Harold Michelson(1920-2007)

Widely regarded as "The industry's greatest illustrator," Harold Michelson was born in 1920 in New York City. He served as a bombardier-navigator in the U.S. Air Force during World War II, flying more than 40 missions over Germany. After the war, Harold worked as a magazine illustrator while attending the Art Students League of New York before moving on to Los Angeles, where he illustrated movie posters. He ultimately became an illustrator for Columbia Pictures before being traded to Paramount Pictures, where he worked as illustrator and storyboard artist on The Ten Commandments (1956), among other films. He then worked as a storyboard artist on Ben-Hur (1959) for MGM and Spartacus (1960) for Universal Pictures.Throughout the remainder of the 1960s, Harold worked as either illustrator or storyboard artist on such classic films as West Side Story (1961), Cleopatra (1963), The Birds (1963), Marnie (1964), Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966), The Graduate (1967), and Fiddler on the Roof (1971). Harold would go on to serve as art director on several films, and also began working as production designer with the 1971 Cannes Film Festival Jury Grand Prize-winning film Johnny Got His Gun, all the while continuing his career as an illustrator and storyboard artist.Later in his career, Harold served as the Art Director/Production Designer for several feature films, including Catch-22 (1970), Mel Brooks' History of the World, Part I (1981), Spaceballs (1987), Planes, Trains, and Automobiles (1987), and Dick Tracy (1990). He was nominated for Academy Awards® for his design of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), contributing to the interior and exterior design on the newly refit USS Enterprise. and Terms of Endearment (1983).In 1999 Michelson was honored with the Art Director Guild's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 2002, he received the Outstanding Achievement in Production Design award from the Hollywood Film Festival. Harold passed away March 1, 2007 at the age of 87.