The Books: The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town, edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Caricaturist’, by Geoffrey Hellman

Next up on the essays shelf:

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks), edited by Lillian Ross is a collection of “The Talk of the Town” pieces in The New Yorker, grouped by decade, which is a lot of fun because you can see how the “voice” of the magazine developed, and how “The Talk of the Town” has grown and changed over the years.

When I was a kid, my parents got the Sunday New York Times delivered. I would pore over the Arts section, reveling in the reviews of grown-up movies, and also the reviews of various theatrical events in the far-away city of New York (which, of course, I had visited – so I felt like an expert. Oh! I know that theatre! Oh! I know that actor!) One of the funnest part of the weekly ritual was the caricature included in the theatre section by Al Hirschfeld. I know I sound like an octogenarian but I am just so sad he’s not around anymore and that those getting to know the NY Times now won’t have the pleasure of looking forward to his caricatures. And someone – who – my Dad? My dad’s friend Barry? – told me of the “Nina” game. In every caricature, he would somehow work in the name of his daughter “Nina”, sometimes multiple times. And by his name in the lower right corner, there would be a little number, which would tell you how many times “Nina” occurred. So much fun to scour over the caricature looking for the Ninas.

And it’s still fun.

I’m sorry, but LOOK at Angela Lansbury. That is so hysterical.

And of course I can’t resist.

Al Hirschfeld became a New York institution.

In 1958, Geoffrey Hellman wrote the following “Talk of the Town” piece about Hirschfeld. He talks about “Nina”. But I was mostly interested in his comments about the standardization of human beings, which he had witnessed in his lifetime. This is a complaint I have now about actors/actresses. Everyone looks alike. All the women have Real Housewives hair, long, with a flip at the bottom. Botox has made everyone’s faces look alike, frozen in a delighted expression. My friend and I were watching The Bachelor one night and she, a woman with gloriously curly hair, commented, “None of the contestants have curly hair.” I look back on a show like, say, thirtysomething, and while those people were, I suppose, attractive … they weren’t outrageously attractive. They all looked like real people that you could actually know. If you look at TV now, that really is not the case anymore. It’s a bit disheartening. Tina Fey has a great section in her book Bossypants about the sea-change in Beauty Standards that she has seen in her lifetime. Once upon a time, stars had indelible LOOKS. You could tell the difference between Marlene Dietrich and Katharine Hepburn, for God’s sake. Now? Claire Danes and Reese Witherspoon have the exact same haircut and that just seems so ridiculous to me. Not just boring, but unintelligent. I get it. The pressure now to conform is far worse than it ever was, due to the 24/7 news cycle and vicious commentary about every single inch of a woman’s appearance. It can be hard to tune that out. But to standardize what we think of as beautiful … to such a Stepford Wife degree – is scary. Lindsay Lohan is a prime example. I’m not talking about her personal life. I’m talking about her obvious internal pressure to be something she’s not. She’s a redhead with freckles. This makes her different, and therefore special. She has big boobs, and a curvy frame (see Mean Girls). And now, she is bleached blonde, and she looks like everyone else. This happens a lot. The pressure of standardization is intense. I love those actors who maintain their individuality. And when someone like Adele, or Melissa McCarthy, show up on red carpets … you can feel how the stupid commentators do not know how to deal with it. These women are at the tops of their chosen fields, and they both have their own specific looks and characters. And this is now baffling.

The following profile was written in 1958, but Hirschfeld was already noticing that trend, and how it made his job more difficult. You used to be able to, you know, tell people apart.

I am so grateful that I grew up when Al Hirschfeld was still active. I always looked forward to his drawings, and to spending some time finding all those hidden Ninas!

The Fun of It: Stories from The Talk of the Town (Modern Library Paperbacks), edited by Lillian Ross; ‘Caricaturist’, by Geoffrey Hellman

Mr. H. had a one-man sculpture show at the Newhouse Gallery in 1928, and since then his work, mostly drawings, has been bought by, among others, the St. Louis Art Museum, the Cleveland Art Museum , the Fogg Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan. His caricatures of new shows appear in the theatrical section of the Sunday Times thirty or forty times a year.

As part of his job, Hirschfeld, who has written a play himself, faithfully attends out-of-town tryouts and Broadway openings. He is married to a red-haired actress, Dolly Haas, and they have a red-haired thirteen-year-old daughter, Nina, who plays the piano with authority and hopes to become a red-haired actress herself. The Hirschfelds live in a big house, on East Ninety-fifth Street, that was once owned by Jacob Ruppert, the brewer. Nina’s father works her name into all his Times drawings, often concealing it in curlicues of curtains and the folds of costumes. “I started that in a circus poster, on which I wrote ‘Nina the Wonder Child,’ when she was born,” he said. “Sometimes you can’t find the name without a microscope. Nina has a microscope, and she always finds it. I’m told her classmates, at Brearley, look for it every week. I worked ‘Brearley’ in a few weeks ago. The engraving department at the Times has a kind of pool on this: the first to spot ‘Nina’ is the winner. ‘Nina’ is hardest to find when it is large: sometimes I make the whole design say it. I hardly ever go out during the day. I work in my studio, on the top floor of the house, until the sun is down; then I go out and raise hell. I’m a late stayer-upper. I read from 1 to 3 a.m. – anything that’s in print. I’ve written and illustrated a couple of books – ‘Manhattan Oases,’ about speakeasies during prohibition, and ‘Harlem’, about Harlem.”

Mr. Hirschfeld finished his omelet and lit a cigar. “I believe that there’s been a subtle change in my style in the last few years,” he said, “and that the reason for this is that people are changing. They’re becoming more standardized. They’re getting to look more and more alike. You used to be able to immediately identify the Marx Brothers, Eddie Cantor, William Jennings Bryan, and even such leading men as John Barrymore and Lou Tellegen. Now things aren’t that clear. Politicians and actors and Presidents all look like advertising men. People all over the world look alike. Americans and Frenchmen and Englishmen all look alike. Twenty years ago, Soviet statesmen looked like Soviet statesmen, but today they look like Bernard Baruch. People don’t write their own books, and Presidents don’t their own speeches. What does a man leave of himself except a photograph? What would we think of Lincoln if it turned out that the Gettysburg Address was written by C.D. Jackson?”