His Line on Film

At age 98, famed celebrity cartoonist Al Hirschfeld is still spry, still charming--and still drawing daily. Though Hirschfeld has been chronicling Broadway theater and its denizens for more than eight decades, the “Line King” actually began his career creating film art. In fact, by 1926 he was a veteran of movie studio publicity and art departments for Goldwyn, Universal, Pathe, Selznick, Fox and Warner Bros.

In a recent phone interview from his home in New York, Hirschfeld recounted how he began in movies in 1920 quite by accident, “like most things in life. If you are on one side of the street instead of the other, your life changes.”

As it happened he was walking down Fifth Avenue in New York one day with a friend who was also an artist. “He told me he was working at Goldwyn in the art department,” Hirschfeld says. “At that time I was a sculptor and had ambitions to be a painter. He said there was no opening there, but I didn’t know any other place to go, so I went up and met with the advertising director, Howard Dietz. We became great friends across a lifetime, but at that time I took a job in the office running errands, kind of a gofer.”

Between running errands, he was also drawing. “I was doing a little sketch one day and Howard saw it and said, ‘Why don’t you do a drawing for an ad for one of the movies?’ So I said OK, and they used it. A couple of weeks later I was over at Selznick, and I stayed there quite a while. I became an art director of Selznick Pictures at the age of 18. It’s kind of crazy when I think back on it.”

The perpetually busy Hirschfeld is currently completing his drawings for the New York Times for such new fall Broadway shows as “Mamma Mia!” and the new Neil Simon comedy, “45 Seconds From Broadway.” But he’s taking a break from his daily routine and traveling to Los Angeles by train to attend the opening of the new exhibition “Hirschfeld’s Hollywood,” opening Friday at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills. More than 250 drawings, paintings, collages, posters and sketches covering an astonishing 81 years will be featured, beginning with “The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari” and concluding with his montage of the nominees for this year’s Academy Awards.

Hirschfeld is also making a rare personal appearance in town; he’ll be at the academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater on Thursday to discuss his work with film writer Robert Osborne. The program is sold out.

“Hirschfeld’s Hollywood” has been organized with curatorial assistance from David Leopold, who has been archivist to Hirschfeld for the last decade. One of the biggest revelations of the exhibition, Leopold says, is his early work--stylistically a far cry from his Broadway line drawings. For example, his poster for “Woman to Woman”--a 1923 drama starring Betty Compson--is a vibrant watercolor, gouache and ink painting.

“You really get to see the evolution of Hirschfeld as an artist,” Leopold says. “It really starts with drawings that you would not associate with him today that are quite good, but it was before he discovered line, before he committed himself to what we call caricature, even though I don’t believe that is what he does. He is a great portrait artist. Picasso puts two eyes on the side of the head and we don’t call it caricature. But if Hirschfeld does it, we call it caricature.” It was film that allowed Hirschfeld to do his theater drawings. “The film work is the work that really paid,” says Leopold. “The theater work was something he enjoyed doing. He has always been attracted to performers. He saw his first show, ‘Hijinks,’ when he was 12 and he has been going ever since.”

Before the 1930s, says Leopold, Hirschfeld was more interested in design, and “capturing the character of the performers wasn’t such a big part of what he did. He sort of had this decisive moment in Bali in 1931. He came back and found he was interested in capturing image and pure line. He realized the essence of a great portrait was character. When he started drawing the Marx Brothers, he says that they started to look like his drawings instead of the other way around.”

“Comedians lend themselves to caricature,” says Hirschfeld.

One of his best friends was Charlie Chaplin. “But not many of my friends [are in the movies]. Most of my time was spent in New York, but on the few occasions I had been to Hollywood and California, I mostly saw Chaplin. In the early days, I drew him for Pathe. But I met him again in Bali. He came on a round-the-world cruise with his brother Sydney. He stopped there and we had a ball.”

Hirschfeld worked for MGM for 33 years, and the exhibition will showcase his film art for “The Wizard of Oz,” “Meet Me in St. Louis” and “Girl Crazy.” To create the film art, MGM would screen the movies for him. “I would make a lot of sketches during the running of the movie and then I would get a lot of stills from the photo department. It all worked out reasonably well over the years.”

Hirschfeld doesn’t have much admiration for today’s film art. “The photograph has taken over completely in all editorials and magazines and motion picture ads.... I pick up the Sunday [New York] Times and I can’t tell one movie from the other. The striving for originality has disappeared.”

The majority of Hirschfeld’s film art featured in the catalogue will be in the exhibition. But Leopold has also added more drawings and posters. He’s especially happy with the addition--thanks to a private collector--of a 1920 charcoal portrait of former child star Jackie Coogan.

“The academy has been wonderful,” says Leopold. “Once they realized how rich the material was, they said, ‘We want as much as possible.’ We really have brought as much as possible from Hirschfeld’s collection, the academy’s collection and a lot of great private collectors. As I was tracking down all of these [pieces of art], I would bring them back to show him. The look on his face seeing things he hadn’t seen in 30 or 50 or 70 years was a great experience.”

But don’t look for those famous “Ninas” in the film posters. Since 1945, Hirschfeld has been hiding the name of his daughter, Nina, in his caricatures, disguised in people, curls, clothing, facial wrinkles and objects. Hirschfeld says that he recently put 45 Ninas in a caricature of Whoopi Goldberg. “I put them all in her hair,” he says, laughing.

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“Hirschfeld’s Hollywood” opens Friday and continues through Jan. 20 at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, 8949 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. Exhibition hours are Tuesdays through Fridays from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. and weekends from noon to 6 p.m. Admission is free. The Hirschfeld program at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater takes place at 8 p.m. Thursday. The event is sold out, but standby tickets may be available. For ticket and exhibition information call (310) 247-3600.