and then getting to pick treasures to take home with them.