Al Hirschfeld

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Albert Hirschfeld (June 21, 1903 – January 20, 2003) was an American caricaturist best known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars.

Personal life

Al Hirschfeld was born in 1903 in a two-story duplex on 1313 Carr Street in St. Louis, Missouri, and migrated with his family to 1915, where he received his art education at the National Academy of Design.

In 1927, he married chorus girl Florence Ruth Hobby; the couple married in 1932 and divorced in 1943. Dolly Haas married him in the same year as the actor did. Haas died in 1994 at the age of 84. Nina (b.) was their one child, and a daughter. 1945 (British):

Louise Kerz, a theatre historian, married him in 1996. (b. 1936 (c. 1936).

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Career

Hirschfeld traveled to Paris and London in 1924 to study painting, drawing, and sculpture. As he returned to the United States, a friend, fabled Broadway press agent Richard Maney, displayed one of Hirschfeld's drawings to an editor at the New York Herald Tribune, which earned Hirschfeld commissions for the newspaper and then later, The New York Times.

Hirschfeld's style is distinctive, and he is widely considered to be one of contemporary drawing and caricature's most influential figures, having inspired countless writers, illustrators, and cartoonists. His caricatures were always drawings of pure line in black ink, for which he used a genuine crow quill.

Readers of The New York Times and other newspapers before they were printed in color will be most familiar with Hirschfeld's black ink on white illustration board. However, Hirschfeld's entire body of color work exists. Several magazines have requested Hirschfeld's full-color artwork, most often as the front page. Examples include TV Guide, Life Magazine, American Mercury, Look Magazine, The New York Times Magazine, The New Masses, and Seventeen Magazine. He also illustrated several books in color, the most notable of which being Harlem As Seen By Hirschfeld, with text by William Saroyan.

In fall 1963, CBS asked him to illustrate a preview magazine highlighting the network's new TV series. Candid Camera, and Hirschfeld's caricature of the show's host Allen Funt outraged Funt so much that he threatened to leave the network if the magazine were to be published. Hirschfeld created a slightly flattering appearance, but he and the network informed Funt that the artwork for newspapers and other print media had been long in preparation, and that it had been too late to remove it. Funt relented but said that what could be changed would have to be changed. Newsweek published an article about the controversy.

Hirschfeld started young and lived to the end of his life, thereby chronicling virtually every major entertainment figure of the twentieth century. He earned his success over the eight decade years as a writer, guitarist, and dancer of various Broadway plays, which would appear in advance in The New York Times to herald the performance's opening. Despite the fact that the theater was his best-known field of interest, according to Hirschfeld's art dealer Margo Feiden, he did more for the films than he did for live performances. Hirschfeld became an art director at Selznick Pictures at the age of 17. He served in Paris for about four years, before moving to Paris in 1924 to work and lead the Bohemian life. Hirschfeld had a beard that was also requiring a refrigerator. He kept it for the next 75 years, presumably because "you never know when your oil burner will go on the fritz."

Hirschfeld drew politicians, television stars, and celebrities of all sorts from Cole Porter and the Nicholas Brothers to Star Trek: The Next Generation's cast. And jazz players Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald, among others — and rockers The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen, Jerry Garcia, and Mick Jagger all caricatured jazz musicians —Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, John Moore, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald. He drew the cover of Aerosmith's Draw the Line album in 1977.

Many original movie posters, as well as The Wizard of Oz (1939), were produced by Hirschfeld, including for Charlie Chaplin's films. Hirschfeld was inspired by his designs, and the segment's producer, Eric Goldberg, has long been a fan of his work. In Goldberg's character design and animation of the genie in Aladdin (1992), Goldberg's admiration for Hirschfeld can be seen further. The Line King: The Al Hirschfeld Story (1996), an Oscar-nominated documentary film.

Hirschfeld married German actress Dolly Haas in 1943. They were married for more than 50 years and had a daughter, Nina.

