Herschell Gordon Lewis, American film director, Died at 87

  Business

Herschell Gordon Lewis was born on June 15, 1926, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and died on September 26, 2016.

He was an American filmmaker, best known for creating the “splatter” subgenre of horror films.

Lewis often called the “Godfather of Gore”, though his film career included works in a range of exploitation film genres including juvenile delinquent films, nudie-cuties, two children’s films and at least one rural comedy.

Herschell Gordon Lewis’s father died when he was six years old; his mother never remarried.

His family then moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he spent the majority of his adolescence.

Following his graduation from high school, Lewis received bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism at Northwestern University in nearby Evanston, Illinois.

Then after few years later, he briefly taught communications at Mississippi State University.

Herschell Gordon Lewis was lured from his academic career to become the manager of WRAC Radio in Racine, Wisconsin, and later to become a studio director at WKY-TV studio in Oklahoma City.

During 1953, Lewis began working for a friend’s advertising agency in Chicago while teaching graduate advertising courses at night at Roosevelt University.

During the meantime, he began directing TV commercial advertisements for a small production company called Alexander and Associates.

He later bought out half of the company with business associate Martin Schmidhofer and renamed it Lewis and Martin Films.

Herschell Gordon Lewis passed away at 87 years old.