Sam Norkin"Stand up Tragedy" Marcus Chong Original Ink Drawing Theater Caricature Art

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"Stand up Tragedy" - Jack Coleman, Marcus Chong & Charles Cioffi
Samuel Norkin (January 10, 1917 – July 30, 2011) … Read more "Stand up Tragedy" - Jack Coleman, Marcus Chong & Charles Cioffi
Samuel Norkin (January 10, 1917 – July 30, 2011) was a Brooklyn, New York-born cartoonist who specialized in theater caricatures, Illustration Art, for more than seven decades. His drawings of theater, opera, ballet and film celebrities appeared in Variety, Backstage, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe and many other publications.
Norkin learned composition and anatomy from the muralist Mordi Gassner. He received a scholarship to the Metropolitan Art School after his high school graduation, and he later attended Cooper Union, the Brooklyn Museum Art School and the School of Fine and Industrial Art. During the 1940s, newspaper editors wanted to devote more space to new theatrical productions, but photo opportunities usually did not happen until a show opened. Norkin took advantage of the situation and gained access to rehearsals, performers, costume sketches, fittings and scenic designs, providing editors with illustrations prior to an opening.
From 1940 to 1956, his theatrical illustrations were a regular feature in the New York Herald Tribune. Then for the next 26 years, he covered the performing arts for the Daily News. Since 1940, Norkin has had more than 4000 drawings published.
When he began doing theatrical caricature, he supplied his own captions, which eventually prompted him to write articles and reviews. He was an art critic for the Carnegie Hall house program and a cultural reporter for the Daily News.
Norkin's theater reminiscences and 266 drawings came together in the book Sam Norkin, Drawings, Stories (Heinemann, 1994), which was reviewed by David Barbour:
A Norkin caricature cartoon is often densely packed with detail and may feature a great deal of solid black space. He also is more daring in his drafting; many of his pieces, in particular one from the Broadway production of The Phantom of the Opera, feature steeply raked lines which plunge vertiginously from top to bottom, to highly dramatic effect. On the other hand, many of Norkin's effects border on the surreal. His version of Michael Jeter and Jane Krakowski in Grand Hotel depicts the pair as a series of interrlated curves; Jeter, in particular, looks like a machine that you crank up and let loose on stage. His version of Constance Cummings as a stroke victim in Wings, uses cruelly sharp angles to create a Cubist deconstruction of the actress's face and limbs, which mirrors the disintegration of the character's mental functions. Norkin offers a wide-ranging collection of his works... He also showscases actors at different points in their careers (as in a trio of portraits of John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson) and different takes on different productions (he gives us a number of Salomes from the Metropolitan and New York City Operas).

Exhibitions
Artwork by Norkin has been exhibited in the Lincoln Center Library and Museum of the Performing Arts, the Museum of the City of New York, the Metropolitan Opera House, the Hudson River Museum in (Yonkers, New York) and various galleries.

Awards
In 1942, Sam Norkin drew Joan Roberts, who was then starring on Broadway in Oklahoma!.
Various awards received over the years by Norkin include an award for "Outstanding Theater Art" from the League of American Theatres and Producers. (1980) and an award for “Lifetime Body of Work” (1995) from the Drama Desk, the association of drama critics, drama editors and drama reporters. Along with David Levine, Al Hirschfeld and Kin Platt he is one of the great artists of the American press. He received two awards from the National Cartoonists Society, the Special Features Award (1980) and the Silver T-Square Award (1984).

Marcus Chong (né Wyatt; July 8, 1967) is an American actor. His best-known roles are Huey P. Newton in Panther (1995), directed by Mario Van Peebles and Tank the Operator in The Matrix
Chong was born Marcus Wyatt in Seattle, Washington to an African-American father and a Chinese-American mother. His father, Martin Wyatt, was a sports reporter in San Francisco for KGO-TV. Chong was adopted in 1978 by Tommy Chong and his second wife Shelby Fiddis.
Chong began acting at age nine. His first role was portraying the young Frankie Warner in the 1979 miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979). Wyatt was a guest star in Little House on the Prairie, in "Blind Journey" part 2. Chong originated the role of student Lee Cortez in the Broadway production of Stand-Up Tragedy, written by Bill Cain which opened at the Criterion Center Stage Right and closed in October 1990 after 13 performances. The short-lived role nevertheless earned him a 1991 Theatre World Award; he was also nominated Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play.
In the early 1990s, Chong played the recurring character Miguel Mendez on the TV show Street Justice. He later appeared in the Vanishing Son action series as Fu Qua Johnson.
In 1999, Chong appeared as Tank the Operator in The Matrix. In May 2003, Chong filed a lawsuit at Los Angeles County Superior Court against Warner Bros and AOL Time Warner, saying Warner was in breach of a 1998 verbal agreement, and a 2000 contract to continue the character of Tank in the film's two sequels. It was reported that a breakdown in talks caused by his salary demands prompted The Wachowskis to write Chong's character out of the second and third films in the series. In 2001, Chong appeared in Season 3 of the TV series Law & Order: Special Victims Unit ("Inheritance"). More recently he had a role in season 4 of Burn Notice.
The documentary "The Marcus Chong Story" by Marcus Chong was released in 2018.
The Kill Off, a book written by Chong, was published 2019. See less