Donald Bevan, famous as a playwright and better known as one of Sardi’s celebrity caricaturists, died at his home in Studio City, Calif., on May 29. He was 93. He drew the famous celebrity art that hangs on the walls at Sardi’s, in New York’s theater district, for more than 20 years. It is considered a great honor among actors to be so acknowledged.
In the early 1950s, when Vincent Sardi Jr. was looking for a new caricaturist, he was introduced to Bevan, who, reported the New York Times, began with drawings of Denholm Elliot and Maureen Stapleton (Stapleton didn’t like hers, and removed it from the Sardi’s wall, according to Sardi’s memoir, “Off the Wall at Sardi’s”).
Bevan was also a WWII German prisoner of war, and with a fellow inmate wrote the hit play Stalag 17, based on his experiences, which became a hit movie, winning an Oscar for star William Holden.
According to Bevan’s New York Times obituary, “The third of only four caricaturists that Sardi’s has employed since 1927 (the current artist is Richard Baratz), Mr. Bevan made hundreds of caricatures for the restaurant for more than 20 years, clean drawings displaying a keen eye for the prominent feature: Karl Malden’s nose; Lucille Ball’s red hair and blue eyes; the rotund face and sleepy-lidded eyes of a possibly inebriated Jackie Gleason (he’s raising a martini glass); Zero Mostel with dark circles around his eyes and a threadbare combover; Carol Burnett with a toothy smile.”
Pictured is Lucy’s Sardi’s caricature.
