The son of Universal studio
artist Mischa Kallis, Albert was born in Kansas City, Mo.
Having his father's gift for art, Albert
went to the Art Center College in Los Angeles.
In 1948, Albert left the Art Center School
in Los Angeles to live in Paris for a year. Upon his return he became
a free-lance illustrator for Universal
Pictures, Foote and Cone Belding, Capitol Records and Saul Bass.
Roger Corman hired him to do a campaign
for "Gunslinger" that was released by American Releasing
Corporation that was soon to become American
International Pictures.
In 1955 Albert made a handshake agreement
to do all their advertising and posters. Thus starting a relationship
with AIP for their low budget films. As their art director Albert
conceived the campaigns, made the layouts for ads and posters and
did the finished illustrations.
While working as art director for AIP, Albert
became one of the founders of The International House of Pancakes
now known as IHOP, an icon among America's most famous restaurant
chains. He designed all of their original menus, ads and annual
reports.
In 1957 American International's fast growing
schedule forced him to hire artists such as Joe Smith and Reynolds
Brown to do the finished art. Reynolds did the finish art on I Was
a Teenage Werewolf while Albert went to work on Invasion of the
Saucer Men.
During his 19 years with AIP he created
campaigns from some of the movies scripts before they were made
and with them Jim Nicholson started AIP's famous pre-production
sell tactics. The theater distributors jumped on the film mainly
because of the fantastic poster artwork. Albert created the title
as well as the campaign for The Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman that
was released by Allied Artists. Reynolds Brown did the finish art
and it became one of their most famous posters.
For 23 years, Albert produced and supervised
many of the memorable artworks in the film industry.
In 1973, he left motion picture advertising
to start a non-profit foundation with his wife Trudy. Together they
have made award-winning documentaries for education, charities,
and social causes. Their last, Art Colonies in America - The American
Impressionists won the "Silver Screen Award" U.S. International
Film and Video Festival 2005.
For a computer list of poster images that
we have on Albert Kallis, click
here.
The following is artwork that we have
attributed to Albert Kallis
| 1955 |
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| 1956 |
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1957 |
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1958 |
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Supervised all artwork for AIP
until 1973 |
