One
of Radebaugh's early hobbies was drawing sleek, futuristic cars. Even after
he had honed his airbrush technique and was doing a wide variety of work in
the late 1930s, he continued to create luminous, streamlined cars for magazines
and ads.
The increasing amount of work he was getting from the auto industry led him to settle in Detroit, car capital of the world.
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Radebaugh returned from
his military service to a Detroit preparing for its Golden Jubilee, the 50th
anniversary of the car capital of the world. Radebaugh had been commissioned
to create a symbol for the Jubilee, one which appeared on letterheads, store
windows, ties, hats and dresses.
Radebaugh's
Golden Jubilee design was also built-- as a sixty five foot statue.
“[the] Queen
of the Golden Jubilee will be the first woman in history to use atomic power
for peacetime purposes in public ceremonies Wednesday night at 9 p.m. when
she illuminates and sets in motion the spectacular automotive symbol in Detroit’s
downtown Grand Circus Park to usher in the twelve-day Golden Jubilee celebration.
...The Queen will wave a wand of neutron-splitting beryllium over a tube of
boron, smashing a boron atom. Energy thus produced will be transmitted to
the symbol electrically to illuminate its spiralling neon conception of an
atom in fission, its antique car and its modern car."
--Golden Jubilee press release
Was
Radebaugh dissatisfied with the annual cycles of slightly changed automobiles,
which were his bread and butter, or did he take inspiration from the streamlined
metallic cars which were born from minds like his, and riff from their forms,
creating variants, mutants, the atomic car which has its four wheels trapezoidally
arrayed so that only the middle two paralleled each other?
MoToR magazine was Radebaugh's most enduring work relationship. It's interesting
to see the way Radebaugh's style altered after World War 2, moving away from
the grim and glamorous avant-gardism of his early work, to a more campy and
cartoony style, more suburban in its content and reassuring in its colors.