"goodbye charlie"

George Axelrod’s stage farce served as Lauren Bacall’s Broadway debut after a 15-year career in the movies. It was later adapted as a 1964 film starring Debbie Reynolds and Tony Curtis.  Bacall played a murdered lecherous playboy who finds himself reincarnated as a beautiful blonde woman. One of the titillating elements of the farcical situation was that his best male buddy is thrown into a sexual tizzy by his attraction to the reincarnated Charlie.

I’ve always marveled at how Hirschfeld manages to create a highly stylized and immediately recognizable caricature of a famous beauty that doesn’t veer into the grotesque. Through his sensual use of line, he allows us to see the sophisticated allure that made Lauren Bacall a star.

Charles Busch

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