What Happened in 1985
Viacom commissions 26 portraits of historic television shows including Gomer Plye, Hawaii Five-O, The Cosby Show, Hogan Heroes, and The Honeymooners.
For Harvard's Fogg Museum, Hirschfeld draws a classic self portrait.
The advertising campign for Masterpiece Theatre's "Complete Gilbert & Sullivan" includes Hirschfeld drawings of many of the productions.
The original cast of Saturday Night Live is immortalized in a Hirschfeld drawing.
After drawing the orignal stage production of The Odd Couple, and "Unlikely Casting" version, and seven performers in the film adaptation, Hirschfeld draws the female version with Sally Struthers and Rita Moreno.
Featured Images From 1985
Decade: 1980
…For half a century now, Al Hirschfeld has been turning out these uncanny wonders, joyous masterpieces of theatrical caricature, in a drab attic studio, his stubby body perched in an old barber chair he bought 35 years ago in the Bowery, arching over a drawing board cross-hatched with a zillion Exacto grooves.
It’s been a hectic time for Hirschfeld –five shows open soon, plus the new TV season, which means a dozen deadlines in ten days for the The New York Times and TV Guide, his main outlets.
He just back from Baltimore, where he saw a preview of Jean Kerr’s new play and, a sketch pad in his lap, feverishly drew a rough draft of the stars, working in the spillover light from the stage. He rips a page off a thick pad on which he’s scribbled primitive versions of Gilda Radner and Sam Waterson in pencil.
…His ambition, still, is to reveal the most personality in the fewest strokes. “The anatomy isn’t interesting to me. I try to stay away from eye-ear-nose-and-throat likenesses. A big nose, you make it bigger –but that’s witless. What I try for is how he seems.”
…’I’m still involved with the mystery of line and what it can do. I’ve found no formulas; it’s difficult not fall back on what you did before. All I know is to keep paring it down, eliminating, until it’s pure line that communicates.
