Tourtelot, Madeline (1915-2002) | University of Illinois Archives

Madeline Tourtelot (nee Burton Hanson Tripp; 1915-2002) was an American filmmaker from Chicago. Born in Alameda, California, Tourtelot grew up in Evanston, Illinois. Tourtelot attended Smith College, Northwestern University, and the Art Institute of Chicago, studying visual art. Her painting, Escape, is on permanent display at the Art Institute of Chicago. At the age of 19, she married the architect Edward Mortimer Toutelot Jr., who helped finance exhibitions of her work throughout the 1930s and 40s.

After meeting the author John Steinbeck on a trip to Mexico in 1947, Tourtelot began working a film version of Steinbeck's novel The Pear. This project led to several films produced in Chicago in the early 1950s. In 1957, she met Harry Partch through Robert Kostka, who was serving as the art director at WTTW-TV in Chicago. In 1958, Tourtelot and Partch collaborated on Windsong. They would collaborate on US Highball (1968) and The Delusion of the Fury: A Ritual of Dream and Delusion (1971).

Tourtelot was the founder of three art institutions the Ephraim Art School, the Gallery Studio, and the Door Harbor School of Art, the last of which is now called the Peninsula School of Art.