Paul M. Fuller, 1897-1951

It has over the years been believed that Paul Max Fuller was born in Switzerland on the 5th January, 1897. Actually he was born on the island Corsica (born name was Paul Fulier), and then still an infant brought to Interlaken in Switzerland by his French mother, who married a Swiss citizen. As a young man, on his honeymoon with his first wife Friedel Schaer, he went to Nebraska to visit his wife’s sister Louise, and Paul Fulier may have thought that he could do well in the States as an architect/designer. It is believed that Paul Fulier worked some time as a farm hand in Wyoming (probably Nebraska) while he learned the Anglo-American language, and it is also believed that Paul Fuller took the middle name Max when he applied for American citizenship (Max was a good Swiss friend, who was also on the ship to America with Paul and Friedel when they were on their honeymoon). Later Paul M. Fuller went to Chicago and worked for the firm Marshall Field & Co. (hundred years later the fourth largest general merchandise retailer in the States). At the Marshall Field & Co. Paul M. Fuller soon became the chief designer in charge of interior decorating. In the thirties he was the originator, designer, and principal owner of the popular Black Forest village display at the Chicago World’s Fair (1933-34) and also designer of the Sun Valley alpine village at the New York World's Fair (1939-40). Late in 1935 (after the divorce from Friedel) Paul M. Fuller, by then a noted design genius, was employed as a consultant by The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company in North Tonawanda to design jukebox cabinets, and later as head of the design department. Paul M. Fuller immediately started to explore alternatives to the conservative wood-'n'-glass cabinet styles, and discovered the shimmering, translucent depth of Catalin plastic as an explosion of art and style (Catalin, a registered trademark of the Catalin Corporation in New York). Paul M. Fuller also discovered bubble tubes (described then as liquid fire), when Edward Merle Colegrove, sales representative for Biolite Inc. in New York, presented a new advertising sign with bubble effect to him in the autumn 1938. After proper testing, the bubble tubes were used in the cabinet for the Wurlitzer Model 800, and that really was the zenith of Fuller's efforts to create eye-appealing features of jukeboxes.

During the years at The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company Paul M. Fuller had a total of 17 jukebox cabinet designs patented in his own name. The classic Fuller designs started with Model 312 (patent No. D:99,277 filed on the 8th February,1936) and ended with Model 1100 (patent No. D:153,675 filed on the 8th September, 1947). Among the 17 designs was one for a Model 260 Console Speaker and another for a very nice remote control unit for Model 1100 (filed the same day), but those two designs were as far as it is known today never produced at The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company in North Tonawanda. Paul M. (nickname: Malt) Fuller was together with general sales manager Milton (Mike) G. Hammergren and the noted illustrator Albert Dorne responsible for the whirlwind national Wurlitzer advertising campaign around 1947, and the dean of jukebox designers finally left the major jukebox manufacturer in 1948 leaving behind a legacy that transcended the mere product and helped to define an age, the Golden Age of automatic coin-op phonographs.

In 1949, soon after leaving the jukebox trade and the Fairfax Hotel in Buffalo, where he resided during the years at The Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, Paul M. Fuller established his own design engineering company in Oneida, the Paul M. Fuller Company, and continued working with wonderful furniture and piano designs. Also he was vice-president of SuperVend Sales Corp. based in Chicago (in fact his own firm). Paul Max Fuller suffered a fatal heart attack only 54 years of age, and died at the Millard Fillmore Hospital in Buffalo on the 29th March, 1951, and was according to the obituary in the "Buffalo Evening News" survived by his widow Ruby Rudd Fuller (his second wife), his son Paul Norman Fuller, and also by his brother Hans in Zürich in Switzerland. Paul M. Fuller’s first wife Friedel died in 1985 (born in 1898) and his son Paul Norman died in 1999 (born in 1928). Unfortunately, the second son Chas F. (born in 1930) died only a few years of age.

Gert J. Almind