Maybe I’m behind the curve but I’d not heard of Lawrence (Larry) Holofcener; a Renaissance man if ever there was one.
He was a poet. lyricist, playwright, actor and director. Such versatility puts even PG Wodehouse in the shade. He was a generation younger than PGW, born 1926, but like him was both an American and a British citizen. He wrote some good lyrics and scores for musicals and revues and appeared in Hello, Dolly! on Broadway alongside Carol Channing and then Ginger Rogers. His writing career was nothing special but he is entitled to be called an author. In 1979 his career changed direction again and he became an accomplished sculptor, much in demand for public and private commissions.
This is why I’m writing about him. His depiction of Churchill and Roosevelt on New Bond Street was unveiled by him and Princess Margaret in 1995 to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of the war. Unusually it shows the leg brace that Roosevelt wore after getting polio in childhood. It also depicts Churchill with a cigar. The cigar was frequently stolen by souvenir hunters until, in 2017, the sculpture was restored and a less pinchable cigar made.
There were still outbreaks of polio in the UK in the 1970s and a particularly nasty epidemic in Co Cork in 1956 described by Patrick Cockburn with some feeling as he got it aged six living near Youghal. Polio was eradicated in the UK by the 1990s. Like Covid 19 it is a viral infection spread through coughs and sneezes – comforting that it was eventually defeated.
Here is another life-size bronze in London by Lawrence Holofcener on the bar terrace of the Churchill Hotel in Marylebone.