In the majority of the drawings he made after her birth, Hirschfeld is known for hiding Nina's name, written in capital letters ("NINA" in most of the drawings. The name will appear in a sleeve, in a hairdo, or somewhere in the background. Hirschfeld took part in "harmless insanity," as Margo Feiden put it, by concealing her name at least once in each of his drawings. The number of NINAs disguised is shown by the number drawn to the right of his signature. If no number is found, then either NINA appears once or the drawing was started before she was born.

Hirschfeld wanted the anonymous NINAs to reach his circle of friends in the first few months after Nina's birth. However, what he hadn't expected was that the population at large was already alerted to them. Hirschfeld felt that the joke was wearing thin among his colleagues and stopped hiding NINAs in his drawings, letters, and letters to The New York Times, ranging from "curious" to "furious" pressured him to begin hiding them again. It was quicker to conceal the NINAs than it was to answer all of the mail, according to him. He cried out that the gimmick had overshadowed his art from time to time.

Feiden's book Show Business is Non Profitable explains what Hirschfeld meant when he referred to the NINA counting as a harmless insanity in 1973: "Every day, an NYU student returns to my Gallery to stare at the same drawing for more than a week." Hirschfeld's whimsical recreation of New York's Central Park was included in the drawing. "What is so riveting about the one drawing that holds you here for hours, day after day?" I wondered as curiosity finally got the best of me.' She said she had only found 11 of the 39 NINAs and would not give up until all were found. The year, not Hirschfeld's signature, was 39, according to me. Nina was born in 1945.

He included a drawing of Nina in his 1966 anthology "The World of Hirschfeld" as a result. There were no NINAs in the drawing. There were two ALs and two DOLLYs, as well as "the names of her wayward parents" (in the literature).

The crimp of Duke the Builder's toothpaste tube contained a NINA in honor of Hirschfeld in the Fantasia 2000 segment.

For more than seven decades, Al Hirschfeld contributed to The New York Times. His work has also appeared in The New York Herald Tribune, The Old World, The New Yorker Magazine, Collier's, The American Mercury, TV Guide, Playbill, New York newspaper, and Rolling Stone.

Hyperion Books published Harlem As Seen By Hirschfeld in 1941, with text by William Saroyan.

In the book The Best Plays of... (for example, The Best Plays of 1958-1959) Hirschfeld's illustrations for the theater were collected and published yearly.

Hirschfeld's Illustrations include: Manhattan Oasis (1951), American Theater (1977), Hirschfeld's World (1981), Hirschfeld's World (1981), Hirschfeld's New York (1995), Hirschfeld's New York (2001), Hirschfeld's New York (1999), Hirschfeld's New York (2001), Hirschfeld's New York (1982), Hirschfeld's World Becomes It (1973), Hirschfeld's World (1981), Hirschfeld's The American Theater (1983) Hirschfeld's The American Theater (1978), Show Business Is (1972), The American Theater (1970), Hirschfeld (1980) Ascheien (1981) Hirschfeld (1980)

Hirschfeld appeared in several journals, including Westward Ha! Or, Around the World in 80 Clichés, a satirical glimpse at the duo's travels on assignment for Holiday magazine. The United States Postal Service hired him in 1991 to produce a series of postage stamps honoring famous American comedians. Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Edgar Bergen (with Charlie McCarthy), Jack Benny, Fanny Brice, Bud Abbott, and Lou Costello were among the drawings included in the series. Rudolph Valentino, Zasu Pitts, and Buster Keaton followed him after a series of silent film stars. The Postal Service permitted him to include Nina's name in his drawings, while their own court prohibited secret messages from being included in United States stamp designs.

Hirschfeld contributed to Patrick F. McManus' humor column in Outdoor Life magazine for a number of years.

Hirschfeld's work can be seen in permanent collections at a number of museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the New York Public Library in Cambridge, Harvard University, and the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, Texas.

Hirschfeld was the recipient of two Tony Awards for lifetime accomplishments. The Al Hirschfeld Theatre on Broadway was renamed on June 21, 2003. Hirschfeld was also honoured on the St. Louis Walk of Fame as a guest.

The National Medal of Arts was given to Al Hirschfeld in 2002. He was a Honorary Member of the Salmagundi Club.

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