Exclusive | These Broadway portraits were stolen from iconic theater district restaurant Sardis

It’s not easy being green.Of the nearly 1,000 celebrity caricatures on the walls of iconic theater-district institution Sardi’s, the one pilfered the most, oddly, is Kermit the Frog.“Kermit was stolen three times.And then we screwed him up to the wall,” Johnny Felidi, longtime maître d’ at the 100-year-old eatery, told The Post ahead of Sunday’s Tony Awards.Another celebrity who had to be screwed at the beloved West 44th Street restaurant: Barbra Streisand.After her original 1963 portrait was purloined, it took the “Funny Girl” 55 years to agree to another caricature.“And you’re gonna love what she wrote on it — ‘Don’t steal this one,'” said Felidi, who has worked at Sardi’s for 26 years.“Julie Andrews was another one that went missing for a long time and then it was allegedly found at an auction,” added receptionist Lydia DeLuca, who spent last summer updating the binder that lists every celeb’s name and their location on three floors of the four-story restaurant.Bob Hope’s was looted as well — and his thief, who was drinking at the bar, was captured on their security cameras.“So we got their credit card information, called them up .

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and of course they get belligerent.And we said, ‘We don’t want to have law enforcement involved, so just return the caricature.’ And they did,” recalled Felidi, a native of Parma, Italy, who grew up in the Bronx.Due to all the star-snatching, the priceless portraits adorning the walls of Sardi’s — where the idea for the Tonys was conceived over lunch — are now duplicates of the originals, which are stored in a safe.It wasn’t until 1986, after the death of James Cagney, that founder Vincent Sardi decided to start using dupes.“The night he died, they stole his caricature, never to be seen again,” said Felidi.The time-honored tradition started when Sardi hired Russian immigrant Alex Gard to create the portraits in the fledgling restaurant in exchange for meals in an at...