LIFESTYLES
WEEKEND, JULY 22-23, 2017
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Ellen Brown, sister-in-law of Dolores Jean Brown Pinney, looks at the back of one of her favorite of Pinney’s paintings in her shop at her
Hermiston home. Brown set aside numerous of her sister-in-law’s paintings to give to family members.
Irrigon woman was
a model, artist, architect
during her 90 years
By JAYATI
RAMAKRISHNAN
East Oregonian
One of the last photos
taken of Dolores Jean
Brown Pinney shows the
90-year-old woman with a
halo of white hair, looking
into the distance and
smiling.
If you pick up an old
fashion magazine, you
might see that same smile.
Pinney, who went by
her middle name, “Jean,”
was no stranger to being
photographed. In the 1940s,
she was a cover model for
magazines such as Redbook,
Pageant, Salute and Look.
A spread in Life Magazine
was one of her first national
breaks, which started a
short, prolific career in the
spotlight.
Pinney passed away on
February 15, a few months
before her 91st birthday, but
her family members are still
reminiscing about her life.
The rise from a small,
rural upbringing to the pages
of national magazines was a
short, somewhat unexpected
path for the Irrigon High
School graduate.
Pinney spent her youth
entering beauty contests
locally, such as “Miss
Umatilla Ordnance Depot”
in 1943 — her first contest.
After graduating from
Irrigon High School in
1944, she studied for a year
at Eastern Oregon College.
“She was a top student in
art,” said her sister-in-law
Ellen Brown.
After a year in La
Grande Pinney moved to
Los Angeles, where her
great-aunt lived, and began
working as a model there.
She won the “Miss Holly-
wood” contest in 1947, at
the age of 21. She soon
moved to New York and
signed with the John Robert
Powers modeling agency,
after which she was featured
in several magazines.
Pinney saved most of
the articles and mementos
from her modeling career
and Ellen Brown pores over
them, remembering her
sister-in-law.
Ellen has fond memories
of Pinney from their shared
youth, as well.
“She was two years
ahead of me in school,”
Ellen said. “Her family lived
about a quarter-mile away.
I moved here at the end of
the school year, and Jean
asked me to ride the family
bikes with her uptown. She
said, ‘I’ll introduce you to
all the students.’ I thought,
how nice of her to be so
neighborly.”
Born in Weed, California,
in June of 1926, Pinney’s
early life was a bit of a
vagabond existence.
“They traveled around
picking crops during the
Great Depression,” said
her nephew, Daryl Brown.
“Oregon,
Washington,
Montana. From first grade
through high school, they
attended
13
different
schools in different cities —
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
Dolores Jean Brown Pinney was a model in the 1940s and 1950s in Los Angeles and
New York. Here she is on the cover of the July 1948 cover of Redbook Magazine.
“Going from Irrigon to LA and New York. She was doing
a lot of things. It was not your average person’s life.”
— Daryl Brown, Dolores Jean Brown Pinney’s nephew
Staff photo by E.J. Harris
See PINNEY/4C
Dolores Jean Brown Pinney in 2015 in Hermiston.