Al Hirschfeld Object List
SIDE BY SIDE: Theater Drawings from the 1930s
by Al Hirschfeld and Ben Solowey
October 4 - 26, 2003
Right This Way
Guy Robertson, Blanche Ring, Thelma White, Joe E. Lewis
Ink on board, 1938
The Women
Enid Markey, Ethel Remey, Jane Seymour, Anne Teeman, Eileen Burns,
Ink on board, 1937
Babes In Arms
Mitzi Green, Duke McHale, Lynn Murray And Grace McDonald
Ink on board, 1937
Duke McHale in Babes in Arms
Ink on board, 1937
Charcoal on paper, 1937
Duke McHale was singer and dancer who first made a hit in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1936, starring alongside Bob Hope, Fanny Brice, Eve Arden, and Josephine Baker. A year later he was the star of the new Rodgers and Hart musical, Babes In Arms. The show, which introduced such standards as “My Funny Valentine” and “The Lady Is A Tramp,” was a success, running 289 performances. McHale made his next and last Broadway appearance in Are You With It?, a forgettable musical whose only distinction may be that Hirschfeld hid his first NINA in the cast drawing of the production.
Candida With Katharine Cornell & Kent Smith
Ink on board, 1937
Saint Joan
Katharine Cornell, Maurice Evans And Charles Waldron
Ink on board, 1936
Murder In The Cathedral
A Federal Theatre Project:
with Robert Williamson, Louis Prohoff, Harry Sothern, & Harry Irvine
Ink on board, 1936
Blithe Spirit
Clifton Webb, Mildred Natwick, Leonora Corbett, Peggy Wood
Ink on board, 1941
Herman Shumlin
Ink on board, 4/20/41.
Shumlin worked on Broadway when it was ruled by the independent producer, and not multi-national corporations as it is today. He not only produced some of the most significant hits of the Thirties and Forties, including Grand Hotel, The Little Foxes and Inherit the Wind, but he directed many as well. Lillian Hellman, whose plays Shumlin produced and directed, wrote, “When a director is as good as Mr. Shumlin, his work is very important indeed…[he] has made many an actor into a star, and many a star into a decent actor…He is one of the few directors who believes in the play; he is one of the very few who has the sharp clarity, the sensitivity, the understanding, which should be the director’s gift to the play.”
Robert Morley & Mark Dignam In Oscar Wilde
Ink on board, 1938
Lady In Waiting; Ladies In Retirement; Liliom
Ink on board, 1940
Paul Whiteman And Jimmy Durante In Jumbo
Ink on board, 1935
The Merry Wives Of Windsor
Effie Shannon, Henry Mowbray, Joan Storm, Louis Lytton, And Estelle Winwood
Ink on board, 1938
Anne Of England
Flora Robson, Leo G. Carroll, Barbara Everest, Frederic Worlock, And Jessica Tandy,
Ink on board, 1941
Frances Farmer, Luther Adler & Roman Bohnen In Golden Boy
Ink on board, 1937
Frances Farmer was a budding film star who found more fulfillment on the New York stage where she worked with the renowned Group Theater. Her alcoholism cut short her career and she spent decades in and out of mental institutions. While her films are hard to find, she is best remembered today by Jessica Lange’s uncanny impersonation in the harrowing screen biopic, Frances.
The Wookey
Edmund Gwenn, Carol Goodner, Heather Angel, Norah Howard, Byron Russell, Victor Beecroft
Ink on board, 1941
Although a veteran of the stage both in England (where he was a favorite of George Bernard Shaw) and on Broadway, Gwenn is best remembered today for his Academy Award-winning performance as Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). He appeared in films in England as early as 1916, and became a popular character actor in Hollywood films in the Forties and Fifties, including roles in The Devil and Miss Jones (1941), Lassie Come Home (1943), and The Trouble with Harry (1955).
Room Service
Betty Field, Eddie Albert, Margaret Mullen, Teddy Hart, And Sam Levene
Ink on board, 1937
Maggie Mullen made her Broadway debut in 1928 and was featured in such stage classics as Dead End (1935). As a protégé of fabled producer/director/playwright George Abbott, she starred in a number of his great productions including Three Men on a Horse (1935) and Room Service (1937). During the run of Red Harvest (1937) she met and married the show’s designer, John Root. They moved to Bucks County where Maggie was a frequent performer at the Bucks County Playhouse.
Candle In The Wind
Helen Hayes, John Wengraf And Tonio Selwart
Ink on board, 1941
There are also a selection of enlargments of newspaper clippings of various works
ALL HIRSCHFELD ARTWORK © THE ESTATE OF AL HIRSCHFELD
© 2003 The Ben Solowey Collection. All Rights Reserved.