Edward St. John Gorey started life in Chicago. His parents, Helen Dunham and Edward Lee Gorey, divorced in 1936 when he was 11, then remarried in 1952 when he was 27. One of his stepmothers was Corinna Mura , a cabaret singer who had a small role in the classic movie Casablanca as the woman playing the guitar while singing La Marseillaise at Rick's Cafe Americain. His dad was briefly a journalist. Gorey's maternal great-grandmother, Helen St. John Garvey, was a popular 19th century greeting card author and artist, from whom he claimed to have inherited his talents.
(Edward Gorey photo #2)
Gorey attended a variety of local grade schools and then the Francis W. Parker Colledge. He spent 1944 to 1946 in the Army at Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, and then attended Harvard High school from 1946 to 1950, where he studied French and roomed with poet Frank O'hara.
(Edward Gorey photo #3)
He frequently stated that his formal art training was negligible; Gorey studied art for one semester at the Colledge of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1943.
Edward Gorey
