Hirschfeld's Hollywood

"The name Al Hirschfeld has been synonymous with Broadway theater, but his dynamic work for Hollywood films is only now gaining the attention it deserves. By the time his first theatre drawing was published in December 1929, Hirschfeld was a six-year veteran of movie studio publicity and art departments, having already worked for Goldwyn, Universal, Pathe, Selznick, Fox, First National, and Warner Bros. "I lived in the movies," he says of his early years, and it was in films that he discovered his gift of caricature." "Hirschfeld's Hollywood showcases Hirschfeld's nine decades of film art for the first time. Published to accompany a major exhibition at the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the book is illustrated with more than 100 marvelous drawings, paintings, collages, posters, billboards, murals, and other ephemera. Included are classic caricatures and behind-the-scenes perspectives of stars, directors, and producers, all executed in Hirschfeld's sinuous line, as well as vibrantly colored works that will be new to many of the artist's fans. Whether Laurel and Hardy or the Marx Brothers, Charlie Chaplin or Fred Astaire, Cary Grant or Marlon Brando, Goldie Hawn or Julia Roberts, Walt Disney or Steven Spielberg - this book captures Hollywood as only Hirschfeld could portray it." "David Leopold, an independent curator and Hirschfeld's archivist, traces the development of the artist from his early, conventional "eye, ear, nose, and throat" drawings to his signature work: a joyful, life-affirming line that communicates volumes in a single stroke of his pen. Hirschfeld's Hollywood celebrates an artist whose serious graphic compositions, informed by a distinctly modern aesthetic and leavened by wit, have helped to define the way Main Street America looks at the movies."--Jacket.