HIRSCHFELD 3 BOOK COLLECTOR SET

HIRSCHFELD'S HARLEM, HIRSCHFELD'S BRITISH AISLES & HIRSCHFELD SPEAKEASIES OF 1932 COLLECTOR'S SET

"The book of original lithographs by Al Hirschfeld should be a prize for modern art lovers."

—Harper's Bazaar, 1942

"Harlem tells a racy, pungent story of life in that quarter.… Hirschfeld hasn't turned out anything livelier to date than this Harlem series." —New York Herald Tribune, December 21, 1941

"These prints possess an inherent American quality, comparable to the music of George Gershwin. They are convincing character studies, so much more emphatic than the thin and papery images of Grant Wood, or the strident caricatures of Thomas Benton. The original lithographs have attracted hordes of people to the galleries." —The Brooklyn Eagle, December 21, 1941

"Harlem people just keep on rising above whatever met them at eye level; regardless of the rugged terrain or the economic weather, Harlem residents had their own means of levitation. They performed an art form beyond the Arts, beyond the stage, beyond the Cotton Club. Very real people meeting reality head on and then stubbornly transcending it. Some commentators have made much of the fact that these aren’t Hirschfeld’s typical performers. Well, they’re not on the stretch of Broadway I had covered before or since. But these Harlemites are performers all right. They are in rehearsal for the performance of their lives. It’s that grand profound ritual I hope to have captured here.”

—Al Hirschfeld, 2003

“Opening this book is like stepping into the vibrant life of Harlem in the first half of the 20th century. Hurrah for this new, enlarged and expanded version, a marvelous combination of images, reminiscences and commentary on black American art and life. Each page has a magical intensity, depicted with rare honesty and warmth. Highly recommended for all public and academic collections as well as for anyone who loves New York City.” —Library Journal

“Smoky, sultry, sinuous: Hirschfeld’s Harlem is as exhilarating as a breath of late-night air. This book is just the tonic for a war-weary age.”—O, TheOprahMagazine

“A feast for the eyes. ‘Glorious’ is not too strong a word for these works of art.” —New York Observer

“A beautiful valentine to African-American artists of Harlem and beyond.”—BaltimoreSun

“Hirschfeld’s spectacular book captures the true Harlem beyond the tourists. The striking portraits in this large, lush volume include such African-American titans as Ethel Waters, James Earl Jones, Lena Horne, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, a pictorial history of black entertainment in the 20th century.”—Playbill

“Beneath Hirschfeld’s celebration of Harlem is the tale of a people struggling to carry on and rise above an atmosphere of repression, hatred, and injustice. These drawings offer a glimpse of the spirit behind that struggle and of the wings that bore it up. . . . Hirschfeld’s exuberant crayon line swings and sweeps through the shapes of dance hall groups, lonely women, families, and jazz musicians. . . . Marvelously informative.” —Bloomsbury Review

AL HIRSCHFELD was designated a “Living Legend” by the U.S. Library of Congress. The U.S. Post Office issued -fifteen stamps of Hirschfeld drawings. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts by President George W. Bush. Hirschfeld was the recipient of two Lifetime Achievement Tony awards. His work is represented in the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum, The Fogg Museum and the Harvard Theatre Collection. For seventy-five years, his work was the centerpiece of The New York Times’ Art & Leisure section. To commemorate his centenary, a Broadway theatre, formerly the Martin Beck, was re-christened The Al Hirschfeld.

With Commentary by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee, Savion Glover, Whoopi Goldberg, Geoffrey Holder, Lena Horne, Quincy Jones, Eartha Kitt, Audra McDonald, Albert L. Murray, Bobby Short, Cicely Tyson, George C. Wolfe and Others

Introductory Essays by William Saroyan and Gail Lumet Buckley

HIRSCHFELD: THE SPEAKEASIES OF 1932

“This is a wonderful book about a lost world. It is part social history, part artifact of urban archaeology, part -simple reporting on the long history of human folly. The apparent subject is the New York speakeasy, -captured in words and drawings by Al Hirschfeld in the final months of the preposterous American social experiment called Prohibition. The true subject is the book’s wider context: the invincible stupidity of those who embrace what George Orwell once called ‘the smelly little orthodoxies.’” —Pete Hamill

“A pithy, affectionate guide to speakeasies and their denizens, from Harlem to the Village . . . Deftly -captures the Manhattan demimonde with a gimlet eye and a Runyon ear . . . . This lavish reprint offers a -spirited look back.” —New York magazine

“A charming work of cultural history and a portrait of the artist as a hard-drinking young man.”

