Wednesday 13 August 2014

The Stars' Address

I love the work of Al Hirschfeld and it’s a treat to run into caricatures of his I’ve never seen before. I spotted these in Sponsor magazine and thought I’d pass them on.

CBS commissioned Hirschfeld to draw the line-up for their 1963-64 season. It’s remarkable how long many of these shows remained on television, either on network or syndication, and it’s the reason people of a certain age will recognise many of the caricatures. And I think it’s neat that Hirschfeld drew Bea Benaderet and Frank Fontaine (in character). Hirschfeld seems to have drawn all the big names in Hollywood and it’s nice to see how he handled some of the comparatively lesser known.

A kind copywriter at CBS has numbered the drawings and supplied an index to the names of the shows. I’ve bracketed some names nonetheless.


SUNDAY: 1. The Twentieth Century (W. Cronkite), 2. Mr. Ed (Alan Young), 3. Lassie (Jon Provost), 4. My Favorite Martian (Ray Walston), 5. The Ed Sullivan Show, 6. The Judy Garland Show, 7. Candid Camera (Allen Funt with Durwood Kirby above), 8. What’s My Line (Kilgallen, Cerf, Francis, Daly).


MONDAY: 1. CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, 2. To Tell the Truth (Bud Collyer), 3. I’ve Got a Secret (Garry Moore), 4. The Lucy Show (Ann Sothern to the left?), 5. The Danny Thomas Show, 6. The Andy Griffith Show (with the brilliant Don Knotts below), 7. East Side/West Side (George C. Scott).


TUESDAY: 1. Marshal Dillon (Jim Arness with Dennis Weaver), 2. The Red Skelton Show, 3. Petticoat Junction (Bea Benaderet), 4. The Jack Benny Program, 5. The Garry Moore Show (Carol Burnett to the left, Durward Kirby to her left).


WEDNESDAY: 1. CBS Reports, 2. Chronicle, 3. Glynis (Glynis John), 4. The Beverly Hillbillies (Douglas, Ryan, Ebsen, Baer), 5. The Dick Van Dyke Show (MTM to the left), 5. The Danny Kaye Show.


THURSDAY: 1. Password (Allen Ludden), 2. Rawhide (Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood), 3. Perry Mason (you know who it is), 4. The Nurses (Zina Bethune and Shirl Conway).


FRIDAY: 1. The Great Adventure (Van Heflin), 2. Route 66 (Martin Milner and Glenn Corbett), 3. Twilight Zone (imagine, if you will, Rod Serling in a Dracula cape), 4. The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.


SATURDAY: 1. The Jackie Gleason Show (Frank Fontaine above), 2. The New Phil Silvers Show, 3. The Defenders (Robert Reed, E.G. Marshall), 4. Gunsmoke (Weaver, Arness, Blake, Stone).


CBS NEWS: J.F.K., Nikita Krushchev, Charles De Gaulle, Chou En-Lai and Fidel Castro included.

Kennedy would be dead within three months of this ad appearing.

11 comments:

  1. Monday: not Ann Sothern but Vivian Vance, no?

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  2. Yes,Vivian Vance. An interesting note is that Allen Funt so hated his "crazy eyes" portrait that he made CBS force Hirschfeld make a new benign version. Both appear in one of his books.

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  3. Viv co-starred with Lucy on The Lucy Show for the first few seasons. By then Lucy and Desi were already divorced and Desi would soon give up his position at Desilu. (He still was invested in the company though, so in a few years he would benefit from the studio's sale to Paramount.)

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  4. Allen Funt objected to his Hirschfeld caricature, which made him appear "wild-eyed", and insisted it be redrawn. The SECOND version, that was featured in a later edition, made him literally look like a monkey.....and he wasn't too happy with THAT one, either.

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  5. Eric O. Costello13 August 2014 at 20:00

    I think that's Chaing Kai-Shek of Taiwan to the right of de Gaulle, and West German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer below Nikita Sergeivich.

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    1. You are correct, sir. And good of you to name the non-communist heads of state in this caricature. We see way too much (and we know why) of Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Mao Zedong and their rotten ilk in the media and popular culture.

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  6. Love the golf clubs in the back of the Hillbillies' truck. Wonder if Al used the " The Clampetts and the Dodgers" episode as a reference?

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  7. That is Chiang Kai-shek. As for Allen Funt, he said that Al's drawing made him look like a gorilla. Al responded that it wasn't his work, that was God's doing.

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  8. The two drawings of Garry Moore look like Buster Keaton . The drawings of Ludden and Daly had big foreheads so I guess they were considered the smart guys .

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  9. He made Donna Douglas and Amanda Blake look sexy with their leg show .

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