Leo Hershfield

Leo Hershfield (1904 – 1979) was a prominent American illustrator and a courtroom artist for NBC News.

Biography

Hershfield was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the child of immigrants from Kiev, Ukraine. He moved to New York in the 1920s, where he studied at the National Academy of Design and supported himself as an employee in the morguehuh? of the "New York World". He worked on the staff of the "Chattanooga Times" then began drawing for the political and theater pages of "The New York Times".

In 1940, he worked briefly for "PM" then moved to Washington, D.C. to join the Office of War Information with his new wife, former Roxyette Mary Emma Hurst. When the war ended he became a freelancer, illustrating for publications such as "Reader's Digest," "The Saturday Evening Post" and Kiplinger’s "Changing Times". His art appeared in more than 50 books, including those by Richard Armour, H. Allen Smith, Fred Schwed, Jr., Groucho Marx and Frank Shannon.

Courtroom illustration

In 1954, Hershfield's sketches accompanied NBC News' coverage of the Army-McCarthy Hearings. Thereafter, he drew the proceedings at major trials around the country, including trials of the Chicago Seven, the Harrisburg Seven, Jack Ruby, James Earl Ray, Clay Shaw, Arthur Bremer, Benjamin Spock, the Gainesville Eight, Billie Sol Estes and William Calley.

The age of courtroom art came to a close in the late 1970s, when the Florida Supreme Court ruled that cameras could be allowed back into the courtroom. Hershfield continued to illustrate books and articles for the "St. Petersburg Times", spending his spare time sailing the Manatee River and documenting Florida through watercolors. He was an ardent environmentalist, illustrating articles in newspapers and magazines in an attempt to save Florida's wetlands from industrial development.

WEDU, the local Florida PBS affiliate, interviewed Hershfield and aired a documentary about his career shortly before his death in 1979. In 1980, Washington's Corcoran Gallery had a retrospective exhibition of Hershfield's quarter century of courtroom illustration.

References

"Leo Hershfield, 75, Illustrator of Trials For Television News," "New York Times," April 19, 1979.

External links

* [http://books.google.com/books?id=fgGpxD9qZFoC&pg=PP3&dq=%22leo+hershfield%22&lr=&as_brr=3&sig=RStlDpE5yxK7NCAIc0194SdmfLM#PPA11,M1 Hershfield illustration in "Memoirs of a Mangy Lover,"] Groucho Marx.
* [http://books.google.com/books?id=-vEOueRigGIC&pg=PA5&dq=%22leo+hershfield%22&lr=&as_brr=3&sig=6-e6vFtMGXksYVDzFAivBBXOAPc#PPA15,M1 Hershfield illustration in "Low and Inside: A Book of Baseball Anecdotes, Oddities, and Curiosities,] H. Allen Smith.