Bellocq and Leggett Join Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor bloodhorse.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bloodhorse.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Why Haven t You Heard of CES Openshaw?
The lawyer made a splash in the 30s fighting capital punishment with a high-profile Barrow Gang case.
By
Gwendolyn Knapp
12/14/2020 at 6:00am
Published in the December 2020 issue of
Houstonia
Days before Raymond Hamilton, the short, dapper 21-year-old âyouthful Dallas desperado,â as newspapers called him, and lieutenant in the infamous Barrow Gangâyes, of Bonnie and Clyde fameâwas set to meet his fate in the Huntsville electric chair on May 10, 1935, little known Houston attorney Camille Openshaw agreed to take up his case, seeking to commute his sentence to life imprisonment.
Youâd think Hamiltonâs made-for-Hollywood crimes and his popularity as âthe southwestâs ranking criminalâ would garner all the newsprint attentionâhe was set to be executed after he and accomplice Joe Palmer had killed a prison guard while busting out of a prison farm during a raid staged by Clyde Barrow and c
Sponsored by:
Pierre Peb Bellocq at Keeneland, where much of his work has been displayed
Renowned Eclipse Award-winning cartoonist Pierre “Peb” Bellocq and the late Eclipse Award-winning writer William Leggett have been selected to the National Museum of Racing s Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor.
Bellocq, 94, was born in France in 1926. At age 19, the French racing journal France Courses gave him national exposure by publishing one of his cartoons of a jockey. Bellocq signed the drawing as “Peb,” a signature that became his lifelong moniker.
By 1954, Bellocq s work had achieved international acclaim and he was contracted by Laurel Park owner John D. Schapiro to do drawings for the prestigious Washington, D.C. International Stakes. Bellocq decided to relocate to the United States and in 1955 accepted an offer to work as the staff cartoonist for the Morning Telegraph and its sister paper, the Daily Racing Form, a job he held until December 2008. Early in this care