The sitter was born on 9 April 1875 in Providence, Rhode Island and died in Los Angeles on 24 June 1931 (he was buried in Hollywood). He married Maude Gorton and had a son called Lawrence Gorton DeMond. He was Director of the Los Angeles National Horse Show, and later co-founded the highly popular Breakfast Club. He lived on Riverside Drive, Los Angeles.
In the early days of Los Angeles, the elite of L.A. spent much of their free time horseback riding through the acres of Griffith Park. Maurice DeMond, had stables along Riverside Drive. Next door, in a beautiful garden, he and a group of movers and shakers from the business and entertainment communities started the Los Angeles Breakfast Club Ltd. This was in 1925 and in no time the organization reached international acclaim through the efforts of members such as Darryl F. Zanuck, Cecil B. De Mille, L.B. Mayer, and Edward Doheny. Will Rodgers and Irving Berlin were regular entertainers, Calvin Coolidge, newspaper moguls William Randolph Hearst and Harry Chandler often shared the microphone. Amelia Earhart landed her plane in the L.A. River and hiked up to speak at the club. President of the club was Rufus von KleinSmid of the University of Southern California. DeMond died of an apoplectic attack in June 1931, a fact which Muller-Ury recorded in his diary. In 1937 it moved premises to prevent bankruptcy as the depression weakened the club’s finances, though at the start of the drawn-out bankruptcy preceedings from early in 1934, it was clear that Harold Link, the Manager of the Club, had taken the membership temporarily to the Ambassador Hotel in order to keep the club going.
Painted in San Marino in 1929. That it was a gift to the club, and not the personal property of DeMond, is evidenced by the bankruptcy papers in the U.S. National Archives (to whose research I am most grateful to the Club historian Rachel Skytt, November 2024) where it is written by the petitioner, Harold Link, on June 18th 1934: ‘Muller-Ury, a well-known portrait painter, in 1930 was resident in Pasadena and for some time had been an enthusiastic member of the Breakfast Club. He painted a portrait of the late Maurice DeMond, the portrait in question, without compensation, and at a Wednesday morning meeting in presence of the members and Mr. Ury it was announced that the portrait then on display was presented to the club as a gift from Mr. Ury.’ Link’s testimony confirms that as far as he was aware the portrait claimed by Mrs DeMond for her son, a minor, as when her husband had died all her husband’s property was removed from the club, and this did not include the portrait. He goes on to quote an airmail letter from Muller-Ury, from New York, dated June 15th 1934, in which the artist wrote: “I cannot understand how Mrs DeMond or her estate could dare to make any claim on the portrait of Maurice DeMond, which I donated not to Mr DeMond but just The Breakfast Club.”
