Jane Julianelli, The New York Times, Jan. 8, 1995
HE had a sparkle in his eye, Francie Norkin said, and then she related how she met her husband, Sam, at Chester’s, in 1967, when Mr. Norkin, a caricaturist, was drawing publicity sketches for that resort in the Catskills.
“I was wearing a bathing suit at the time,” Mrs. Norkin recalled. “And as we were talking Sam said there was some publicity that had to be done for Chester’s, and would I mind posing? And I said, not at all. And as I’m posing in this lovely bathing suit, I see the pad is lifting higher and higher so that I can’t see it. When I saw it, I was posing nude.”
Using that sparkle in his eye Sam Norkin has drawn 4,000 caricatures in 54 years for The New York Herald Tribune, The Daily News, Backstage, Variety, Stages and other publications. Perhaps the only other theatrical caricaturist who has been as prolific is Al Hirshfeld, whose work has appeared in The New York Times since the 30’s.
Mr. Norkin has two studios, in his house in Quogue and in Manhattan. His new book, “Sam Norkin: Drawings, Stories” (Heinemann), includes caricatures and “pertinent nuggets of information” about theater, opera, ballet, and movies.
Mr. Norkin, who was given a special award by the League of American Theaters and Producers in 1980 for his contribution as a theatrical artist, drew weekly caricatures for The New York Herald Tribune for 15 years and for The Daily News for 26 years.
“For 26 years every Monday I came for my assignment for what was going to be in next Sunday’s paper,” he said. “There were different categories. There were the sketchers, the fellows who would go backstage and do a pencil or charcoal sketch of a backstage scene. There were the portraitists who would do a literal charcoal portrait. There were the caricaturists who would do line drawings. I was trained in art school as an illustrator. So I liked to do a scene from a play or a montage.”
“Sam Norkin’s book includes accounts of shows that never came back, of shows whose names were changed (‘Away We Go!’ became Oklahoma!), of directors who changed their names (Paparofsky became Papp), of the leaky fountain at the Vivian Beaumont Theater, and other Lincoln Center tales.”
The New York Times
NY Public Library Salutes Theatre Caricaturist With Free Exhibit, Nov. 22-Jan. 18
The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts will offer a retrospective of the career of caricaturist Sam Norkin beginning Nov. 22.
—By Andrew Gans, Playbill, November 12, 2002
Entitled “Theater.Ink: The Art of Sam Norkin,” the exhibition is subtitled “From Hitchcock to Hairspray, a Caricaturist’s View of the Performing Arts Over 60 Years” and will include over 200 drawings by the famed artist. Among the works of interest to theatre lovers are drawings of Zero Mostel and Eli Wallach in Rhinoceros, Kirk Douglas in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Albert Finney in Luther, James Earl Jones in Of Mice and Men, Angela Lansbury and Len Cariou in Sweeney Todd and scenes from The Producers and Hairspray. The Library will also display Norkin’s renditions of Leonard Bernstein, Bette Midler, Bette Davis and dozens of other celebrities.
Born in Brooklyn in 1917, Sam Norkin studied with muralist Mordi Gassner as a teen-ager and later trained at the Metropolitan Art School, Cooper Union and the School of Fine and Industrial Art. From 1940 to 1956, his work was seen in the New York Herald Tribune, and for the next 26 years, he covered the performing arts for the New York Daily News. Norkin’s drawings have also been featured in the Philadelphia Inquirer, Boston Globe, Washington Post and Toronto Star. He received a 1995 Drama Desk Award for his body of work, and the League of New York Theatres and Producers honored Norkin for “outstanding contributions as a theatrical artist.”
“Theater.Ink: The Art of Sam Norkin” opens Nov. 22, 2002, and runs through Jan. 18, 2003 at the Donald and Mary Oenslager Gallery of The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza. Exhibition hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from noon to 6 PM; Thursday, noon to 8 PM; closed Sundays, Mondays and holidays. Admission is free; call (212) 870-1630 for more information.