—Starred Review
Library Journal

“His comments are as swooping and witty as his lines.” —The New Yorker

“It is an amazing volume. A veritable Arabian Nights is unfolded here. The fashionable as well as the humble haunts are minutely described. It is the last word in daring and deviltry. From the Bowery to the roaring forties we are taken for a whirl and we meet every type that exists in our hectic town. Women in Paquin gowns are seated at the French bars, Negroes are seen hammering the piano keys, and one can all but hear the drinks being poured to the accompaniment of the exotic music. Mr. Hirschfeld’s -volume will someday be an historical document.” —Charles Hanson Towne
The New York American, 1932

“Mr. Hirschfeld takes your breath away. . . . He takes his 36 hot spots and puts them between two covers of a book to be handed down to posterity as a curio from a curious age in which America passed a law against the Demon Rum, with the odd result that -teetotalers took to mixing their own gin in the kitchen rather than to submit to law and order.”

—The Brooklyn Eagle, October 16, 1932

When Manhattan joints were hung out to dry, the Booze-oizie sniveled, then pirouetted on their stools to find reasonably palatable Speakeasy facsimiles. Each Prohibition hangout had its own flavor, decorum, decor, and formula for ducking the law. Each found its own alcoholic substratum, its own inimitable characters, behind, at and under the bar.

Al Hirschfeld nails these dipsomaniacal outposts with his pen and brush in the manner of a dour Irish bartender sizing up a troublesome souse. Provided as well is the recipe for each speakeasy's claim to fame. The resulting concoction is the perfect antidote to the Cappuccino Grande Malaise, a book that will make everyone yearn for a Manhattan, old-fashioned and straight up.

HIRSCHFELD'S BRITISH AISLES

“These drawings document Hirschfeld’s Anglomania. . . . Its subject matter may not rank with the Battle of Trafalgar, but this is inmost England, and is indispensable.”

—John Russell

“Al Hirschfeld was the Mozart of pen and ink.”

—Peter Shaffer

“Hirschfeld was the greatest American caricaturist of the 20th century and his passion was theater” —Sheridan Morley, The Telegraph

Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Sabotage
with producer Ivor Montague

The rotund gentleman in the tight suit is unmistakable — you have seen him briefly in most of his movies, the great thriller director, Alfred Hitchcock. He looks fiercer than he probably was; he was a great practical joker and wit. Hitchcock’s career owed much to the man on the left, with the electric hair and magnified eyes. This was a peer of the realm who rejected his status. Ivor Montagu, who might have been Lord Swaythling had he not been a dedicated Communist, rescued Hitchcock’s first great film, ‘The Lodger,’ from limbo. Distributor CM Woolf considered it unshowable. Montagu’s discreet re-editing enabled the film to have a second wind and it was a stunning success, establishing Hitchcock as the boy wonder of British cinema
(he was 27).

— Kevin Brownlow

Charles Laughton

England’s finest film actor, still. Every inch of that odd body and that curious face expressing something, a thousand teeming impulses visible just beneath the surface. A voice all cellos and basses and the occasional thwack from the tympani sounding every implication of every word.

— Simon Callow

King Lear

Even if you know nothing about ‘King Lear,’ the composition of this drawing tells you that the play is no trifle. The wonderfully rendered Paul Scofield explodes at the centre whilst the other characters swirl and disintegrate in his orbit.

— Michael Blakemore

Cecil Beaton with the Queen Mother

This is my absolute favorite Hirschfeld drawing. Cecil Beaton, court photographer, flanneur and acclaimed designer of sets and costumes for ‘My Fair Lady’ is here seen in the role of Henry Higgins in colloquy with Mrs. Higgins in her luxuriant conservatory. Mrs. Higgins is, of course, the Queen Mother, the penultimate royal matriarch sipping some gin-based tincture. As a royal vignette it equals Max Beerbohm’s celebrated drawing of Alfred Lord Tennyson reading ‘In Memoriam’ to Queen Victoria. In Hirschfeld’s drawing the royal personage is gazing lovingly into her cocktail and Cecil, poised in a wicker chair, has a beady eye on posterity. I once sat next to the Queen Mother at dinner during which she sotto voce sang me a series of old fashioned and slightly naughty vaudeville songs. ‘You might put some of those into your next show, Mr. Humphries,’ she advised. Cecil, always the courtier, is assuming an appreciative expression as the Queen Mother teeters on the brink of song.

