William N. Copley

All images copyright William N. Copley Estate / Artist’s Rights Society, New York

Polaroid of William N. Copley in character for the mock-play<br />The Passion According to Heaven Hill Farm, circa 1980

William N. Copley led a charmed life. An orphan, born in 1919, he was adopted by Ira Copley, the conservative owner of 16 newspapers in Chicago and San Diego. He was sent to Phillips Academy Andover and to his adopted father’s alma mater, Yale University. He hated Yale and espoused liberal politics, so he left the university to join the US Army. He briefly toyed with politics, then in 1946 wedded the daughter of a famous test pilot. His wife’s sister was married to John Ployardt, an animator at Disney Studios and a serious aficionado of Surrealism. The two men met Man Ray,…