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Celebrating Pride Hirschfeld-Style! Check Out These Rare Classic Drawings From the Famed Artist
Celebrating Pride Hirschfeld-Style! Check Out These Rare Classic Drawings From the Famed Artist
In celebration of The New-York Historical Society's special exhibition "The Hirschfeld Century: The Art of Al Hirschfeld" and the new book "The Hirschfeld Century: Portrait of an Artist and His Age," Playbill presents a look back at some classic Al Hirschfeld drawings. For the month of June, we feature some of his work that is tailor-made for our ongoing Pride coverage.
23 PHOTOS
Albert Carroll in
The Grand Street Follies, 1927
In the Twenties, female impersonators were among the most popular vaudeville performers. Audiences loved their outrageousness, and it is widely believed that Mae West co-opted Bert Savoy’s hip-swaying walk and his comic invitation to “come up and see me.” Albert Carroll was a female impersonator whose specialties were well-known performers and dancers. Here he burlesques Ethel Barrymore.
Al Hirschfeld
Angels in America
Marcia Gay Harden, David Marshall Grant, Kathleen Chalfant, Ron Leibman, Ellen McLaughlin, Stephen Spinella, Joe Mantello, and Jeffrey Wright, 1993
Hirschfeld drew this Pulitzer Prize winning play when the first half, Millennium Approaches debuted on Broadway in 1993. The play was such an event that he included Ellen McLaughlin as the Angel at the top of his year end overview drawing that December.
Al Hirschfeld
B.D. Wong in
M. Butterfly, 1988
Hirschfeld drew both B.D. Wong and John Lithgow. Lithgow played the unhappy French diplomat who falls in love with a Chinese opera diva played by Wong, who turns out to be a man.
Al Hirschfeld
Bent
Richard Gere, David Dukes, and David Marshall Grant, 1979
Hirschfeld drew both this cast drawing of Martin Sherman’s play about the persecution of gay men in Nazi Germany when it debuted on Broadway and individual drawings of Gere and Michael York for the Times Friday theater column.
Al Hirschfeld
Big Fish, Little Fish
Hume Cronyn, Jason Robards Jr., and Martin Gabel, 1961
John Gielgud directed Hugh Wheeler’s first play about a college professor, disgraced by a sex scandal, who now works in a minor post at a publishing company. It was one of the first Broadway plays to explore frankly the issue of homosexuality.
Al Hirschfeld
Breaking the Code
Jenny Agutter, Derek Jacobi, and Rachel Gurney, 1987
Derek Jacobi portrayed British mathematician Alan Turing, famous for breaking the Enigma code in WWII, in this Hugh Whitemore play that links his cryptographic work with his attempts to come to terms with being gay. His story was also the basis for the hit fit film, The Imitation Game.
Al Hirschfeld
Cabaret
Joel Grey and Liza Minnelli, 1972
Hirschfeld had drawn the original stage production of kinder and Ebb’s famous musical which dealt with the sexually ambigious Weimar era as well as this Oscar winning film version starring Liza Minnelli and the original Emcee, Joel Grey.
Al Hirschfeld
Elizabeth Ashley in
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, 1974
Hirschfeld drew this sultry portrait of the actress who said that her job was “to give every man in the audience a hard-on,” except her husband in the play, Brick, who struggles with his own sexuality.
Al Hirschfeld
Falsettos
Michael Rupert, Heather Mac Rae, Chip Zien, Carolee Carmello, Barb Walsh, Steve Bogardus, Jon Kaplan, 1992
James Lapine and William Finn combined two Off Broadway one acts by finn to give Broadway Marvin, his ex-wife, his psychiatrist, son and gay lover in the Tony-winning Falsettos .
Al Hirschfeld
Hair, 1968
This “tribal love-rock musical” not only shocked audiences with its brief nudity, but also its attitudes to sexuality and an onstage kiss between two male leads.
Al Hirschfeld
Joel Grey in
The Normal Heart, 1985
Larry Kramer’s gripping semi-autobiographical drama about the rise of AIDS was a success off Broadway. Brad Davis originated the role of writer/activist Ned Weeks and was later replaced by Broadway vet, Joel Grey. The play eventually made it to Broadway in 2011.
Al Hirschfeld
Jonathan Hogan in
As Is , 1985
As Is was another play to deal with the rise of AIDS, but this time directly on Broadway. Although noiminated for a Tony for best Play it only lasted 49 performances.
