"Hirschfeld On Line is just that - it's Al Hirschfeld "on" Hirschfeld, as the master turns his quick quill pen to prose in order to comment, critique, explicate, and occasionally even lampoon his own artwork, from the very first theatre drawings he did in the mid-Twenties up to (nearly) last week. " "Here is Hirschfeld on the dramatic and droll stories behind his scenes, as well as those of the Broadway stages he's covered graphically since the American theatre came of age with O'Neill and Show Boat. Here are his most famous and enduring images like that one of Liza Minnelli in Cabaret, or that long-striding one of Robert Preston in The Music Man, or that one of, well, the list - the distinguished line - goes on and on. He tells us at long last not only why he draws but what and how he has drawn it. " "For those who've missed the past seventy-five years of opening nights on Broadway and would like to catch up, this is the book for them. For those who would like a pictorial summation of our time - from the early, "hopeful" years of Soviet Russia to the final, cynical episode of Seinfeld, this book is for them. And for those who would just like to know how and why Al Hirschfeld started putting all those NINAs into each and every one of his drawings - and why no power on earth can now grant him leave to cease and desist - this book is essential. "--Jacket.