[7][10] Although Margules appeared as a child actor with the Adler Family[11] and Bertha Kalich, his sister, Annette Margules,[12] somewhat dubiously continued in family theater and vaudeville tradition, creating the blackface role of the lightly-clad Tondelayo[13] (a part later played on film Hedy Lamarr) in Earl Carroll's 1924 Broadway exoticist hit, White Cargo.

[7] By age 11, he had won a city-wide prize (a box camera) at a children's art show presented by the department store Wanamaker's.

[22] In his late teens, Margules studied for a couple of months in Pittsburgh with Edwin Randby, a follower of Western painter Frederic Remington.

[26][27] Margules then considered himself something of an expert on art, and the painter Myron Lechay[28][citation needed] is said to have responded to some unsolicited analysis of his work with the remark "Since you seem to know so much about it, why don't you paint yourself?"

[27][29][30] Thereafter Margules began to participate in shows with a group including Stuart Davis, Jan Matulka, Buckminster Fuller (exhibiting depictions of his "Dymaxion house") in a gallery run by art-lover and restaurateur Romany Marie on the floor above her cafe.

[32] In 1927, Margules took a lengthy leave of absence from his day job as a police reporter in order to travel to Paris, where he "set up a studio in Montmartre's Place du Tertre, on the top floor of an almost deserted hotel, a shabby establishment, lacking both heat and running water.

[7] Jonathan Cott wrote that: the painter De Hirsch Margulies sat on the quays of the Seine and painted pictures in the dark.

[34]Elaine de Kooning remarked that studying the works of the Noctambulists confirmed Margules' "direction toward the use of primary colors for perverse effects of heavy shadow.

[7] The photographer and art promoter invited Margules to dine with his wife, the artist Georgia O'Keeffe, and his assistant, painter Emil Zoler.

"[38] The admiration was by no means unreciprocated: Marin said that Margules was "an art lover with abounding faith and sincerity, with much intelligence and quick seeing.

"[44] He was said to "know everybody" in Greenwich Village, to the extent that when the novelist and poet Maxwell Bodenheim was murdered, Margules was the first one the police sought to identify the body.

[5] Most of his friends and acquaintances found Margules a generous and voluble man, given to broadly emotionally expressive gestures and acts of kindness and loyalty.

[14] Norman also wrote about Margules' routine acts of kindness, taking in homeless artists, constantly feeding his friends and providing the salvatory loan where needed.

[45] Norman also notes that Margules was blessed with a loud and good voice, and was apt to sing an operatic air without provocation.

[49]King also spoke with affectionate amusement about Margules' pride in his cooking, speaking of how "if he should ever invite you to dinner, he may serve you a hamburger with onions, in his kitchen-living room, with such an air of gastronomic protocol, such mysterious hints and ogling innuendoes, as if César Ritz and Brillat-Savarin had sneaked out, only a moment before, with his secret recipe in their pockets.

"[50] Margules was such a memorable New York personality that comic book writer Alvin Schwartz imagined him at the Sixth Avenue Cafeteria in a risible yet poignant debate[51] with Clark Kent about whether Superman had the ability to stop Hitler.

Among the people in the same photograph are Shel Silverstein, Lester Blackiston,[53] James Baldwin, Norman Mailer, beat poet Howard Hart,[54] and Ted Joans.

One of them[57] shows Margules (wearing his customary beret) jumping with childlike glee in a New York City Park, surrounded by a flurry of pigeons.

[59] also taken in a New York City park, shows Margules in a display of mock-pomp, his hand inside his shirt a la Napoleon Bonaparte.

[60]Artist Leslie Jencel was quoted as saying I'm wearing my black leather cape today because De Hirsh would have wanted me to.

[60]The supposedly penniless Margules left an estate of more than $100,000, the amount and circumstances of which were enough to merit a New York Times article[4] and a mention by nationally syndicated celebrity columnist Leonard Lyons, who remarked the big shock to Greenwich Village's Bohemian colony last week was in learning that the Bohemian painter, de Hirsch Margolis [sic], left a huge estate.

[62](This is a conclusion that has been disputed with by Charles Norman, who stated that collector Harrison D. Horblit[63] purchased all remaining Margules paintings "in order to swell the estate.

")[64] Among the forty-five people sharing in his estate were "beneficiaries living in such diverse areas as Greenwich Village, Paris, Niagara Falls, Oyster Bay, and the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Thumbnails of these works can be seen ib crnauctions.com[145] Characterful portraits of the artists Milton Avery and Abraham Walkowitz and a self-portrait of Margules (which was not for sale) are visible here.

Various "Time Paintings" are also on display, but many of these and other complicated works are hard to appreciate fully due to the low resolution and small image size.