Franklin McMahon | |
|---|---|
 Self-portrait of Franklin McMahon, circa 1960 | |
| Born | (1921-09-09)September 9, 1921 Chicago, Illinois, U.S. |
| Died | March 3, 2012(2012-03-03) (aged 90)[1] Highland Park, Illinois, U.S. |
| Occupation | Artist-reporter |
| Spouse | Irene Leahy (d. 1997)[2] |
| Children | Wm. Franklin, Mark, Mary, Deborah, Patrick, Hugh, Margot, Michelle, Michael |
| Parent(s) | William McMahon (commodities and oil speculation); Elizabeth Franklin (owner of office supply company) |
William Franklin McMahon (September 9, 1921 – March 3, 2012) was an American artist-reporter.[3]
His artistic output also includedfilms andbooks.[4]
Other than in his very early years when he did illustrations "on spec", he was not an "after-the-fact" illustrator. In his own words, drawing from life made him an "artist-reporter" or a "reportorial artist." "That way," he said, "you can see around the corner."[5]
Franklin McMahon was born inChicago, IL in 1921. He and his parents lived inBeverly Hills, CA for a time, returning to Chicago in his teens. He commuted to the Chicago suburb ofOak Park, IL to attendFenwick High School,[6] where his cartoon drawings were published in the school's newspaper, "The Wick.[7]"Collier's Weekly, a weekly national news magazine, noticed one of his cartoons. Thereafter, they paid him when they saw one they wanted to use. When he graduated in 1939, the Colliers connection helped land him his first job, as an apprentice in an art studio.During World War II, he was anArmy Air CorpsB-17 navigator, and was shot down in action in January 1945. He spent several months in a German prison camp. On occasion, when he could get hold of some paper, he drew his guards.
After the war, he married high school sweetheart Irene Leahy[2] and used theGI Bill to attend night classes atChicago Academy of Fine Arts,American Academy of Art,Harrington College of Design, and theArt Institute of Chicago. Franklin and Irene had nine children. Inspired at a young age by Franklin's work, his son Mark McMahon, went on to continue creating work in the artist-reporter's style.[8]
McMahon's overwhelming main artistic output was his 8,000-9,000 drawings.[9] He also producedfilms andbooks. His films incorporate drawings (seeTechnique section), at a rate of 200–300 drawings per ½ hour of film. The books, although sometimes labelled as "illustrated" by Franklin McMahon, had the same kind of ["on site"] drawings as those from the courtroom, the political arena, and all his other spheres of activity. Even his commercial work had drawings mainly done on site, not after-the-fact illustrations for existing text.
McMahon's work in both of these aspects of mid-20th Century American history helps illustrate his role as an artist-reporter. He began reporting from the courtroom in 1955, after some of his very early work came to the attention ofLife magazine's editors. Because cameras were not allowed at the Mississippi trial of the suspected killers of Chicago teenagerEmmett Till,Life commissioned him to go there to sketch courtroom events. His drawings, and in particular, one of Till's great-uncle,Moses Wright, standing to point at the accused men, were seen nationwide. From then on, on-site reporting with his drawings was a major part of his life work.
The Emmett Till trial in September 1955 was the early catalyst for thecivil rights movement. McMahon's on-site and on-deadline images from Mississippi, published nationwide inLife magazine, provided the visualization that helped spurRosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on the bus in December 1955,[10] which then led to theMontgomery bus boycott and to bringingMartin Luther King Jr. to national attention, along with fellow boycott leaderRalph Abernathy. McMahon was in attendance for King's "I Have a Dream" speech during the August 1963March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. He also covered the two 1964 mistrials of the murderer of civil rights leaderMedgar Evers. In March 1965, King's march for black enfranchisement was going fromSelma to the Alabama Capital Montgomery. About that time, Franklin was returning fromCape Kennedy,Florida, after covering one of theUS crewed space launches.[11] He heard of the march on his car radio, and took a detour, arriving in time to document King's arrival in Montgomery. He also covered King in Chicago in 1966, theUnited Farm Workers protest in 1968, and the1968 Chicago riots following King's death.
