Caricature Builder

By Andrea Sachs

When Al Hirschfeld arrived with his family in New York City in 1915 at the age of 12, the Empire State Building had yet to be built. But his parents, who had run a candy store in St. Louis, Mo., hoped that the city would provide opportunities for their gifted son. Indeed it did. Virtually ever since, Hirschfeld has been drawing in his adopted hometown, and his caricatures of Broadway stars have become synonymous with the style and urbanity of the Big Apple. Two lustrous new books, Hirschfeld's New York and Hirschfeld's Hollywood, have just been published by Abrams. TIME recently visited Hirschfeld, 98, at his Manhattan brownstone.

HOW OLD WERE YOU WHEN YOU REALIZED THAT YOU COULD DRAW?

I don't remember doing anything else. I can't do anything else. That's one of my limitations.

THERE ARE SO MANY DIFFERENT WAYS YOU COULD HAVE USED YOUR ARTISTIC TALENT. WHY DID YOU MOVE TOWARD DRAWING RATHER THAN BECOMING A PAINTER, FOR EXAMPLE?

I started out as a sculptor, actually. And I found that it was impossible to make a living. I became a painter and went to Paris in 1924. I know everybody refers to that time as a very romantic era, but I found it an economic necessity. You could live very cheaply there. From Hemingway down, any American writer or painter who was living in Paris at that time, they all had an income of some kind. I don't think anybody ever made a dime there.

WHAT WAS HEMINGWAY LIKE?

A bully. Picked on fellows. He loved to fight. But I never saw him in a getup with a fellow his own size. He had a kind of a wild tendency toward violence. I don't know why, because he was a very gifted writer. Who knows what prompts people to write or draw?

WHAT TURNED YOU AWAY FROM PAINTING?

Line. I discovered line, and I fell in love with it in about 1931. I still find it fascinating how a line can communicate. It expresses everything that I want.

Like most things in life, [it happened] quite by accident. I went to the theater one evening with a fellow about my own age, Dick Maney, who was a press agent. During the performance, I was just nervously [sketching] on the program. I was always drawing. Dick looked at it and said, "Hey, that's a good drawing. Why don't you put it on a clean piece of paper, and I'll take it around to the papers and see if I can place it?"

Next Sunday, as big as life, there it was in the Herald Tribune. They called me the following week and asked me to do another drawing. I didn't take it seriously, you know. This went on for about a year and a half. Then I got a telegram from the Times.

WHAT'S YOUR ARRANGEMENT WITH THE NEW YORK TIMES NOW? DOES YOUR ART APPEAR THERE EXCLUSIVELY?

Yes. Not in any other newspaper.

HOW MUCH DIRECTION DO THEY GIVE YOU?

None. Usually it's a matter of a conference on the telephone.

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOUR WORK HABITS?

Well, I work seven days a week. That's during the day. But come the evening, around 5 p.m., I call it quits. We [he and his wife Louise Kerz] either have people in and sit around and schmooze, or go to the theater. That's about my limit of using New York City.

DO YOU GO TO EVERY BROADWAY OPENING?

Oh, yes. When I have a free night, we go to the off-Broadways.

DO YOU EVER GET TIRED OF THE THEATER?

No, there's always something that works, no matter how bad the play is. It will be the set, or one acting performance is outstanding. Or the ushers. [Laughs.] There's always something that happens in a theater on opening night that's exciting.

ARE YOU A GOOD CRITIC IN TERMS OF PREDICTING WHAT'S GOING TO BE A HIT?

Good God, no. I go to the theater and I love the thing. I think it's a smash hit. I pick up the paper and realize I've seen a bomb. [Laughs.]

WHEN YOU DRAW PEOPLE, ARE YOU WORKING FROM HAVING SEEN THEM IN PERSON? DO PEOPLE POSE FOR YOU?

Yes. In most cases, people sit for me. Up until about five years ago, plays opened out of town--New Haven, Washington, Boston, Philadelphia--even as far away as Chicago. But in recent years they open cold in New York. In many cases, I don't get to see the show at all until opening night. But I do the drawings from costume sketches, scenery designs. I copy those, and then I put the characters in. They either come up here, or I go where they're rehearsing. So I have to kind of invent a drawing.

ARE YOU FRIENDS WITH PEOPLE IN THE THEATER?

Yes, it's a big family, actually.

YOU PUT NINA, YOUR DAUGHTER'S NAME, IN ALL YOUR WORK.

I put it in the day she was born, in 1945. I did it for the next three weeks. I thought the joke wore thin. Then I received mail from as far away as Alaska. I didn't realize that I was being scrutinized like that. So I put it back in.

WHERE IS THE REAL NINA NOW?

She's in Austin, has two children. I didn't realize it's a terrible thing to do to a child, to make a celebrity of her. People would say, "Oh, you're the Nina!" She doesn't get that in Texas. But after a few years, she realized that it was just affection. And it was impossible to stop it by then.

If I could have stopped it, I would have, to make her life a little more comfortable. She's accepted it now, and she's very proud of the fact I put in her name. That comes with being an adult. But as a child, that was rough.

HOW DO YOU MAKE IT TO 98 AND REMAIN IN SUCH GREAT SHAPE AND WORK EVERY DAY? WHAT'S THE SECRET?

The secret is genes, I think. I had nothing to do with it. [My parents] lived to 91 and 93. I've never exercised. I have no special diet. Anything that's given to me I eat.

ON A BAD DAY, DOES DRAWING EVER FEEL LIKE WORK TO YOU?

No, it's a luxury. Work is something you don't like to do.