MORT DRUCKER : MAD magazine's Best Caricature Artist!

Remembering MAD artist Mort Drucker on his birthdate: March 22, 1929! He's always been my all-time favorite artist. Mort's cartoons were the feature I always looked forward to whenever I got the latest issue of MAD. When he left the magazine, I stopped reading it but never forgot his artwork and I still keep revisiting him often! 

Very Sad News: MORT DRUCKER is gone!

Mort Drucker, master of caricature passed away today at 91 years of age.
His work made my days happier and his art was my inspiration. He will certainly be missed, although he had pretty much retired in recent years but his fine legacy will stay forever with us.
I used to buy MAD magazine just to see his masterful artwork and celebrity caricatures which were imitated but never equaled by other Drucker-hopefuls.  His style has an undefined quality that makes his caricatures rise above everybody else's.
I won't go into many details about his work but you can read what I wrote here:
                         https://ferllera.blogspot.com/2019/03/mort-drucker.html

So long, Mort! Someday, we'll all be eventually meeting on that big drawing board up above!

You can read more about Mort Drucker here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mort_Drucker

HIirschfeld's World of Comedy

 Here are some of my favorite comedians as seen by Al Hirschfeld:

Charlie Chaplin                                                      Buster Keaton 

Harold Lloyd

                                                                                                                        The Marx Brothers

Laurel & Hardy
 

W.C. Fields, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Groucho Marx

 ZaSu Pitts

The Marx Brothers

                                                                                Danny Kaye

   Bob Hope

Abbott & Costello

Martin & Lewis

Jerry Lewis Woody Allen

                              The cast of "What's New, Pussycat?"

The cast of SEINFELD

AL HIRSCHFELD

One of my most admired cartoonists has always been Al Hirschfeld.

His way of capturing likenesses and translating them into simple, flowing and dynamic lines is absolutely amazing and even poetic.

His caricatures are widely known and renowned, and almost every self-respecting cartoonist has learned part of his craft by studying Hirschfeld's renderings.

                                       

Yesterday, I paid a visit to the famed Algonquin Hotel located at 59, West 44th Street in Midtown Manhattan and was greeted by some framed examples of Al Hirschfeld's artwork.

  

The story of the Algonquin Hotel is part of New York City's folklore and so is Mr. Hirschfeld.
Al Hirschfeld was born in St. Louis, Missouri on June 21, 1903 and died January 20, 2003 at the age of 99.           

In 1943, Hirschfeld married famous European actress Dolly Haas and they had one daughter, Nina, born in 1945. After her birth, Hirschfeld developed the habit of hiding her name, spelled in capital letters, on most every drawing he did thereafter. The number of NINAs concealed in every drawing was shown next to the artist's signature.  It quickly became a favorite pastime to try and find out the hidden NINAs in the cartoons.

MAD MAGAZINE ceases publishing.

                          MAD Magazine #95, from June 1965, the first Mad Magazine I ever read!

I was 14 years old when I read my first MAD Magazine. I became hooked instantly to its insane parodies and sarcastic brand of humor. My biggest idol was Mort Drucker and his spot-on caricatures. I also became a fan of Sergio Aragones, Don Martin, Jack Davis, Dick DeBartolo, Dave Berg, Joe Orlando, Wallace Wood, George Woodbridge, Paul Coker Jr., Jack Rickard, Angelo Torres, Al Jaffee and the rest of the Usual Gang of Idiots who contributed for the magazine up until the late nineties. My sense of humor was greatly influenced by all of them and I Iearned the craft of cartooning by studying their artwork.
It's sad to see the magazine disappear from the newsstands but I am not sorry to see it go as I had actually stopped reading it by 2005. The magazine ceased to be as sharp and funny as it originally was and none of the newer artists appealed to me as much as the older ones had.
For me, MAD Magazine had pretty much died as soon as the 21st century began.
Long Live MAD!

Turning Back the Clock...Harold Lloyd Style!

   

             

                       Harold Lloyd in "Safety Last" - (1923)

SEAN CONNERY'S 88TH BIRTHDAY!

From WIKIPEDIA, the free encyclopedia:

Sir Thomas Sean Connery (born 25 August 1930) is a retired Scottish actor and producer who has won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one of them being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award) and three Golden Globes (including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award).

Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His film career also includes such films as Marnie, The Name of the Rose, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, The Hunt for Red October, Finding Forrester, Highlander, Murder on the Orient Express, The Man Who Would be King, The Wind and The Lion, Outland, The Hill, and The Rock.

Connery has been polled as "The Greatest Living Scot" and "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". In 1989, he was proclaimed "Sexiest Man Alive" by People magazine, and in 1999, he was voted "Sexiest Man of the Century". Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to Film Drama.