By Sally Deering

A terrorist flirted with her; a murderer stuck his tongue out at her; and a victim whose face was slashed shared with her the heart-stopping details of her attack – itâ€s all in a dayâ€s work for courtroom artist Christine Cornell who has spent decades in the courtroom with her canvas and pastels drawing some of the biggest criminal trials in our countryâ€s history.

Cornell, a Weehawken resident, has been drawing trials since the 1970s and images from her portfolio are sought after by documentary filmmakers like Ken Burns who features 30 Cornell drawings in his new film “The Central Park Five” which recently aired on PBS about the five young men convicted and later found not guilty of the rape attack of the “Central Park Jogger”. Just last week CNN contacted Cornell for a documentary on the 1980 murder of Beatles†singer/songwriter John Lennon. They wanted to purchase the drawing Cornell did of gunman Mark David Chapman at his arraignment clutching the book “Catcher in the Rye”.

When asked what makes a good courtroom drawing, Cornell says, “Composition. You have to have the key elements and be able to see and feel what the defendant is feeling. You need the judge, the witness, the attorney engaging the witness. Itâ€s always more interesting when thereâ€s more than one person. These drawings are more telling when thereâ€s an interaction between people. You can look back at the drawing and it can actually tell the story.”

Courtroom artists have been attending criminal trials and drawing the events inside the courtroom since the Salem Witch Trials of the 1600s. By the 1960s, courtroom artists were in demand because TV cameras were not allowed in the courtroom, but things began to change in the mid-1980s with more courts allowing cameras and since then, courtroom artists have seen a decline in numbers. Still, Cornell is considered one of the best in her field and travels all over the country to draw courtroom trials. And when sheâ€s not in the courtroom, Cornell spends her time working on her first book, a visual history of the biggest trials of our times and a collaboration with her sister Irene Cornell who has covered most of the same trials as a reporter.

Famous Trials

Martha Stewart, Woody Allen, Bill Cosby, Donald Trump – these are just a few of the celebrities Cornell has covered in the courtroom. In December 1980, she was called in to draw the arraignment of Mark David Chapman who was clutching a copy of “Catcher in the Rye”. In the late 1980s, Cornell covered the trial of Bernie Goetz, dubbed the “Subway Vigilante”. She also covered the trial of Leona Helmsley aka the “Queen of Mean”.  During her trial, Helmsley leaned over and asked Cornell: “Is my hair really that messy? If I looked like that my husband would divorce me”.

“I told her she was right, and I fixed it,” Cornell says.

In New York, Cornell also covered the Central Park Jogger trial. Watching the daily courtroom proceedings, Cornell felt that the boys on trial were not guilty as charged, she says.

“None of their confessions matched. None had a criminal history and it was hard to imagine they could get all the details wrong if they had participated in it,” Cornell says. “They couldnâ€t agree on what she was wearing, where the event took place. The sentiment in the courtroom was they were guilty of something. Everyone knew they shouldnâ€t have been out there, but they were kids. In the end when they got convicted, I figured okay, you donâ€t confess unless chances are you did something. So there it is. But all along I didnâ€t think they committed the rape.”

For the Bernie Goetz Trial, Cornell did a series of five drawings that included a re-enactment of the crime where Goetz was attacked by a group of young men and alleged that he used his handgun in self-defense to shoot his attackers. Cornell drew the re-enactment by reading the transcript of Goetz’s confession. She also did a re-enactment drawing for the trial against the men who slashed the face of Marla Hanson.

“In that case I sat down with Marla and she described to me what happened,” Cornell says. “I drew the assailants from her descriptions. She told me that the guy carving her was smiling.”

At John Gottiâ€s trial, Sammy “The Bull” Gravano testified to 19 murders and Cornell was there drawing it all in and on paper.

“He looked at me and stuck his tongue out at me,” Cornell laughs.

And when Ramses Yousef was on trial for the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, Cornell says his lawyer came over to her and relayed this message from his client: “If I beat this rap, will you go out with me?”