In 1969–70, Franklin was courtroom artist at the infamousChicago Seven"conspiracy" trial of the eight (later just seven) defendants, resulting from protests during the1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. The 8th defendant,Bobby Seale, was eventually bound, shackled, and gagged, then separated from the group and sentenced for contempt of court by the judge. The trial lasted five months, with McMahon producing almost 500 courtroom drawings. They were published across the nation, including an entire issue of theChicago Tribune's Sunday magazine section. TheChicago History Museum currently owns both the collection of 483 drawings from that trial as well as that from the 1955 Emmett Till trial.[12] In 1971, Marv Gold produced and directed the film69 CR 180, an artist's report by McMahon featuring his courtroom drawings of the 1969 trial. The documentary animation was made, animated and narrated by McMahon, and edited by Ron Clasky.[13][14]
Civil rights was a continuing interest and vocation: he covered the presidential campaigns of black candidatesShirley Chisholm, U.S. House ('72) and theReverend Jesse Jackson ('84, '88), and was at the 1995Million Man March.
During theSpace Race of the 1960s and 1970s, Franklin was to return frequently to NASA's mission control, including his coverage of Neil Armstrong's walk on the Moon. All would earn him a mention in NASA's bookEyewitness to Space.
He drew Democratic presidential candidate GovernorAdlai Stevenson II ('52, '56) at hisLibertyville, IL home. One of McMahon's drawings of Stevenson hangs in that home, which is now a state historical site and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He covered every Democratic and Republican campaign from 1960 through 2008, including attending a vast majority of the conventions, He made first-person drawings of the 1960Kennedy-Nixon Debates (the first broadcast on live television) and later of Kennedy's funeral. DuringRichard Nixon's successful 1968 presidential run, Franklin also drew the "unelected White House guys" (H.R. Haldeman,John Ehrlichman andJohn N. Mitchell), that he correctly predicted would surround Nixon. His take on Nixon's 1974 resignation showed the disgraced ex-president escaping in a helicopter. There are McMahon drawings from the 1973Watergate hearings, of Senator John McCain's "straight talk express" in New Hampshire in 2000, the stirring Barack Obama speech at the 2004 Democratic Convention, and on the 2004 presidential campaign trail withGeorge W. Bush andSenator John Kerry.
He was in Rome on October 11, 1962, for Opening Day of theSecond Vatican Council, and went on to chronicle that major event through 1965. His filmThe World of Vatican II covers the opening and closing of Vatican II; and is a literal "travelogue in drawings" of many countries where Catholicism was facing new challenges at that time; and how and by whom they were being met. He followed Papal journeys, Council activations, and ministries in the Church world through the 1970s and 1980s. In the 1990s, he was in Chicago and South Africa with theParliament of the World's Religions. Drawings he made in South Africa were published byNotre Dame Magazine and accompanied an article by ArchbishopDesmond Tutu inU.S. Catholic Magazine.
McMahon accompanied conductorSir Georg Solti and theChicago Symphony Orchestra on their first European tour in 1971. The whimsical title (Real Violins) of his film describing that trip refers to Chicago's reputation as a city where gangsters once carried machine guns in violin cases. He worked forSports Illustrated Magazine on assignments ranging from the 1959 American League champion baseball teamChicago White Sox and Goose Hunting in Cairo, IL to the Acapulco Yacht Race in Mexico.
McMahon also created artwork for corporations and businesses. A series of decorative plates which he designed with Chicago themes forContinental Illinois National Bank (1972–1982) were given out as premiums at that time. They have since become collectors items, and are still traded on eBay.[15] He did other work for Continental, and also had commercial commissions forMcDonald's Corporation,International Harvester,Marshall Field & Company andBorg-Warner, among others. He had been heard to say that his work for Continental put several of his children through college.
