Al Hirschfeld

• Born: June 21, 1903
• Birthplace: St. Louis, Missouri
• Died: January 20, 2003
• Place of death: New York, New York

Artist

For seven decades, Hirschfeld produced thousands of elegant caricatures that captured the essence of celebrities and of Broadway shows, and which graced the pages of dozens of publications.

Areas of achievement: Art; theater; entertainment

Early Life

Al Hirschfeld (HERSH-fehld) was the son of a German American father and a Ukrainian mother. A child prodigy in art, he grew up in humble circumstances in St. Louis. At the suggestion of a painting teacher, the Hirschfeld family moved when their son was twelve years old to New York City, where his extraordinary talent would have a better chance to flourish. In New York, Hirschfeld attended daytime classes at the Vocational School for Boys, and at night he took courses in painting and in sculpture at the prestigious Art Students League of New York, an adjunct to the National Academy of Design. Following high school graduation in 1920, he became an art director at Selznick Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, where he created posters for many silent films, including several featuring Charlie Chaplin. He continued to develop his craft, picking up tips from fellow artists Charles Dana Gibson (of “Gibson Girl” fame), John Held, Jr., and Mexican illustrator Miguel Covarrubias, with whom he shared a studio.

When Selznick Studios folded in 1924, Hirschfeld afterward determined that he wanted to work as a freelancer rather than as an employee, and he completed projects on commission for other New York-based film production companies. Still searching for a unique style, he went to Paris to continue his artistic education. He supported himself as a part-time tap dancer and grew a beard, which he would retain for the rest of his long life. He also traveled to North Africa and to London, drawing and painting wherever he went.

Returning to New York, Hirschfeld happened to attend a play in 1926, and he drew some of the actors in his ever-present sketchbook. An agent in attendance placed one of the drawings in the New York Herald Tribune. Soon afterward, Hirschfeld became a regular contributor to New York newspapers. In 1927, the year he went to Russia for six months as theater correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, he married for the first time, to chorus girl Florence Ruth Hobby. Their marriage, strained by Hirschfeld’s many trips abroad—including extended stays in Tahiti and Bali in 1931—would end in divorce in 1941.

Life’s Work

While travel abroad may have jinxed his first marriage, the experiences Hirschfeld absorbed in foreign environments had a positive effect on his artwork. By the early 1930’s he had developed the ability to reduce human subjects to their most essential qualities, limned in strongly contrasting blacks and whites. His clean, crisp lines produced maximum effect—the delineation of character—with a minimum of effort. A sure stroke here caught a typical gesture, such as the uplifted pinky on W. C. Fields’s hand as he quaffs a drink. A confident slash there preserved Mae West’s trademarked smirk, the playful twinkle in Groucho Marx’s eye, or the instantly recognizable slope of Bob Hope’s nose. Unlike those of some other caricaturists, Hirschfeld’s portraits—though they naturally exaggerated particular facial features—were never mean-spirited. Most subjects were honored to have Hirschfeld draw them, because it meant they were worthy of being noticed in the world of entertainment.

The place where most of America first became aware of Hirschfeld’s talents was in the theater section of The New York Times, where the artist’s works were a fixture for more than seventy years. Hirschfeld saw not only all the major plays on Broadway but also witnessed many productions in Baltimore in preparation for their New York debuts. It was in Baltimore that he met popular German-born actor-singer Dorothy Clara Louise “Dolly” Haas, who, as a Jew, had fled from Adolf Hitler’s regime in the mid-1930’s. They married in 1943 and produced a daughter, Nina, in 1945.

As Hirschfeld’s fame spread, the demand for his singular talent increased. In the 1930’s, he drew political cartoons for several radical publications, including New Masses. In 1932, he published the first of ten books of illustrations, Manhattan Oases, containing drawings of New York speakeasies. Between 1942 and 1954, American Mercury commissioned him to do a series of paintings of American political figures for the magazine’s covers. During the late 1940’s and early 1950’s, Hirschfeld accompanied humorist and best friend S. J. Perelman on two around-the-world jaunts, and he illustrated Perelman’s accounts of the journeys, The Swiss Family Perelman (1950) and Westward Ha! (1948). In the 1950’s, as television became predominant, TV Guide called upon Hirschfeld to illustrate the new medium; he would do more covers for the magazine than any other artist. From the 1960’s on, Hirschfeld was a popular choice as an artist for film posters and book and record album covers.

In the 1990’s, the United States Postal Service made Hirschfeld the first living artist to have his signature on a U.S. postage stamp. It commissioned him not once but twice. In 1991, he portrayed great comedians on stamps (Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy, Fanny Brice, Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, Jack Benny, and Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy). In 1994, he drew a series of greats of the silent screen (Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd, Rudolph Valentino, Clara Bow, Charlie Chaplin, the Keystone Kops, Theda Bara, John Gilbert, and Zasu Pitts).

In 1994, Hirschfeld’s wife of more than fifty years, Dolly, died of ovarian cancer. Two years later, he married widowed theatrical historian Louise Kerz. America’s best-known caricaturist continued working right to the very end of his long and productive career: He died of natural causes while sketching, less than six months short of his one-hundredth birthday.

Significance

Hirschfeld received considerable recognition for his work throughout his career and posthumously. His artwork can be found in such institutions as the Brooklyn Museum, the Library of Congress, the Lincoln Center Library, the Metropolitan Museum, the Morgan Library, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Smithsonian Museum, and in many other public and private collections. In 1996, he was the subject of an Academy Award-nominated feature documentary, The Line King. He received a special Tony Award for his contributions to American theater. In 2002, he was named as a recipient of the National Medal of the Arts and elected to membership in the American Academy of Arts and Letters. After his death, the Martin Beck Theater in Manhattan was renamed the Al Hirschfeld Theater in his honor.

Bibliography

Hirschfeld, Al. Hirschfeld on Line. New York: Applause Books, 2000. This collection contains essays about the artist from a number of individuals who knew him or were the subject of his drawings, and it includes a generous selection of his delightful art.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Hirschfeld’s British Aisles. New York: Glenn Young Books/Applause Books, 2005. This is a collection of the artist’s caricatures of British theatrical and cinematic celebrities, spanning the period from the late 1920’s to the end of the twentieth century, with commentary from many of those depicted.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Hirschfeld’s Harlem. New York: Glenn Young Books/Applause Books, 2005. This collection, a blend of color lithographs and black-and-white drawings, demonstrates Hirschfeld’s range as an artist in Harlem, one of his favorite venues. Includes commentary from many African American celebrities.

Leopold, David. Hirschfeld’s Hollywood: The Film Art of Al Hirschfeld. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001. This collection, produced to coincide with an exhibition at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, focuses on Hirschfeld’s work for the film industry.