HOT ROD'S FIRST COVERS CAME FROM LEE BLAISDELL'S PHOTOFILES

HOT ROD has enjoyed working relationships with dozens of talented photographers, on staff and freelance, during its 75 years chronicling American speed and performance.

- DREW HARDIN

But when Robert E. Petersen and Robert Lindsay started laying the magazine's foundation back in late 1947, they relied heavily on one particular photographer, Lee Blaisdell.

Blaisdell built his first hot rod, a roadster with a two-port Riley conversion in 1941, shortly before entering the Navy to serve during World War II. After the war he was active on the California racing scene, now with a camera in his hands.

His work impressed the local sanctioning bodies so much that he became the official photographer of the Southern California Timing Association and the California Roadster Association.

While sitting in on a 1947 SCTA meeting, he heard a 20-year-old Robert Petersen talk about a car magazine he was starting. "I told Pete I was the photographer for the SCTA and the CRA," Blaisdell recounted to Bob D'Olivo, Petersen Publishing's photographic department head, in a February 1995 handwritten note about the "old times." Petersen was happy for the help, "so that's where HOT ROD got started, out of my negative file," Blaisdell wrote.

Many of the images in the very first issue were his, including the cover photo of Eddie Hulse in Regg Schlemmer's T, which Blaisdell vignetted in the darkroom using his hands to mask off the photo's dry lakes background. Petersen and Lindsay put Blaisdell's photos on the magazine's first six covers, capturing hot rodding icons-in-the-making like Don Blair, Stu Hilborn, and Ed Iskenderian.

Soon after Isky's June 1948 cover appearance, Blaisdell's photos stopped appearing in the magazine. As Blaisdell explained to D'Olivo, "After several issues I moved back to Monterey where my folks lived. I was only getting paid per photo, and being out of a job and having no car, it was hard to survive."