Franklin and wife, Irene, formed a film distribution company called Rocinante Sight & Sound. They produced several award-winning documentary films, some of which were shown on television (CBS and PBS) for a number of years.
The Chicago Film Archives, a non-profit regional film archive, houses and manages the Franklin McMahon Collection. The collection contains audio reels and films made by Franklin McMahon between the years 1965–1998.[16]
His bookThis Church, These Times contains more than 100 drawings, along with text by FatherFrancis X. Murphy and introduction by FatherTheodore Hesburgh, then the head of theUniversity of Notre Dame. He illustrated an essay on Richard Nixon's White House forWorld Book Encyclopedia and early in his career, illustrated a number of books for textbook publisherScott Foresman and Company, including one on the Illinois Constitution, for which he traveled around the state. Other books with his drawings includeVittles and Vice (1952),[21]You are Promise (1974) withMartin Marty, andFrom the land and back (1972) with Curtis Stadfeld . AlsoOn The Spot Drawing (1969),American national government,Policy and politics, andEyewitness to Space.[22] In 1994,American Artist Magazine featured his article, "Reporting from Around The World" in their publication,Watercolor.
McMahon's work is in the permanent collections of theLibrary of Congress,[23] theNational Air and Space Museum (of the Smithsonian Institution),[24]The University of Chicago, TheBorg-Warner Corporation, Time Inc.,Binghamton University, TheNew Britain Museum of American Art,George Washington University, the Lake County IL Discovery Museum[25] as well as the already mentioned 500 + works in the Chicago History Museum. Many of McMahon's works are represented in theCorbis Collection.[26]
Works by Franklin McMahon have been exhibited at
McMahon won the Renaissance Prize of the Art Institute of Chicago. The Society of Illustrators elected him to its Hall of Fame in 2001, and the Artists Guild of New York chose him as "Artist of the Year" in 1963. His documentary films of several presidential campaigns earned him threeEmmy Awards[19][18] and aPeabody Award. He also received the Minority Economic Resources Corporation's Martin Luther King Jr. Award for Civil Rights Achievement (2000), and honorary degrees fromLoyola University Chicago (1985)[32] andLake Forest College(1979).[33] He was a part of the guiding faculty of theFamous Artists School[34] and served as a guest instructor atSyracuse University,Rhode Island School of Design and TheSmithsonian Institution. McMahon was a long-standing member of The Society of Typographic Arts (STA), Chicago of which he is an Honorary Member,[35] and a thirty-six year member of the Twenty—Seven Chicago Designers (1950–1986).[36]
Franklin McMahon's on-the-spot drawings were generally done with a charcoal pencil, then colored in his home studio afterwards, using acrylic watercolors.[37]
In the films for which he won the Emmy and Peabody awards, the process is similar to what is often done when scanning old daguerreotypes: using a moving camera to make more than a dry slideshow from a series of still images. However, in his films, the path of the camera is computerized, liberal use is made of zooming, and a carefully selected soundtrack accompanies all. The "digital age" equivalent is known as theKen Burns Effect, but McMahon's films were made decades before Burns' work, and the effect is somewhat different. The following is typical of the reaction when such films of his works are seen by viewers:
This ... motion picture is a film of drawings, but not of static drawings ... it seems to have been made by cameras moving seamlessly over hundreds of drawings. The overall effect is almost that it has been filmed live ... yet it is ... drawings.[39]
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)An artist report by Franklin McMahon about the infamous Chicago 8 conspiracy trial of the eight (later just seven) defendants arrested during the protests of the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago. From 1969-70, McMahon was the courtroom artist for the trial, which lasted five months and resulted in almost 500 courtroom drawings by McMahon. This film, or 'artist report,' features these drawings alongside the voices and comments of McMahon and others involved with the trial.
{{cite book}}:|website= ignored (help)
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