Albert Hirschfeld (June 21, 1903 – January 20, 2003) was an American caricaturist best known for his black and white portraits of celebrities and Broadway stars.

[2][3] His father, Isaac, was a German Jewish traveling salesman, while his mother Rebecca was from a family of strict, Russian Orthodox Jews; his maternal grandparents refused to eat in his parents' non-kosher home.

[7] Hirschfeld's style was unique, and he was considered to be one of the most important figures in contemporary drawing and caricature, having influenced countless artists, illustrators, and cartoonists.

[citation needed] Hirschfeld started young and continued drawing to the end of his life, thus chronicling nearly all of the major entertainment figures of the 20th century.

Though the theater was his best-known field of interest, according to Hirschfeld's art dealer Margo Feiden, he actually drew more for the movies than he did for live plays.

"By the ripe old age of 17, while his contemporaries were learning how to sharpen pencils, Hirschfeld became an art director at Selznick Pictures.

He also caricatured jazz musicians——Glenn Miller, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Fats Waller, Lionel Hampton, Harry James, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Dizzy Gillespie, Billie Holiday, and Ella Fitzgerald—and rockers The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Jerry Garcia, and Mick Jagger.

[16][17] Hirschfeld drew many original movie posters, including for Charlie Chaplin's films,[18] as well as The Wizard of Oz (1939).

When Hirschfeld thought that the gag was wearing thin among his friends and stopped concealing NINAs in his drawings, letters to The New York Times ranging from "curious" to "furious" pressured him to begin hiding them again.

[14] In Hirschfeld's book Show Business is No Business, Feiden recounts the following story to illustrate what Hirschfeld meant when he referred to the NINA counting as a harmless insanity: "The NINA-counting mania was well illuminated when in 1973 an NYU student kept coming back to my Gallery to stare at the same drawing each day for more than a week.

[22] In the Fantasia 2000 segment, the crimp of Duke the Builder's toothpaste tube contained a NINA in tribute to Hirschfeld.

[25] In 1987, the United States Postal Service commissioned him to draw a series of postage stamps commemorating famous American comedians.

[26][7] The 1991 collection included drawings of Stan Laurel, Oliver Hardy, Edgar Bergen (with Charlie McCarthy), Jack Benny, Fanny Brice, Bud Abbott, and Lou Costello.

[27] He followed that with a collection of silent film stars including Rudolph Valentino, ZaSu Pitts and Buster Keaton.

[28] The Postal Service allowed him to include Nina's name in his drawings, waiving its own rule forbidding hidden messages in United States stamp designs.

[26] Hirschfeld expanded his audience by contributing to Patrick F. McManus' humor column in Outdoor Life magazine for a number of years.