Le Crime Ne Paie Pas - 'Bonnie et Clyde'.
Francis Marshall was a British magazine and book illustrator, whose short stint as a comic artist included illustrations for installments of the French vertical comic strip 'Le Crime Ne Paie Pas' by Paul Gordeaux.
Early life and career
William Francis Marshall was born in 1901 and educated at the Slade College of Fine Art in London. He began his career in advertising illustration. In 1928 he began a collaboration with Condé Nast as an illustrator for their magazine Vogue, to which he contributed during a period of ten years. He also painted numerous covers for romantic fiction especially the Barbara Cartland titles for PAN, Bantam, Corgi and NEL amongst others. He furthermore had a weekly fashion feature in the Daily Mail.
Book illustrations
In 1959 Marshall wrote his first book on drawing entitled 'Magazine Illustration'. It was followed by more similar books, such as 'Fashion Drawing', 'Sketching the Ballet' and 'Drawing the Female Figure'. Marshall is known for his many drawings of London, especially the ballet in the Covent Garden Opera House. Several of these works were collected in the books 'London West' (1946) and 'The London Book' (1951), and also in the brochure 'Shopping in London' (1950), a post-war guide issued by the British Tourist association to lure overseas visitors back to the UK. He is also the author and illustrator of the book 'An Englishman in New York' (1949), made during a trip to the States.
Le Crime Ne Paie Pas
Marshall's talent was apparently also recognized on the European mainland. He illustrated at least two installments of the French newspaper comics feature 'Le Crime Ne Paie Pas' in the 1960s. This was a series of true crime cases, told in a text comics format, written by Paul Gordeaux. Marshall provided the illustrations for 'Le Rapt du Bébé Lindbergh', dealing with the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby, and 'Bonnie et Clyde', about American crime couple Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. The latter strip had such an impact, that director François Truffaut sent Gordeaux and Marshall's adaptation to the scriptwriters of the 1963 'Bonnie and Clyde' film when he was approached to direct it. Arthur Penn only directed 'Bonnie & Clyde' in 1966, though.
Death
William Francis Marshall passed away in 1980.
