Who was D.M. Bartley?

Like many of our readers, I often read articles by a ‘D.M. Bartley’ in a variety of automobile magazines in the 1950s and 1960s. And then, as now, I was fascinated by automotive journalists, be they Ken Purdy or Henry Manney, but there was scant information about Bartley, who remained a mystery for a number of years. Years ago, I decided to ask a few writers to tell us what they knew about D.M. Bartley. Jim Sitz, Karl Ludvigsen, and the late Denise McCluggage all pitched in with their impressions. Doing more research, through Clark University, we found Abigail Kimball, Bartley’s friend and neighbor, who was glad to provide even more information about Diana Bartley as well as a few photos from the Bartley collection. We begin with Abigail’s story.

Abigail Kimball:

Diana Bartley was born on June 18, 1926 in Toledo, Ohio. She died on July 31, 2011 at age 85 in New York City.

She developed a bone infection in her hip when she was a teenager, which was exacerbated when she was in a car accident a year or two later. Although she had to use a crutch the rest of her life, she didn’t let that get the better of her. She painted her crutches to match her clothes and she bounded across 7th Avenue, as my husband Robert would report to me aghast, in the middle of the block against the light. Her independent spirit was already evident when she was a senior in high school. The yearbook includes the results of the senior class poll: Diana came in second for most argumentative – but also first for wittiest.

She graduated from the University of Miami, where she took a lot of English and music courses – and was a lifelong enthusiast of classical music. She began her career in New York in public relations, worked for a publishing company, where she proved to be a good editor, and found her calling when she landed a job as the managing editor of Auto Age. She didn’t have any particular automobile expertise in the beginning, but as she once wrote, “A good editor can edit anything.” Auto Age went out of business in 1956. In a 1962 summary of her career up to that point, she wrote:

“For the last five years, she wrote, I have been called variously an automotive journalist, a motoring writer and a lady car nut. What I do is write articles about automobiles – their innards, their stylistic outards, their past and future, their success and failure and the people who build them, drive them and race them. These stories are bought with some regularity by Esquire magazine and sporadically by such publications as Saturday Review, True, Sport, the New York Times, Car & Driver, Road and Track. Somewhat fitfully, I also produce a bi-weekly news from America column for several car magazines and newspapers – currently one each in France, Germany, Italy and Belgium.”

The work took her to Europe often and to the world of race cars. In 1963 she moved into the Alwyn Court in Midtown Manhattan; she lived here for almost 50 years. In 1977 Robert and I moved into the apartment next door and had the privilege of becoming Diana’s neighbor and friend. By then she had switched from writing about cars to working as a financial advisor. Her two standout accomplishments during the many years we knew her were her superb leadership of the Alwyn Court Tenants Association, which stood up for and protected the rights of the building’s tenants during a nasty co-op conversion. and even more impressive, her assembling and donating a priceless Holocaust book collection for Clark University’s Holocaust Studies department. This project occupied her for probably a dozen years and she was working on her lists of books two days before she died even though she was in fragile health. She was well-read, well informed on a wide range of subjects, loved jokes, was a friend you could always depend on – I’ll miss her.

Jim Sitz:

On February 25, 1956 at Palm Springs, I was having coffee with Phil Hill next to the Ecurie von Neumann transporter. It was cold and windy. Suddenly Phil asked me if I was going down to Florida for the big International race. He knew I was not ready to take the big jump and go to Europe as he was, but Sebring might be a good first step for me. I told him it would be expensive, but his response was, well, if you are serious about being a journalist, you simply have to go!

I took his advice and sent a few color photos to the editor of a popular magazine at the time called Auto Age. I was lucky; the editor liked my work and gave me a job as the West Coast representative for the magazine, which in turn encouraged me to go to Sebring where I could meet the editor.

When I arrived, I immediately sought out Hill by getting up on the pit roof as he was getting ready for practice. I called his name; he looked up, surprised to find me there. (Luckily, I captured his surprise on film.) I asked him if he knew where I could find this guy Bartley, my new boss. Phil laughed and yelled up, “SHE is over there, with Chinetti!”

My new boss was Diana Bartley. But the masthead of the magazine listed the editor as “D.M. Bartley.” She was a woman working in the male-dominated workplace of the 1950s, and like Denise McCluggage and the late Dorothy Deen (AKA Ms. Doretti)) had similar problems during that era.

So when Diana and I met, we were both surprised; me, the 17-year-old reporter, and her, the female editor of a car magazine. In our correspondence, she hadn’t mentioned her gender and I hadn’t mention my age! My first real assignment for Auto Age was Pebble Beach a month later.

She once told me that she began at Auto Age in 1953 by sending them a story about driving around Europe in a very small car called a Rovin shortly after she graduated from college. The story was eventually published in the December 1953 issue of Sports Cars and Hot Rods by Fawcett, [http://www.uniquecarsandparts.com.au/lost_marques_rovin.htm] although as I recall Diana told me that the trip was in about 1949 or so.

I remember her as an extremely bright lady, lovely white skin, very dark hair, very well-read and Intelligent.

Both Phil and I were impressed with her knowledge. She was a real trouper, and despite having a crippling bone infection as a child, she never let this slow her down, often hauling around several Leicas and a notepad all while getting around on a crutch.

After Auto Age went under, she went free-lance and wrote pieces for Esquire, Harper’s Bazaar, SCI and Road & Track, and would edit the English edition of AUTOMOBILE YEAR, traveling to Lausanne to do so.

Although she was almost ten years my senior, she insisted taking me to a new affair in New York; lunch at Sardis for the new Madison Avenue Sports Car and Chowder Society, which must have been the second gathering in April of 1957. Everyone there was in a great mood, and she introduced me as the “poor” guy who is going off to Europe and cover the racing season. This announcement was met by facetious boos from the audience, which included her co-editor at Auto Age, Harvey Janes.

Diana had considered me to be her discovery. She gave me letter of introduction to the director at Monza, and another to Count Johnny Lurani. She was well connected and each year went to Lausanne to work on the English version of Automobile Year for Mr. Ami Guichard. When I returned from Europe, she generously let me share her office.

My last real piece of work for her was the winter of 1959/60. I was sent to Reventlow’s shop on Jefferson Boulevard to photograph building of new Scarab GP car for the 1960 season.

We kept in touch occasionally via phone and letters over the years, even though she had lost interest in her automotive past. In 2010, I sent her the photo of her and Phil at Sebring and she seemed genuinely touched.