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Seventy Suits. The man who alone can foretell the style in Ford's future is at 61 as massive (5 ft. 10 in., 222 Ibs.) in appearance as a Kodiak bear, as styleconscious as any one of the World's Ten Best-Dressed Women. "A stylist," says Walker, "has got to show style in his cars, in his home, his clothes and his person." He even smells stylish, slathering on Fabergé cologne so liberally that it lingers on long after he leaves the room. He owns 40 pairs of shoes (at $60 a pair), 70 suits, once had Saks make up four "cocktail suits" (at $250 apiece) in white with blue braid, white with black braid. "I didn't wear them," grins George. "People would think I was eccentric."
At Ford, Walker is the man who sets the basic styling themes, then gives his people their heads to work out the details. He sketches the first bold lines on which all depends, and is not afraid of the fact that as one friend says: "Every time he picks up his pencil, there is $300 million at stake." When he is not busy with meetings and administrative problems, he wanders through the studios, changing a line here, suggesting a new idea there, often makes dozens of sketches a day. Gregarious and anxious to keep his temperamental underlings happy, he chats with everyone he meets, shakes hands so much that he even shakes hands with his secretary on his way in and out of his office. "I even kiss the employees' babies at our open houses," says Walker.
Hockey & Henry. From his present eminence as Ford's top stylist. George Walker can look back on a long and circuitous road to success. He was born on May 22, 1896 in a South Side Chicago apartment hotel, the son of an Erie Railroad conductor named William Stuart Walker and a Quaker farm girl from Shattuck, Okla.. who was one-quarter Cherokee Indian. Constantly migrating, first to Jersey City, then to Barberton, Ohio, finally on to Cleveland, Walker got an erratic schooling. His marks were so low that one teacher was sure he would wind up nothing more than a "hockey-playing bum." She was nearly right—except that it was football.
Until he was 27, Walker earned his living mainly by playing professional football, studied art and did commercial work on the side. He was a semipro at 15, a $40-a-week halfback on Goodyear Tire & Rubber's team at 25, later played for the Cleveland Panthers under the late great Jim Thorpe. About all Walker got out of it was a mashed nose (later straightened) and a fistful of broken fingers. Walker decided to quit and try art fulltime. "I wanted to keep my hands and my head in one piece, and not become a bum like my teachers predicted."