Alexander "Alex" James Redmond was born June 24, 1902 in Indiana, where his mother, Catherine, had returned to be with her mother during the birth. They lived in Brooklyn, New York, where his father, James Redmond, was a general practice lawyer. They lived at 155 Underhill Avenue, Brooklyn. There were five children in the family and Alex was the youngest.
In 1916, when he was only sixteen years old, his mother died. He and his two older brothers, Ed and Joe, were sent to be raised by their two spinster aunts in Conshohocken, Pennsylvania. They lived at 71 Fayette Street with their grandfather, Daniel B. Redmond, who was a seventy-three-year-old widowed Irish immigrant. The grandfather ran a shoe store where the boys and thier aunts worked as shoe clerks.
During the Great War, his two older brothers served in the Army, but he was too young for military service.
After the war his two older brothers returned to live with him and their Aunts in Conshohocken. He and his brother Ed attended art classes in Philadelphia, which was fifteen miles South by commuter train.
In 1926 Alex and Ed Redmond moved to new York City where they shared an art studio at 55 West 10th Street. Ed specialized in portraiture and Alex listed himself in the building directory as an "Artist of Magazines."
His first cover assignment was for the pulp magazine Everybody's Combined with Romance, which was dated January 1930 and was the final issue of that long-running magazine.
He then sold a series of freelance covers to the larger-format "bed sheet" magazines, such as Crime Detective, Real Detective Tales and Mystery Stories.
He soon sold covers regularly to Popular Publications, where the majority of his work appeared on pulp romance magazines, such as All Story Love, Complete Love, Ideal Love, New Love, Love Fiction Monthly, Love Novels, Love Short Stories, and Sweetheart Love Stories.
He was too old to serve in WWII, so he was among the few professional freelance illustrators who remained busier than usual throughout the war years.
After the war he lived and worked at 15 West 67th Street, which was a popular artist studio building on the Upper Westside. His nearby friends and neighbors included other pulp artists, such as Norman Saunders, George Gross, Ralph DeSoto, Richard Lillis, Gloria Stoll, and Allen Anderson.
He never married.
Alex Redmond died in his art studio on the Upper West Side at the age of seventy-three in November of 1975. © David Saunders 2009 |
