All Told

LeRoy Neiman was arguably the world’s most recognizable contemporary artist until his passing in June 2012. He broke the barrier between fine art and popular art while creating indelible images that helped define the twentieth century. But it is the life he lived and the people he knew that make the memoir of this scrappy Depression-era kid who became a swashbuckling bon vivant with the famous mustache such a marvelous historical canvas. Chronicler and confidant of Muhammad Ali, Neiman also traveled with Sinatra, cavorted with Dalí and Warhol, watched afternoon soaps with Dizzy Gillespie, played in Sly Stallone’s Rocky movies, exchanged quips with Nixon, smoked cigars with Castro, and experienced the terrorist attacks at the Munich Olympics alongside Peter Jennings, Howard Cosell, and Jim McKay. And then there was his half-century relationship with Hugh Hefner as principle artistic contributor to Playboy, setting up studios in London and Paris to cover his Playboy beat, “Man at His Leisure,” and his creation of the Femlin, the iconic Playboy nymphette. With his life’s work, and in All Told, LeRoy Neiman captured sports heroes, movie stars, presidents, dishwashers, jet-setters, jockeys, and more than a few Bunnies at the Playboy Mansion—a panoramic record of society like no other.