Alfred R. Kilgore (December 19, 1927 - August 15, 1983), who signed his work Al Kilgore, was an American artist who worked as a cartoonist and filmmaker. Born in

Newark, New Jersey Newark ( , ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of New Jersey and the seat of Essex County and the second largest city within the New York metropolitan area.basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

with a young

Bob Cousy Robert Joseph Cousy (, born August 9, 1928) is an American former professional basketball player. Cousy played point guard for the Boston Celtics from 1950 to 1963, and briefly with the Cincinnati Royals during the 1969–70 season. A 13-time N ...

. He also met Dolores Preusch at this time, and the couple married in 1958. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, he served in the

Fifth Air Force The Fifth Air Force (5 AF) is a numbered air force of the United States Air Force Pacific Air Forces (PACAF). It is headquartered at Yokota Air Base, Japan. It is the U.S. Air Force's oldest continuously serving Numbered Air Force. The organiza ...

. After the war, he entered into art studies, graduating from the Art Career School in 1951.

Comic strips and comic books

He was an artist on the '' Bullwinkle'' comic strip for the

Bell-McClure Syndicate The Bell Syndicate, launched in 1916 by editor-publisher John Neville Wheeler, was an American syndicate that distributed columns, fiction, feature articles and comic strips to newspapers for decades. It was located in New York City at 247 West 4 ...

between 1962 and 1967. In 1969, he did a syndicated puzzle feature, ''TV Star Screen''.Lambiek: Al Kilgore
/ref>

Films

He appeared as an actor in Louis McMahon's serial parody ''Captain Celluloid vs. the Film Pirates'', along with fellow film historians and authors

Alan G. Barbour Alan may refer to: People *Alan (surname), an English and Turkish surname *Alan (given name), an English given name **List of people with given name Alan ''Following are people commonly referred to solely by "Alan" or by a homonymous name.'' *Al ...

and

William K. Everson Keith William Everson (8 April 1929 – 14 April 1996) was an English- American archivist, author, critic, educator, collector, and film historian. He also discovered several lost films. Everson's given first names were Keith William, but he r ...

. This four-part, semi-professional production paid homage to

Republic Pictures Republic Pictures Corporation (currently held under Melange Pictures, LLC) was an American motion picture production-distribution corporation in operation from 1935 to 1967, that was based in Los Angeles. It had studio facilities in Studio City an ...

and its adventure serials, while kidding the vintage film subculture of the 1960s. The plot involved a masked villain named The Master Duper, one of three members of a Film Commission who attempts to steal the only known prints of priceless antique films, and the heroic Captain Celluloid, who wears a costume reminiscent of that of the Black Commando in the Columbia serial The Secret Code and is determined to uncover him. Kilgore produced and scripted ''The World of Hans Christian Andersen'' (1971) which he co-directed with

Chuck McCann Charles John Thomas McCann (September 2, 1934 – April 8, 2018) was an American actor, comedian, puppeteer, commercial presenter and television host. He was best known for his work in presenting children's television programming and animation, a ...

. He was a founding member of the Laurel and Hardy appreciation society,

The Sons of the Desert The Sons of the Desert is an international fraternal organization devoted to the lives and films of comedians Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. The group takes its name from a fictional lodge that Laurel and Hardy belonged to in the 1933 film ''Son ...

, and drew the organization's crest. His caricatures of Laurel and Hardy were used in John McCabe's biography, ''Mr. Laurel and Mr. Hardy'' (1962). Kilgore and his wife Dolores lived in Long Island's Queens Village. He died in New York in 1983 from an

embolism An embolism is the lodging of an embolus, a blockage-causing piece of material, inside a blood vessel. The embolus may be a blood clot (thrombus), a fat globule ( fat embolism), a bubble of air or other gas (gas embolism), amniotic fluid (amniot ...

Awards

He was awarded the

National Cartoonists Society The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the ...

Silver T-Square in 1976 for outstanding dedication or service to the Society or the profession and its Special Features Award in 1983 for his ''Elvis the Paper Doll Book''.

References

External links

NCS Awards

1927 births 1983 deaths American comics artists United States Army personnel of World War II Artists from Newark, New Jersey United States Army Air Forces soldiers Deaths from embolism {{US-cartoonist-stub