In 2012, for the show “In Session” on Tru-TV, Cornell was courtroom-artist commentator for the Jerry Sandusky trial in Pennsylvania. It was her job to describe how the young men who accused Sandusky of sexual abuse were handling the pressures of telling their stories in public and how Sandusky was reacting.

“It was a challenging task I took seriously,” Cornell states on her website ChristineCornell.com where you can purchase prints of her courtroom drawings including one from the Sandusky trial. “People began to approach me on the street and tell me how I had added to their understanding and appreciation of the emotional goings-on inside.”

How to Draw Justice

Born in New York and raised in Yonkers, Cornell grew up in a news-gathering home. Her dad Cameron Cornell was a popular newsman in radio and her sister Irene went on to be a reporter for CBS radio. Eager to go to college, Cornell was 16 when she entered the Pratt Institute where she earned a BFA in Drawing. She attended the College of Physicians and Surgeons – part of Columbia University – where she studied anatomy to hone her skill drawing the human body.

“We learned all the external musculature and it made it so I could draw figures from my imagination from every position,” Cornell says.

Honing your craft is important to being a courtroom artist, but so is having a strong sense of compassion, Cornell says. Thatâ€s because courtrooms are emotional places and the human drama is what makes a good drawing.

“If youâ€re missing out on the feeling, whatâ€s the point,” Cornell says. “Youâ€re trying to tell the emotional story as well as get their likeness.”

To view Christine Cornellâ€s courtroom art, go to www.christinecornell.com

 

For more info on “The Central Park Five” documentary, go to
http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/centralparkfive/

The post WIN, LOSE, DRAW -Courtroom Artist Christine Cornell See the Art in Justice first appeared on River View Observer.

By Sally Deering

Inside photos by David Bayne

Award-winning actor Danny Aiello is the House Special — the “cherry on the Spumoni”– at Tutta Pasta Italian restaurant in Hoboken, where on any given day passers-by can catch a glimpse of Aiello holding court in the dining room, signing autographs for his fans and, in essence, spreading his special charm like finely seasoned olive oil on a hunk of crusty Italian bread.  

“People love Danny,” Tutta Pasta’s manager Vincent Borriello says. “They love to see him. He’s always happy and he makes other people happy.”

Cool in his wire-rimmed shades and hipper than most dudes his generation, the 76 year-old Aiello wants to leave ’em laughin’ in Hoboken – the town he “adopted” a few years back. So, more than two years ago, Tutta Pasta gave Aiello his own comedy venue, the second floor dining room where every Thursday night, he hosts “Danny’s Upstairs,” a comedy club for up-and-coming comics to do their thing.

“I love comedians,” Aiello says, on a recent Thursday night before show time. “I know what a difficult field (stand-up) is and I have connections. I can help the comics who perform here. That means something to me.” 

Aiello loves to laugh, he says, and with 85 movies under his belt – including an Academy Award nomination for his role as Sal, the pizzeria owner in Spike Lee’s Do The Right Thing,  — Aiello has cultivated connections and wants to use those connections to help others move up the show biz ladder. That’s why you’ll find Aiello sitting in the restaurant he grooves on, in the town he loves, watching, laughing and giving stand-up comics moral support and a place to shine in front of an audience. 

Showtime is 8:30 and the club seats about 50. The stage is small, with a mic and some spotlights lighting up the “Danny’s Upstairs” logo on the back wall. Waiters serve food and drinks and the place has the same look as other comedy clubs like the old Improv on 9^th and 44^th in Manhattan that closed a few years back (it’s a Chipotle eatery now.) It was in the early 1970s at the Improv, that Aiello entered the world of stand-up comedy – as a bouncer. While he watched the door, he also kept an eye on up-and-coming comics like David Brenner, Freddy Prinze, Rodney Dangerfield and Andy Kaufman. He observed their performances and the way they honed their jokes, dueled with hecklers and polished their acts to become headliners – which they all did.

