Arthur A. Vallee, 93; gave up acting career

Arthur A. Vallee, 93, who gave up a Hollywood career in the 1940s to return to his family in South Jersey and went on to own a successful car dealership in Woodbury, died of heart failure Jan. 17 in his Woodbury home.

After reading about California in several magazines, Mr. Vallee, a Gibbstown native, decided to launch an artistic career on the West Coast, said grandson Joseph Vallee Jr.

In the late 1930s, much to his father's dismay, Mr. Vallee ventured to Los Angeles and enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts. By 1940, he was a cartoonist and one of the first illustrators to draw Donald Duck and Pluto for Walt Disney.

During a strike in Hollywood, Mr. Vallee returned to New Jersey and visited the Atlantic City Country Club. A chat there with golfer Ed Dudley resulted in a meeting between Mr. Vallee and Bing Crosby, Mr. Vallee told an Inquirer reporter in 1959. Crosby helped Mr. Vallee land a job at Paramount Studios.

While at Paramount, Mr. Vallee worked on the sets of The Emperor Waltz and The Road to Rio, in which he played the part of a Spanish caballero.

As a young man living in Hollywood, Mr. Vallee became friends with some of the biggest stars of that time: Perry Como, the Ames Brothers, Hugh O'Brian, and Ronald Reagan. However, Mr. Vallee had a wife and son back in New Jersey who did not want to be part of the Hollywood crowd, his grandson said.

"One day out of the blue he decided to leave and come back for his family," said Joseph Vallee Jr. "He went home and never looked back."

While he was packing his suitcase, though, Mr. Vallee's agent called with the news that Mr. Vallee had landed the part of the Swede in The Killers. Burt Lancaster took the role after Mr. Vallee turned it down.

Arthur Vallee said in 1959 that he left Hollywood because he wanted "what makes my wife happy."

Once he was back in Jersey in 1949, Mr. Vallee started working as a car salesman at the Lloyd H. Pearson Oldsmobile and Cadillac dealership. In 1960, he and his brother-in-law, Leon Bowe, purchased the dealership and renamed it Vallee & Bowe.

Mr. Vallee's connections with the Hollywood crowd did not end after his move. Instead, his grandson said, Mr. Vallee's famous friends often came to Jersey to purchase cars.

Mr. Vallee also continued his friendship with Reagan. When the former actor became president, Mr. Vallee visited the White House several times. When Joseph Vallee Jr. was 9 years old, he recalled, the Vallee family was invited for brunch at the White House.

Mr. Vallee's dealership served Woodbury and the surrounding South Jersey community until the three generations of Vallee men who operated the business decided to sell it in 2006.

Hundreds of former employees and clients attended Mr. Vallee's viewing Thursday, his grandson said.

Mr. Vallee was born and raised in Gibbstown and graduated from Paulsboro High School in 1934. He served in the U.S. Army out of Fort Dix for two years during World War II.

He married Helen Marie Bowe in 1940, and the couple was together for 63 years, until she died in 2003.

In addition to his grandson, Mr. Vallee is survived by a son, Joseph Sr., and a granddaughter.