James Gay Stevens

James Gay Argyll Stevens was born in New York City on Independence Day, July 4, 1927. After growing up playing stickball and throwing snowballs, the family relocated to Cleveland, Ohio before moving permanently to Los Angeles where his father was developing a songwriting career in Hollywood.

Jim went to Hollywood High and worked as an usher at the famous Grauman’s Chinese Theater, where he loved dashing across the street for a thick chocolate malt at C. C. Brown’s after work. He spoke fondly of the smell of orange blossom that pervaded the city and took the Red Car to Santa Monica to swim in the sea and play beach volleyball. He was a very good athlete, particularly in basketball at the local YMCA leagues and years later he won Most Valuable Player in a semi-pro league involving the Hollywood movie studios.

He wanted to be part of the war effort and enrolled in the U. S. Navy despite being under eighteen. He earned an honorable discharge when the war ended without getting a chance to serve. After the war he began his long career at Paramount Studios, working his way up from the mail room to publicist, interrupted only by the Korean war when he again enlisted, this time in the Air Force.

During the war, he was stationed at Hickam Air Force Base in Honolulu. Among the most interesting of his duties were his disc jockey work spinning powerful works such as Shostakovich Symphony 5 for Armed Forces Radio and a night job at the hospital playing more soothing melodies to put wounded soldiers to sleep. This love of music led a friend to set him up on a blind date with a vibrant young pianist Delores Wunsch, music director at Punahou School and violinist in the Honolulu Symphony, thus beginning a lifelong love story.

After he mustered out with another honorable discharge, he returned to Los Angeles and his job at Paramount, marrying Delores where they lived for over seventy years in Pacific Palisades. Jim and Dee gave birth to a daughter, Victoria, and a son, Paul. Dee built her music career performing and teaching, while Jim drove his white 1954 corvette convertible down Sunset every day to Paramount, interviewing the likes of Grace Kelly and William Holden, hobnobbing with costume designer Edith Head, composer Miklos Rozsa, getting his hair cut on the lot before lunch at the commissary with Charlton Heston or having ice cream with Sophia Loren. A favorite picture from that time has Jim directing Alfred Hitchcock and Jimmy Stewart “hands on” at a photo shoot on the set of Vertigo in San Francisco.

With the demise of the studio system in 1960, Jim worked for a number of PR firms, including Gruen Associates, where he represented Delta Air Lines and Air Canada at Expo ’67 in Montréal. He wrote press releases to the Los Angeles Times and was an important voice for the American Association of Architects, creating radio segments called Notes on the Environment, authoring numerous articles, directing photo shoots of new construction all over Southern California. His commitment to historic architecture led him to be part of the Los Angeles Conservancy for many years and on the board of several Frank Lloyd Wright Houses.

He was passionate about hiking in the wilderness. There were yearly trips to the Eastern Sierras with friends and family, as well special adventures involving more rigorous climbing such as Mt. Whitney, Mt. Cook, the base camp of Mt. Everest, and Mt. Blanc, hiking the latter with his son Paul and daughter-in-law Annie.

Photography was also a lifelong passion. He loved developing his own pictures in his darkroom, traveling the world taking photos with his beloved Nikon and Hasselblad of everything from the towering granite mountains of the High Sierra and ruined castles in the UK to extreme closeup shots of flowers and running water. His photographs of castles and Morocco were later made into successful commercial calendars.

Photography led him to a new career in 1974 when he joined the faculty of Windward School. He taught there for 29 years and was much loved by hundreds of students as he introduced them to darkroom skills, proper light exposures and creative image framing for their projects. Many graduates of the school claimed he was the favorite of all their teachers.

Jim’s publicity skills and spatial artistry also aided Dee, working tirelessly at her side running the two “family businesses” - the Martha’s Vineyard Chamber Music Society and Chamber Music Palisades - which Dee directed and co-directed for fifty and thirty years, respectively. Jim did it all; serving on boards, fund-raising, stage managing, writing his famous press releases, facilitating artist’s transportation and housing, creating witty promotional materials and being the rock for her during the ups and downs of her busy concert career.

Being of Scottish descent, he was always enthusiastic about the UK and led many trips of Windward students there, as well as traveling with Dee to Russia, Asia, North Africa, Australia, New Zealand and South America; both for Dee’s concerts as well as to explore and take pictures. He had a full life and was much loved. He was preceded in death by his wife Delores, survived by his daughter Victoria of Santa Monica, son Paul and daughter-in-law Annie of Lawrence, Kansas, granddaughter Hannah of Montréal, Canada, grandson Mark of Elkhart, Indiana, niece Carrie Pitt and grandniece Kyra of Laguna Beach and grandnephew Ryan of Ferndale, California.

In lieu of flowers consider donating to The Sierra Club:

The Sierra Club Foundation: The Foundation for a Healthy Planet

The Sierra Club Foundation

https://www.sierraclubfoundation.org