Hirschfeld’s British Aisles

(Applause Books). With commentary throughout by Julie Andrews, John Russell, Cameron Mackintosh, Simon Callow, Ralph Steadman, Michael Blakemore, Louise Kerz Hirschfeld, Tony Walton, Lynn Redgrave, Barry Humphries, Peter Shaffer, Julie Christie, Kevin Brownlow, Nicholas Wright, Mel Gussow, Sheridan Morley, and Al Hirschfeld. 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 over five hundred works are dedicated to his British subjects. Until Louise Kerz Hirschfeld connected all the dots, evidence of the artist’s life-long 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 on Great Britain, or as we have come to think of it, Hirschfeld’s British Aisles! Here are the fabled luminaries of the West End: Gielgud, Richardson, Olivier, Coward, Guinness, Scofield, captured in their moments of stage glory by the only recording device allowed in the theatre: Al Hirschfeld’s pencil. Also includes Peter Ustinov, Gertrude Lawrence, Rex Harrison, Jeremy Irons, Julie Andrews, Jonathan Price, and others. Even Twiggy, the only human thinner than Hirschfeld’s lines, makes an appearance.