D R E W • F R I E D M A N

Thursday, May 24, 2018

Portrait of Frank Ferrante as Groucho

The celebrated comedic actor and singer Frank Ferrante commissioned me to create a portrait him in the guise of Groucho Marx.

Frank has been performing his wonderful one-man-show "An Evening with Groucho" for decades to sold-out audiences around the world. http://www.eveningwithgroucho.com

finished art

initial pencil sketch

Thursday, May 17, 2018

My GENERATION

GENERATION was a 1965 Broadway Comedy that starred Henry Fonda as a father trying to come to grips with his pregnant daughter who is living in Greenwich Village with her nonconformist photograper husband who has no intention to go to the hospital to deliver her baby.

The author was William Goodhart. This was his only play. He who would later pen the screenplay for Exorcist II, The Heritic.

The play received overall lukewarm reviews from NY drama critics, but became popular with older theatre-going audiences, some who felt they were able to relate to the subject matter, and wanted to see the legendary Henry Fonda live on stage. It ran on Broadway for close to a year.

Touring companies revived the play a number of times during the sixties and early seventies with various aging actors in the lead role, and it was adapted and updated into a 1969 film starring David Janssen as the father, with Kim Darby and Carl Reiner.
Thanks to John Wendler

playright William Goodhart

Henry Fonda...

Don Porter...

Robert Young...

Hans Conried...

Arthur Godfrey

Jack Bailey

Willard Waterman

Robert Cummings...

James Whitmore

Don DeFore

Henry Morgan

Gavin MaCleod

David Janssen...

Friday, April 27, 2018

together chewing gum

In the mid-seventies, attempting to reach an older demographic, Topps chewing gum created "together" chewing gum, targeting young, me-generation couples on the go. Clearly someone at Topps had a hunch that a "tingling" cinnamon chewing gum would be just the aphrodisiac young couples desired. The product was tested but ultimately not released.

Several designs were created, here ar two from my collection:

together in a wheat field

together romping on the beach

back of together

Thanks to Mark Newgarden

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

The Book of WEIRDO Cover

The Book of WEIRDO is a massive retrospective edited by Jon B. Cooke, paying tribute to R. Crumb's legendary comics and graphics magazine from the 1980's and early 90's. Crumb was WEIRDO"s first editor, followed by Peter Bagge and finally Aline Kominsky-Crumb. R. Crumb created each one of WEIRDO's 28 covers. Some of my earliest comic strip work appeared in the early issues of WEIRDO.

I created the cover art and border to the upcoming book, and the logo and lettering was lovingly rendered by David Coulson. I also wrote the book's foreword. The Book of WEIRDO will contain extensive interviews and tributes to the magazine with many of the magazines original contributers as well as many of it's admirers, and much, much more. EVERYTHING you ever wanted to know about WEIRDO!

The book will be published by Last Gasp in May 2019.

the cover (click to enlarge)

key to who's who in the border

my initial cover sketch

finished art

Monday, April 9, 2018

Some Funny Re-Casting On The Way To The Forum...

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum opened on Broadway in 1963 starring Zero Mostel, who also starred in the 1966 Richard Lester film version.

The show has been revived many times over the years with various stars in the lead role, among them Nathan Lane, Whoopi Goldberg and recently Frank

Ferrante.

Here are some of the other stars and casts of broadway, touring and lesser-known productions of the show...

Thanks to John Wendler and to Tor Lier, John Schrank, Frank Santopadre and James Mulholland