A Chicago native, Harold McCauley trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and at the American Academy of Art.  From 1939 until 1942, he worked at Haddon Sundbloom’s busy Chicago art studio and posed for the original painting of the Quaker Oats Man.  Starting in 1946, McCauley worked as a staff artist for the Ziff-Davis publishing house and painted over a hundred covers for magazines like Amazing, Fantastic Adventures, and Mammoth Detective.  Duringthe early 1960s, he also painted several covers for Nightstand Library.