— Barry Humphries

Hamlet

Ralph Fiennes. I worked with him in David Cronenberg’s film ‘Spider.’ He has the quietest, most zen-like focus when he works. There’s an aura that surrounds him. You don’t want to invade that space. His thoughts are private. In his chair he waits for the director to call the scene. Like a panther who appears to be dozing on a rock but is aware of everything. ‘The readiness is all.’

— Lynn Redgrave

Medea

Two great Australian actresses vie for supremacy in Euripides’ tragedy. By slipping to her knees, Judith Anderson has contrived to get her raised face in a blaze of light. Zoe Caldwell, standing above, and just a touch upstage of her, recognizes the strategy and is thinking about stepping on her fingers. Murder is definitely in the air.

— Michael Blakemore

Andrew Lloyd Webber

The most commercially successful composer/producer/manager ever to have emerged from the West End, Lord Lloyd Webber followed a path laid out at home and abroad by Sir Noël Coward and Ivor Novello, but given modern marketing techniques and the rise in world travel, he was able to market himself with still greater global results. Though he now tends to go through lyricists faster than Kleenex, an early start with Tim Rice established his career both on Broadway and in the West End. Born in 1948 (no, that is not a misprint), he was a published composer at 11 and was just 21 when his ‘Jesus Christ Superstar’ was first released as a single. Now a Peer of the Realm, his interest in all things Victorian has been reflected by his latest (2005) musical ‘The Woman in White’; he writes scores at the rough rate of one every couple of years, usually vastly more popular with the public than with critics, but then again, what do we know?

— Sheridan Morley

Joan Collins

Joan Collins is one of my favourite women, and many people think we’re sisters. I must admit, we do have a lot in common in the charisma department and although she has the looks, I have the bone structure. Joan and I are both survivors and if ever there is a photo opportunity, we are it. Although there are a few silver threads in my wisteria locks, amazing Joan still retains her brunette coiffure, untouched by time. Like me, she can laugh at herself, which is probably just as well. She is married to an adorable Peruvian possum named Percy, who could leave his poncho on my bedpost anytime he likes.

— Dame Edna Everage

Betrayal

Here Hirschfeld captures a portentous dramatic moment, one of many which have given to the theatrical vocabulary the epithet ‘Pinteresque.’ The distinguished playwright borrowed freely from Samuel Beckett in the employment of the indefinite pause. It is one of these enigmatic caesuras that Hirschfeld depicts here, from which the audience desperately struggles to divine some profound meaning. It should be noted that this is one of Hirschfeld’s few drawings where the protagonists’ mouths are firmly shut.

— Barry Humphries

That Al Hirschfeld drew New York and that Hirschfeld drew Hollywood is hardly news.

But it will come as a revelation to even the artist’s most ardent fans that in the
Hirschfeld archive more than five hundred works are dedicated to his British subjects. Until Louise Kerz Hirschfeld connected all the dots, evidence of the artist’s lifelong Anglomania had remained dispersed among hundreds of portfolios in different locations. Mrs. Hirschfeld has convened the first-ever reunion of actors, directors, playwrights, politicians, publicans, musicians—enough to gloriously fill a new volume populated with nearly eight decades of Hirschfeld’s British Aisles!

Here are the fabled luminaries of the West End—Gielgud, Richardson, Olivier, Coward, Guinness, Scofield—dramatized on the page as only Hirschfeld can, captured in their moments of stage glory by the only recording device allowed in the theatre: Al Hirschfeld’s pencil.

Here are past luminaries brought vibrantly back to life: Beatrice Lillie,
Peter Ustinov, Gertrude Lawrence, Margaret Rutherford, Rex Harrison. And here too are the newer waves of British thesps: Jeremy Irons, Tracey Ullman, Natasha Richardson, Roger Rees, Julie Andrews, Jonathan Pryce, Lynn Redgrave.
Even Twiggy, the only human thinner than a Hirschfeld line, makes an appearance—with plenty of room for Tony Walton’s skinny on his old friend.