Al Capp - Amesbury, MA - Grave of a Famous Person on Waymarking.com

“My work is being destroyed almost as soon as it is printed. One day it is being read; the next day someone's wrapping fish in it.”
- Al Capp

Well, that more or less sums up the efforts of a newspaper cartoonist. I might have said that they use it to train their dog or, if they’re really meticulous, put it under the cuckoo clock. Anyway, Li’l Abner, a satirical comic strip set in the American South ran daily for over 43 years - that’s a lot of paper mâché.

Al Capp was born Alfred Gerald Caplin in New Haven, Connecticut. Young Al grew up in an impoverished family and lost a leg in a trolley accident at the age of nine. He never did well academically but was able to parlay an ability to draw into acceptance at several art schools, though he wasn’t able to complete his studies due to failure to pay tuition.

Employment was difficult during the Great Depression, but Capp managed to land a couple of jobs working for cartoonists at various publications. At night, he worked on his own comic strip idea, Li’l Abner, which he was able to sell to United Feature Syndicate. The strip launched in August of 1934 and was an immediate success. The satirical comic strip was set in the fictional town of Dogpatch, Kentucky, featured a parade of memorable hillbilly-type characters and poked fun at just about everything.

The success of Li’l Abner propelled Capp (who supposedly shortened his name to fit in the comic frame) to celebrity. He achieved so much notoriety as a radio and television personality that his fame surpassed that of his comic strip. He also frequently appeared as a guest speaker at colleges and universities where he was often heckled for some of his political positions. In reference to the many college demonstrators of the 1960s, which he disdained, he once said: “Today's younger generation is no worse than my own. We were just as ignorant and repulsive as they are, but nobody listened to us.”

Due to declining quality, Li’l Abner was discontinued in November of 1977 after a run of over 43 years. The chain smoking Al Capp died of emphysema a couple of years later in 1979. He is buried in Mount Prospect Cemetery in Amesbury, Massachusetts.
(Source: wikipedia.org)

Description: See Long Description above. Date of birth: 09/28/1909 Date of death: 11/05/1979 Area of notoriety: Entertainment Marker Type: Headstone Setting: Outdoor Visiting Hours/Restrictions: none Fee required?: No Web site: [Web Link]

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