From the Improv, Aiello hooked up with writer Louis Larusso, a Hoboken native who cast Aiello in several plays on Broadway including a production of Lamppost Reunion, a piece about Hoboken that Aiello says put him on the map. Aiello and Larusso became friends and ever since then, Hoboken cast its spell on Aiello and he fell in love with the town when it still had the look and feel of Budd Shulberg’s On the Waterfront, with its working class neighborhoods and old time charm.

Already a family man in 1977, (he has four children including Danny Aiello III who works as a professional stuntman, ) Aiello landed one of the lead roles in the Broadway hit Gemini, playing a warm-hearted dad who tries to help his son move beyond his working-class roots to finish Harvard.  Aiello brought pathos to the comedic role, something that he reveals time and again in the parts he plays. Whether it’s the gangster with a sympathetic heart in Woody Allen’s Radio Days, or the mama’s boy who lost Cher to Nicholas Cage in Moonstruck, Aiello gives his characters the heart of the working-class everyman who just wants to do the right thing – characters that are so old school, you can almost smell the Old Spice wafting from their shirt collars.

And now, Aiello shares that paternal instinct with the comics who perform on his stage every Thursday night. 

At a recent show, six comics performed – five guys and a gal in their 20, 30s and 40s — who told jokes about skydiving, being fat, their girlfriends – or lack of them – and shopping at Wal-Mart.  Some of them had TV credits like appearances on 30 Rock and many of them are doing the club circuit, traveling to other cities for one-night stands in rooms like “Danny’s.”

Willy Sacco, a nervous comic who jumped about the stage like a high-kicking Rip Taylor told this joke during his routine: “I love this stage. It’s the same size as my apartment.” And this one: “I was so broke I had to move back to my parents. They live in a nursing home.” He also did some shtick as John Travolta making meatballs and dancing ala Saturday Night Fever.

 Headliner for the evening, Mike Vecchione had a laid-back, low-key delivery and told jokes about his girlfriend, including this one: “Our fights are like an Iranian election. She always declares herself the winner.”

Vecchione then told a joke about ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder,) prompting a group of women at one of the tables to heckle and boo. Vecchione kept his cool and the ladies in check, keeping things light and breezy with a little flirtation. “I know what it is.  I feel the heat coming from this direction,” he said, talking directly at the giggling women. “I feel an attraction.”

All the comics kept the audience laughing throughout the 2-1/2 hour show and while they may not be big names like Artie Lange, Jackie Mason and Jerry Stiller who have performed at Danny’s, the comics are gaining experience and the opportunity to do their own material in a professional venue that takes them one step closer to their big break.

 “When I worked at the Improv, I watched David Brenner perform and after he went on, he would go over what worked and what didn’t,” Aiello says. “I try to stress to the comics that when you bomb, it teaches you to be better.”

 It’s that kind of enthusiasm and sage advice that makes Aiello hip and relevant. His zest for life is contagious and he continues to undertake projects that challenge and excite him and give him immense pleasure.  Aside from hosting his own comedy club and rehearsing a one-man show about Al Capone, Aiello just cut an album of songs, Live from Atlantic City, and his renditions of “Save the Last Dance,” and “Besame Mucho,” are now available at iTunes.

To his friends and fans, Aiello’s the Solid Gold Caddy of character actors who just keeps getting better with time. But take a closer look under the hood and you’re likely to find a guy with a big Italian heart, who acknowledges his lucky breaks and wants to share that luck with younger generations. Aiello was raised in New York, but he’s got a Jersey way about him, a stand-up guy with the heart of a working-class everyman who just wants to do the right thing.

You can almost smell the Old Spice wafting from his shirt collar.

 Danny’s Upstairs

Tutta Pasta Restaurant and Bar

200 Washington St

Hoboken

201-792-9603

www.dannysupstairs.com

By Sally Deering-

The post Danny Aiello, A Stand- Up Guy! first appeared on River View Observer.