Godfrey Daniels
Artist
Al Hirschfeld
United States, 1903 - 2003
Publisher
Darien House, Inc., New York City
Date1975
Dimensions44 x 29 1/2 in. (111.8 x 74.9 cm)
ClassificationsPoster
Credit LineGift of Diane Lippert
Object numberPH.810
DescriptionAl Hirschfeld’s poster advertises the book “Godfrey Daniels!”: Verbal and Visual Gems from the Short Films of W. C. Fields; like the others in this series by Richard J. Anobile (see also cat. nos. PH 808-10 and PH812), it incorporated film stills with snippets of dialogue from the films. Shortly after his daughter Nina was born in 1944, Hirschfeld began hiding her name in his work. This poster incorporates the name no fewer than three times. The title refers to the comic actor’s characteristic curse phrase “Godfrey Daniels!” and the image shows a caricature of Fields in an early scene from The Barber Shop of 1933, in which he plays an incompetent but cheerful small-town barber. It was one of five talking shorts that Fields made between 1930 and 1933. While the Hays Code, which cracked down on all kinds of language and behavior in American films considered dissolute and immoral by the censors, was not introduced until 1934, profanity had already been at the top of a list of proposed “don’ts” approved by the Federal Trade Commission in 1927. Hence the actor's invention of his own unofficial curse words. On View
Not on view
