Alex Gard (Aleksei Kremkov): “An Accidentally Americanized Cartoonist”

Abstract

The article focuses on Aleksei Mikhailovich Kremkov (1898-1948), graduate of the St. Petersburg Naval Corps, who received his military education—and baptism of fire—during the First World War and Civil War, and who, in emigration, worked as caricaturist in France and USA under the pseudonym Alex Gard. Gard collaborated with The New York Herald Tribune and many other serials, his cartoons graced the walls of the prestigious Sardi’s Restaurant in New York, and he published several albums of caricatures (including skits on military service, the Russian ballet, and the cream of America’s theater and cinema bohemia in the 1930s and 1940s). True, his cartoons brought tears to many an eye, but they also inspired people to understand themselves better and even to bolster self-confidence. Little has been written about Gard and biographical data are often contradictory. This article publishes vintage photographs and inscriptions, including a drawing from the collection of the author, whose great-uncle—the Russian ballet dancer in exile—Dimitri Rostoff (D.N. Kulchitsky), was one of Gard’s closest friends.