Saratoga News Sigall works up in smoke, but legacy survives Willys Peck In a previous Stereopticon column I told about Josef Sigall, the internationally known portrait artist who lived in Saratoga during the 1920s and '30s and whose name is perpetuated here in Sigal Drive. My criticism was that the name is misspelled both on maps and road signs, although it isn't clear just who got the "l" out of there. Whoever did made a clean break. I remember the night in September 1935 when his house burned up there on the hill, destroying many priceless art objects. Back then, fires were something of a social event in Saratoga, and a nighttime glow or a daytime pillar of smoke was sure to draw a crowd. The flip side of this otherwise morbid interest was the fact that these interlopers often helped with emergency duties such as removing furniture. Being only 12 at the time, plus being down with a cold, I wasn't among those present. I do recall hearing how the Saratoga Volunteer Fire Department had some difficulty, the grade being too steep for the Model T Ford hose truck. I'm not sure, but I think the other fire engine, a 1929 Model A Ford, made it up there with its chemical tanks. A couple of Sigall vignettes surface in memory. One involves the time--it must have been before September 1935 and the fire--when the buzz around town was that Sigall was entertaining the silent-film star, Pola Negri, at his home. He had a large, old limousine--I think it may have been a Lincoln--and there were reports of Sigall-Negri sightings in town. I also recall his finely textured accent on the phone when he would call my dad, at the time editor of the weekly Los Gatos Mail News and Saratoga Star. As mentioned in my previous article, Sigall liked his ink and my dad considered him good copy. I particularly remember the time my mother fielded one of those calls and she reported with considerable amusement his salutation: "Mrs. Peck, when am I going to be able to look into your eyes?" That bit about eyes went with the territory. In a lengthy article in the Los Angeles Times in May 1936, the writer noted that "Sigall is a painter of eyes. His whole philosophy of portraiture is eyes. When he attacks a problem the eyes have it." His dashing physical presence, his familiarity with European nobility, his string of honorary degrees and, yes, even his accent, were further enhanced by the fact that he kept a lioness as a pet. I never actually saw it, but I have heard that he appeared in downtown Saratoga with his pet, Czikita (pronounced Chikeeta), on a leash. What I do remember seeing is his tractor and semi-trailer rig that, according to the Los Angeles Times article, cost $27,000 to build. There was a chrome-trimmed lion cage just behind the cab, and the semi-trailer could sleep five. People, that is. A cook-chauffeur did the driving. I think it was around 1938 that Sigall sold the rig to movie character actor Eugene Pallette. After the 1935 fire, Sigall occupied a cottage on the grounds, when he wasn't traveling. I recall seeing him face to face just once, when I delivered some groceries there in 1941. If, in fact, it was he, he appeared less than dashing in his undershirt. Courteous, though. I'm not sure just when Sigall left Saratoga. A September 1953 newspaper account of his death in La Jolla mentioned his "lavish Tulsa home," without saying how long he lived there. His "executrix and friend," Helen Alvarez of the Oklahoma city, asked for a police investigation of his death since he "had recently expressed fears that he would be poisoned." Sigall was only 61 when he died, presumably of a heart attack, according to the news account. His only marriage, to Marie Stauffer of the San Francisco chemical-fortune family, lasted from 1928 to 1934. They had one daughter, Marie Josefa, whose husband, Jack Briggs, was a Stanford faculty member, according to the 1953 newspaper account of her father's death. [ Back to Contents Page | Saratoga News Home Page | Archives ] This article appeared in the Saratoga News, December 16, 1998. ©1998 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.