Leo Hershfield
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Leo Hershfield (1904-1979) was a prominent American illustrator and a courtroom artist for NBC News.
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[edit] Biography
Hershfield was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, the child of immigrants from Kiev. He moved to New York in the twenties, where he studied at the National Academy of Design and supported himself as an employee in the morgue of the New York World. He worked on the staff of the Chattanooga Times and then began drawing for the political and theater pages of The New York Times.
In 1940 he worked briefly for PM, and then moved to Washington 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--often in an antic style--for Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, Kiplinger’s Changing Times, and scores of other magazines and newspapers. His art appeared in more than fifty books, including those by Richard Armour, H. Allen Smith, Fred Schwed, Jr, Groucho Marx, and Frank Shannon.
[edit] Courtroom Illustration
In 1954 Hershfield's sketches accompanied NBC News's 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 great age of courtroom art came to a close in the late 1970's, 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.
[edit] References
"Leo Hershfield, 75, Illustrator of Trials For Television News," New York Times, April 19, 1979.
