Posted on Sep 05, 2019

Frank Frazetta; a Brooklyn Boy in the 1930s

Frank Frazetta was born when the nation fell into the worst economic condition ever faced, the Great Depression. Frank’s parents, Alfred, a jeweler and Mary, a homemaker, were second generation Italian-Americans who cared for and raised Frank and his three sisters in a humble home located in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, NY.

In the 1930s, the economic downfall stole the hopes and dreams of a nation but not for young Frank. Perhaps too young to grasp what was happening to the nation’s economy, Frank knew a better future was in the cards for him, somehow, someway. He knew that if he wanted to achieve certain things in life, like success, he would have to work extremely hard and be consciously independent from his family.

At age 3 he began to draw with an obsession. When he would run out of scratch paper he would grab a novel from his family's bookshelf so he could fill the endpapers with hundreds of doodles. He loved how art made him feel. It made him feel alive. He sold his first crayon drawing to his grandmother for a single penny. That transaction sparked Frank’s confidence and reassured him it was okay to dream big. Quoted in ‘Testament: The Life and Art of Frank Frazetta,’ “I have got thank my grandma for showing me that there was money to be made in art.”

As a child, Frank loved to play with the neighborhood kids, particularly his cousin, Eddie who he nicknamed ‘Lil Sonny’ but anytime he was home or stuck inside on a rainy day, he was sprawled somewhere with a pencil or crayon in hand. Frank remembered Brooklyn as a magical place that fed his imagination. When he entered grade school his teachers began to take note of his talents when he would grace the blackboards with holiday cartoons and filled his notebooks with drawings of classmates. His teachers eventually contacted his parents and urged them to enroll Frank into an art school.

To be continued...