We Celebrate the Upcoming Broadway Season Through the Legendary Pen of Al Hirschfeld!
Rip Torn, Hal Holbrook, George Grizzard, Jane Alexander, and Edward Hermann, 1976
Hamilton shows how historical figures can be relevant to today’s audience. Forty years ago, there was a flurry of television biopics that tried to do the same.
Tom Stoppard, Harold Pinter, and Christopher Hampton, 1978
Harold Pinter’s Old Times will soon be in New York. Hirschfeld drew the playwright and his shows from close to thirty years, capturing important plays such as The Homecoming, No Man’s Land, and Betrayal. Here Pinter is drawn for the cover of book examining three of England’s greatest contemporary playwrights.
When The Gin Game opens on Broadway in October it will be almost the 40th anniversary of when Hirschfeld first drew this work from the original production.
Charles Durning and Julie Harris, 1997
20 years after the Broadway premiere, Hirschfeld drew two of Broadway’s leading lights in the two-person comedy.
Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy, 1958
Before Sylvia made actors perform as dogs, this 1958 comedy put Hume Cronyn is a dog suit as the shy Oliver who can only be bold and independent when wearing the suit.
Joyce Bulifant, Philip Coolidge, and Eva le Gallienne, 1961
Zola’s fascinating story was first presented on Broadway in 1945 as simply Therese, with Eva Le Gallienne playing the overbearing aunt. She would re-create the performance in this 1961 television production for the Play of the Week.
Frances Nuyen and William Shatner, 1958
The clash of East and West is nothing new on Broadway, with David Mamet’s China Doll being the latest entry. This 1958 play by Paul Osborn was adapted from the novel of the same name and starred the future Captain Kirk from Star Trek in his first lead role on Broadway.
J. Carrol Naish, Eileen Heckart, Jack Warden, Gloria Marlowe, Richard Davalos, and Van Heflin, 1955
This play opened as a one act in repertory with another Arthur Miller one act and met with a mixed reception. It was later adapted by Miller into a standard two act play which is being revived this season.
Mamet came to Hirschfeld’s studio the afternoon before the opening of his On the Stem starring Ricky Jay to pose for this drawing. The two men chatted with Hirschfeld about the history of Broadway and vaudeville. The conversation was reprinted virtually verbatim in the New York Times.
Al Pacino, James Hayden, and J.J. Johnston, 1983
This season’s China Doll is not the first time Pacino has starred in a Mamet play on Broadway. His first was Mamet’s now celebrated American Buffalo in 1983.
"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.
