Harold L. Burrows (1889 to 1965)
At the age of 17, Hal Burrows came to New York to study and room with sculptor and fellow-Utahan Mahonri Young. He was also greatly influenced by his teachers George Bellows and Robert Henri, but obtained freelance work as an illustrator and cartoonist for Life and Judge magazines alongside another friend from Utah, John Held, Jr. During WWI, Burrows was a staff cartoonist on the Army newspaper Stars and Stripes in Paris. When publication ceased in June 1919, he stayed on to study at the Academy Julian.
In 1923, Burrows became Advertising Art Director for M-G-M Studios. In this position, which he held until 1958, he commissioned artists to make posters, lobby cards, theatre displays and other advertising, some of which he designed himself. He worked on major projects such as Ben-Hur, Gone With The Wind, and The Wizard of Oz. Burrows contribution in this arena is extensively documented in Rebello and Allen s Reel Art: Great Posters from the Golden Age of the Silver Screen and in The Lost Art of Hollywood.
An outgrowth of this was his design and execution of some of the first moving electric signs on Broadway, using mirrors instead of electric lights during the blackouts of WWII. Burrows continued to paint, and had two one-man shows in New York, one at the Harlow-McDonald Gallery in 1928, and another at Grand Central Gallery in 1944.
Information courtesy of Illustration House, June 2008