Al Hirschfeld, Telegraph obit
Hyfler/Rosner
(Filed: 22/01/2003)
Al Hirschfeld, who has died in New York aged 99, was for almost 70 years the
witty and urbane caricaturist of the New York Times and many other
publications; his pen and ink portraits of hundreds of Broadway and
Hollywood stars captured the likenesses of everyone from Laurel and Hardy
and Tallulah Bankhead to Liza Minnelli, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Madonna.
Hirschfeld, who had trained as an artist and sculptor, stumbled upon his
profession after a night at a Broadway play in 1926 when he sketched the
French actor Sacha Guitry on his programme. A friend of his was so impressed
by the drawing that he showed it to the New York Herald Tribune and the
sketch was duly published to accompany a review of the play. Hirschfeld's
work was soon appearing in several newspapers and in 1929 he joined the New
York Times.
Although to begin with his interests lay more in politics, Hirschfeld soon
found his metier in theatrical drawings, and his humorous, graceful and
fluid renditions of actors, dancers and singers came to represent the
glamour of the New York stage. Indeed, on Broadway you were not considered
to be established until Hirschfeld had drawn you.
Although his drawings could be provocative, they were never vicious. "My
primary interest," he explained, "is producing a drawing capable of
surviving the obvious fun of recognition or news value . . . for the subject
which turns me on is people."
Nevertheless, from the late 1920s until the beginning of this year, his deft
draughtsmanship could wield great power. The actress Carol Channing held
Hirschfeld responsible for making her career, when he picked her out of 20
unknowns in a small review and put her on the front page of the New York
Times. Katharine Hepburn was, however, more circumspect. His portraiture,
she warned, "tells the whole story - terrifying".
Hirschfeld, who usually sketched his subjects in a darkened auditorium,
would perfect the pictures at home with "a lot of trial and error and a lot
of erasing". "I consider a successful likeness has been achieved," he
explained, "when the subject begins to look like the drawing."
Albert Hirschfeld was born on June 21 1903 at St Louis, Missouri. His mother
recognised his talents for drawing, painting and sculpture and when he was
12 the family moved to New York so that Albert could attend the Art
Students' League.
Initially Hirschfeld went into the film business (as an art director for the
producer David Selznick), but in 1924 he left for Paris where he spent the
next few years painting, drawing and sculpting. Upon his return to New York
in 1928 he had a one-man sculpture show at the Newhouse gallery, but he
began to favour the simplicity of drawing and lost interest in other
methods. "Most of my paintings were really drawings in colour," he wrote in
1970, "and my drawings were really sketches for paintings." He later added
that "sculpture is a drawing you fall over in the dark".
Hirschfeld travelled to the Far East in the 1930s, where he became
fascinated with Polynesian art, and particularly with Javanese shadow
puppets. Much of his work was influenced by oriental art and he was also a
great admirer of the Japanese print master Hokusai. In the 1940s Hirschfeld
collaborated with S J Perelman, Ogden Nash and Vernon Duke on an ill-fated
musical comedy entitled Sweet Bye and Bye. The play never reached Broadway,
but Perelman and Hirschfield later went on to write and illustrate
respectively Westward Ha! Or, Around the World in Eighty Cliches.
During his many years as a caricaturist Hirschfeld reflected the changing
face of the American stage. His portraits of a grinning Fatty Arbuckle, an
angular Gregory Peck, a crooning Frank Sinatra and a bearded John Lennon
formed a pictoral history of showbusiness. Even Hirschfeld himself became
something of an institution. In 1945, when his daughter Nina was born, he
drew her name into the background of the picture he was doing that day.
From then on he would regularly work the name into his drawings, and finding
the hidden name in his newspaper caricatures became a national obsession in
America. On one occasion, the US Department of Defense devised a test for
their pilots in which they had 20 seconds to find the "Ninas" on some
enlarged Hirschfeld drawings.
His work is exhibited in a number of galleries, including the Metropolitan
Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, both in New York, the St Louis
Museum of Art and the Cleveland Museum of Art. He also published many books
of his work including, in 1932, Manhattan Oasis (depictions of the bars and
bartenders of New York), Show Business is No Business (1951), The World of
Hirschfeld (1968) and Hirschfeld by Hirsch feld (1979).
Hirschfield received a special Tony award for his work and in 1996 a film
documentary, The Line King, was made about his life.
In later life his work appeared on everything from postage stamps to
magazine covers. "After 70 years of drawing you improve," he said recently,
"otherwise you are a dolt."
In appearance, Hirschfeld, with his pointed beard, heavy brows and beady
brown eyes, was something of a caricature himself, and occasionally a
self-portrait would appear in crowded scenes. The beard had been acquired
during his Paris years and when he returned home he was reported in Variety
to have "sprouted a hanging garden on his chin". Offended by the remark,
Hirschfeld sued the magazine for $300,000 and was awarded six cents by a
jury.
Al Hirschfeld, who died on Monday, was still working the day before his
death. "I never take a day off," he once revealed. "When I would travel, I
would always draw. I wouldn't know what else to do."
He married first, Ruth Florence Hobby, in 1927. The marriage was dissolved
in 1942. His second wife, the actress Dolly Hass, whom he married in 1943,
died in 1994. He is survived by his third wife, Louise Kerz, his daughter
Nina and two stepsons.