Background
Alexander King was born Alexander Konig on November 13, 1900 in Vienna, Austria. He was of Jewish ancestry and the only child of Karl Gabriel Konig, a research chemist, and of Malvine Breuer.
(King, Alexander, I Should Have Kissed Her More)
King, Alexander, I Should Have Kissed Her More
https://www.amazon.com/should-have-kissed-her-more/dp/B0007DQK22?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B0007DQK22
(The uproarious bestseller -- a scandalous, wonderful, fan...)
The uproarious bestseller -- a scandalous, wonderful, fantastic safari through the zany world of writers, artists, actors and lovers.
https://www.amazon.com/Mine-Enemy-Grows-Older-Alexander/dp/B000CZ3LQS?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B000CZ3LQS
(Full-color painting prints on slip case. Originally price...)
Full-color painting prints on slip case. Originally priced at $6.50.
https://www.amazon.com/Alexander-Presents-Peter-Altenbergs-Evocations/dp/B000NQBR1W?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B000NQBR1W
(Alexander King (1899-1965) was an illustrator and author....)
Alexander King (1899-1965) was an illustrator and author. He was often a guest on the Tonight Show hosted by Jack Paar, where he would tell funny stories.
https://www.amazon.com/May-this-house-safe-tigers/dp/B00005WEH8?SubscriptionId=AKIAJRRWTH346WSPOAFQ&tag=prabook-20&linkCode=sp1&camp=2025&creative=165953&creativeASIN=B00005WEH8
Alexander King was born Alexander Konig on November 13, 1900 in Vienna, Austria. He was of Jewish ancestry and the only child of Karl Gabriel Konig, a research chemist, and of Malvine Breuer.
King was expelled from grammar school for "unaccountable conduct" and was sent to a Jesuit school for boys in Vienna. In 1913, his parents immigrated to New York City, where King went to public schools on Manhattan's Lower East Side. He also attended Cooper Union and the Sorbonne.
At an early age, King began to draw, and at seventeen he found work as a cartoonist on The Big Stick, a humorous Jewish weekly paper. In 1920 he became a naturalized citizen. He did sketches for the Socialist newspaper Call, and he sold a few covers to Smart Set, encouraged in his work by the editors, H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan. King also painted, and the first exhibition of his painting was in publisher Horace Liveright's office, who hired him later to do book illustrations.
For nearly twenty-five years (1930 - 1955), King ceased drawing and painting altogether. During this period, he edited an erratically published magazine Americana (1932 - 1933). He served for a time as managing editor of Stage magazine, and as an assistant editor of Vanity Fair. From 1937 to 1940 he was an associate editor of Life, where he was reputed to be an "idea" man. He turned out an occasional magazine article in these years, including a profile of Rose O'Neill, the illustrator and inventor of the Kewpie Doll, for the New Yorker, November 24, 1934.
In 1945 King took morphine to relieve persistent kidney stone pains. He became addicted. For nine years he struggled against the addiction, spending fourteen months at the Federal narcotics hospital in Lexington, Kentucky. Eventually, he was cured. He vividly described the drug addict's subculture in his memoirs. He published his first book, Mine Enemy Grows Older, in 1958. But he had received no appreciable public recognition until his explosive appearance on the Jack Paar television show on January 2, 1959. He captivated the audience. Witty, sardonic, and irreverent, he delivered an incessant flow of commentary on art, life, sex, drugs, women, literature, and other topics engaging his interest. "He was the greatest conversationalist I ever met, " said Paar, who described his guest as "a frail but fierce little man with the air of a delinquent leprechaun. "
King later had his own show, "Alex in Wonderland, " on a New York City television station. Critic John Lardner, who was not greatly impressed, found King "so fluent as to make what he says implausible. His talk abounds in bon mots and other meaty observations that were uttered to him personally, he tells you, by famous men, most of them now extinct. " When King first appeared on the Paar show, Mine Enemy Grows Older had sold about 6, 500 copies. The following week it sold 26, 000. Ultimately, it sold more than 175, 000. The book was described accurately as "less autobiography than memoirs, less memoirs than a series of impressionistic self-portraits and wildly hilarious anecdotes done so vividly, with such zest and animal bounce, that the book all but leaps in your hands. " It was quickly followed by three more books of reminiscences--May This House Be Safe from Tigers (1960), I Should Have Kissed Her More (1961), and Is There a Life After Birth? (1963). There was a recession of spontaneity and quality in the succeeding books and an increase of raunchiness, pumped-up flamboyance, and petulant misanthropy; however, all sold well.
In 1960 King brought out Alexander King Presents Peter Altenberg's Evocations of Love. Altenberg was an obscure Viennese journalist whose meditations and little stories were delightful reading. King translated, introduced, and illustrated a selection of Altenberg's work. He deserves credit for salvaging from oblivion some excellent writing. In precarious health much of his life (suffering from kidney disease, peptic ulcers, and hypertension), King died in New York City shortly after a television appearance promoting his just-published book, Rich Man, Poor Man, Freud and Fruit (1965).
(The uproarious bestseller -- a scandalous, wonderful, fan...)
(Alexander King (1899-1965) was an illustrator and author....)
(King, Alexander, I Should Have Kissed Her More)
(Child's fiction/picture book about a seal.)
(Full-color painting prints on slip case. Originally price...)
Quotations: "We had our century and muffed it. We put Coca Cola in Old Vienna. It couldn't be sadder. "
King was known to his friends as a gifted but erratic man, disarmingly gentle in appearance, who spoke five languages, wrote plays, and painted. Among his numerous dislikes were advertising ("a soggy over-ripe fungus"), abstract painting, millionaires, Life magazine, the New Yorker, the evangelist Billy Graham, and Ernest Hemingway. People generally, King said, were "adenoidal baboons" caught in "life's erratically operated sausage machine. "
King was married four times--for twenty years to his first wife, Nettie, with whom he had two sons. His fourth wife, Margie Lou Swet, whom he married on February 23, 1953, was a young singer who often appeared on his television shows.