Al Hirschfeld
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Heardon Lackey, Merle Louise, Chita Rivera, Brent Carver, Anthony Crivello, Kirsti Carnahan, 1993
Kander and Ebb along with Terrance McNally turned this popular novel and film about two cellmates in South America, one who is gay, and one who is not into a Tony winning musical directed by Hal Prince.
Al Hirschfeld
La Cage Aux Folles
Gene Barry and George Hearn, 1983
This Jerry Herman musical about the hijinks of gay manager of nightclub and his partner, a drag performer who is the club’s star attraction who tried to hide their gayness when their son brings home his fiancée’s very conservative parents. It is the only musical to win Tonys for Best Musical and Best Revival each time it has come to Broadway.
Al Hirschfeld
Liza Minnelli in Victor/Victoria, 1997
When Julie Andrews took a four week vacation for this cross dressing musical, Liza stepped in and wowed Broadway audiences who had not seen her on stage for 11 years.
Al Hirschfeld
Nathan Lane in
The Lisbon Traviata, 1989
Lane played Mendy, a “flamboyantly bitchy and viciously wicked opera queen” in Terrence McNally’s play about gay relationships and Maria Callas.
Al Hirschfeld
Quentin Crisp, 1984
The celebrated gay writer and raconteur celebrated his ninetieth birthday performing his one-man show, An Evening with Quentin Crisp. He would die almost one year later.
Al Hirschfeld
Rent
Daphne Rubin-Vega, Taye Diggs, Fredi Walker, Adam Pascal, Wilson Jermaine Heredia, Anthony Rapp, Idina Menzel, and Jesse L. Martin, 1996
Jonathan Larson’s update on La Boheme set it in the East Village during the AIDS epidemic.
Al Hirschfeld
Richard Thomas in Fifth of July, 1981
Landfrod Wilson’s 1978 play centered on Kenneth Talley, Jr., a gay paraplegic Vietnam veteran living in his childhood home with his boyfriend, botanist Jed Jenkins. The show came to Broadway in 1980 and Richard Thomas was one of the actors who played the role of Ken during its run.
Al Hirschfeld
Robert Morley and Mark Dignam, 1938
The Stokes Brothers drama of the Irish writer used much of Wilde’s own writing to tell his story and because of that it was first banned in England. This 1938 Broadway production helped launch the career of Robert Morley.
Al Hirschfeld
Stacy Keach in
Deathtrap, 1979
Keach played Sidney, a successful playwright who stages the murder of young man who eventually turns out to be his lover to shock his wife to death. When they succeed, they end up turning on each other and are both dead by the end of the play.
Al Hirschfeld
The Children’s Hour
Audrey Hepburn, James Garner, Shirley Maclaine, Karen Balkin, and Fay Bainter, 1961
Hirschfeld drew the original stage production of Lillian Hellman’s drama about boarding school headmistresses who are accused of being lesbians in 1934 as part of composite of long running plays that season. He drew this 1961 film adaptation to promote the United Artists film.
Al Hirschfeld
The Ritz
Jerry Stiller, Jack Weston, Rita Moreno, Kaye Ballard, F. Murray Abraham, Treat Williams, and George Coulouris, 1976
Hirschfeld drew the poster for the film adaptation of Terrence McNally’s play set in a gay bathhouse.
Al Hirschfeld
"The Hirschfeld Century: The Art of Al Hirschfeld " is the first major retrospective of the acclaimed portraitist, who immortalized celebrities and Broadway productions with his iconic drawings for nine decades. On view at The New-York Historical Society through Oct. 12, the exhibition features over 100 original drawings from the artist's early work for Hollywood studios to his last drawings for the New York Times. Highlights include classic portraits of Charlie Chaplin, Carol Channing , Ella Fitzgerald , Jane Fonda , and Ringo Starr, as well as cast drawings from such landmark productions as Fiddler on the Roof , West Side Story and The Glass Menagerie .
The book "The Hirschfeld Century: Portrait of an Artist and His Age," published by Alfred A. Knopf and featuring biographical text by David Leopold, is currently available exclusively at The New-York Historical Society exhibition, and will be available in bookstores around the country July 7. The artist's extraordinary career is revealed in more than 360 of his iconic black-and-white and color drawings, illustrations, and photographs. Hirschfeld's influences, his techniques, and his evolution from his earliest works to his last drawings, are all chronicled.