Albert Heschong

Elmer Albert Heschong[1] (February 22, 1919 – March 1, 2001) was an American art director and production designer, principally for television.

In a career that spanned more than 40 years, he worked on over 2,500 productions and was posthumously inducted into the Art Directors Guild Hall of Fame.

He won an Emmy Award for his art direction on Playhouse 90's 1956 production of Requiem for a Heavyweight.

During the 1970s and 1980s, he worked principally on television movies, winning Emmy nominations for his work on Rascals and Robbers: The Secret Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1982) and My Wicked, Wicked Ways: The Legend of Errol Flynn (1985).

[2] He attended Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati, graduated cum laude, and was voted "most all-around boy in the class.

In the second half of his sophomore year, he transferred to the architecture department to develop his technical drawing skills.

He next worked for a year at a theatrical company in Cincinnati and then for the Baltimore Museum of Art, where he designed and built sets and exhibits.

[7] While at ABC, he also worked with Alex Segal on the live drama series Celanese Theatre, including productions of Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1950) with Raymond Burr, Winterset (1951) with Burgess Meredith, Ah Wilderness (1951), Anna Christie (1952), and The Street Scene (1952).

In the early 1950s, the ABC art department in New York worked out of a building that had previously been horse stables.

No Time for Sergeants featured highly stylized sets and was the first dramatic show that was aired with an audience.

[9] Heschong also worked on the Meet Millie sitcom, the Red Skelton Hour, and an early-summer replacement show starring Johnny Carson.

Heschong won an Emmy Award for his art direction on the Rod Serling boxing drama Requiem for a Heavyweight (1956).

[9] Heschong's other notable Playhouse 90 productions included The Miracle Worker (1957), Helen Morgan (1957), Seven Against the Wall (1958), The Velvet Alley (1959), and Judgment at Nuremberg (1959).

The writers came up with many strange concepts and effects that were a challenge, including a steam-driven wheel chair, a steam engine that spit flames, and other unusual vehicles.

One of his favorites was the television movie Visions (1972), for which he designed a large rubble scene to show the aftermath from the explosion of a water treatment plant.

[11] He received an Emmy nomination for his art direction on Rascals and Robbers: The Secret Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1982).