Court Drawing

Searle's multi-faceted career saw him master several disciplines: caricatures for TV Guide magazine, travel reportage for Holiday magazine, animated film titles, book illustration, theatre design, war artist, political cartooning and, perhaps less known, court trial artist. The most high profile case he covered was, of course, the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Searle was the sole draughtsman amongst a throng of photographers which is exactly why the magazine wanted his unique perspective. This chapter of Searle's career deserves a post of its own but here are a few of the drawings he made in Jerusalem.

Commissioning Searle to cover the Eichmann trial may well have occurred to Life's editor after an earlier assignment the artist had completed for the magazine.  In 1957 Searle had been dispatched by Life to cover the trial of the notorious John Bodkin Adams case. He was a doctor accused of over prescribing narcotics to an elderly patient in whose will he was named as a beneficiary. This masterful drawing appeared as a double-page spread in the 22 April, 1957 issue of Life magazine along with the following portraits of the defense and prosecution lawyers and key witnesses.

The courtroom drawing above is, I would say, comparable to Searle's tour de force depiction of Winston Churchill's last speech in the House of Commons, again for Life magazine (4th April, 1955).

'The accused'

The incredible thing about these drawings is they were all done from memory. Sketching was not permitted in British courts. He got around this by surreptitiously drawing on tiny note paper in his lap & taking multiple toilet breaks where he would rapidly draw from his notes and what he could memorise! With only a week's deadline to collate the necessary research the Old Bailey assignment turned out to be much effort for little remuneration, 'at least the Eichmann trial went on for months!' Searle joked.

Courtesy of the Chris Beetles Gallery here are some of those notes and sketches made in the court room.

In the following article Searle reveals his process behind a cartoon version of the Old Bailey.

Perhaps inspired by Life magazine a French publication 'Marseille magazine' commissioned Searle to illustrate a similarly sensational trial that gripped France in 1963, that of the 'gang de pétanques' in Marseille.

To see more of the 'Marseilles' court drawings (plus the Churchill speech picture) check out this post 

Sketch of the 'Fuchs trial' 1950 presided over by Lord Goddard.

 Lord Goddard 1956

Illustration of a British Judge for a 1962 print advertisement for Beetle Dough Molding Compound

 From 'Merry England'

Belles

Searle relaxes off-set with Sandra Alfred during the filming of 'The Belles of St. Trinian's' (1954)

Searle and his first wife Kaye Webb on the set of  'The Belles of St. Trinian's' (1954) with actress Joyce Grenfell.

Ronald sketches British starlet Sabrina on the set of 'Blue Murder at St. Trinians'. 'If you look at the CREDITS, you'd think Sabrina was the star : in the opening credits she was billed as "Guest Artiste" and in the end credits, she billed just after Alistair Sim. However, in spite of the film's publicity stills showing her in uniform, she never got out of bed (in in this case, gentlemen, that is not a good thing.) And she never said a word. Featuring as the school swot, she lounges with a good book as a JEWEL THIEF and several policemen revolve around her. It's unfortunate that the plot did not do the same.' - Nylon.net

Searle with actress Lisa Gastoni

"They're over here . . ."

American supermarket chains come to Italy - illustrations for an article on 'The Americanisation of Europe' in the Telegraph magazine 1965.   'Ronald Searle asks whether "Le Supermag" indicates the thin edge of a nasty wedge' indicates that he also wrote the copy as he would do for TV Guide in the 70s. It contains his usual eloquent phrasing and biting satire as sharp as his drawings .
'Europe may look askance at American politics abroad but she is trying to swallow whole certain other elements of American life.  By some, the self-Americanisation of Europe is seen as a rather nasty sort of masochism; by others, as a sinister and disarming method of infiltration by the CIA.  True, that many buildings go up instead of out, that the glass matchbox has become a dreary part of most European cities, dominating the gently crumbling tourist attractions.  True, that Coca Cola discs can be seen littering the walls of coffee shops in villages as remote as those of the High Atlas in Morocco.  But ths rash of red spots can no more pinpoint an Americanisation of Europe than a flood of Scotch whisky can indicate the Scotlandisation of France, or the now pot-holed autobahns of Mussolini and Hitler indicate the growth of Fascism in America because the Italians and the Germans got in first with super-highways . . . '

'. . . Though the importation of Le Supermag in France, or Selbestbedienung in Germany (to pick only two examples), might seem to indicate the thin end of a rather nasty wedge, the appearance in them of the now legendary can of red wine no more indicates a mass switch from the bottle than the appearance of canned London fog in America indicates a mass switch by the American continent away from American fresh air.
The American supermarket is an exportable idea, as is the European cuisine and the European pocket book.  A continent absorbs these elements into its own pattern until it comes to believe that they are its own.  If you told housewives that staunch British goods such as Lipton's Tea and Persil were, in that order, American and German in origin, they would look at you with pitying disbelief.
This imagined Americanisation of Europe is a European dream fulfillment.  It is not entirely wrong to say that in America, the word France conjures up a vision of the Can-Can.  In Europe, the word America conjures up the Wild West, cowboys and Indians, gangsters, James Dean and blue jeans.  America is New York (skyscrapers), Chicago (gangsters) and Hollywood (of course).  Anything else is the Far West (including Washington), or the Deep South.  However, this list has recently come to include Dallas, Texas. . . '

'There are Dr Kildare syringes in European toy shops, but Bonanza gets the ratings.  My local cinema in Paris showed 100 cowboy films in 100 days last year,and any night you had to queue to get in.
The latest addition to the neighbourhood is Le-Drugstore-Saint-Germain-des-Pres.  It is built of marble and brass and embellished with bronze shields which embody either the eye or the lips of a hero of our time.  The eye of Picasso is there, and so are the lips of Bardot.  Sticking out from the walls into the boulevard are half a dozen old bracket lamps, no longer lit by gas but still crowned with the traditional spike.
I predict that the first head to be impaled on a spike will be that of the American who gazes around Le Drugstore and says "Gee, this is just like we have at home."

Photograph of original drawing

The series of drawings was expanded and re-ublished a year later in American VENTURE magazine.  Searle's ever canny agent consistently sold the same drawings to multiple publication outlets!  The drawings added for Venture are even more impressive (and actually features the 'SuperMag' mentioned in the Telegraph piece but not illustrated!).

Searle had, of course, poked at the post-war American cultural 'invasion' previously such as this editorial picture for LIFE magazine almost a decade earlier.

"A critical view of American conduct abroad is expressed in this drawing . . . of U. S. visitors in an Italian town. Villagers watch, fascinated, from stairways as the strangely clad members of a tourist party, just disgorged from a huge American automobile, disport themselves about a fountain while one of a group of lounging GIs gives a wolf-whistle at a passing girl."

LIFE magazine 23 Dec 1957