Palm Springs Life - February 22 1961 - Cover Poster

Palm Springs Life cover Illustration by Earl Cordrey.

So what's so unusual about a dog wearing sunglasses? Especially, if he's a poodle and lives in Palm Springs.

Earl Cordrey (1902-1977) was a founder of Palm Springs Life who designed the original logo and illustrated covers for the magazine until the mid-1960s.

A Southern California native, he trained at the prestigious Chouinard School of Art (which was since absorbed by CalArts) and worked in the studio of the revered early desert landscape painter Sam Hyde Harris before marrying his wife, Catherine, moving to New York, and devoting himself to magazine illustration.

The couple moved to the desert in the early 1940s, and Cordrey quickly became a fixture of the local art scene.