Existing comment:
Hirschfeld returned to the subject of Hughes after the Chief Justice was featured prominently in the 1937 Broadway musical-comedy, I'd Rather Be Right. In the play, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tries to balance the budget but is thwarted by everyone from his own Cabinet to the Supreme Court. Interestingly, the Court appears as a monolithic pack of nine Charles Evans Hugheses rather than as nine individual Justices, a detail no doubt due to Hughes' recent role in preventing what is popularly known today as Roosevelt's Court-Packing Plan.
Hirschfeld's drawing of the nine Hugheses gleefully dancing is not in the richly-textured style of "The Supreme Bench" but in the sinuous, linear style for which he would be best known, especially when it came to the stars of Broadway. A still photograph of the original production represents the same moment in the play, when the nine Chief Justices (and friends) sing a Rodgers & Hart song, "A Little Bit of Constitutional Fun." |