Richard W. Dorgan
Richard William Dorgan (September 24, 1892 – May 5, 1953) was an American cartoonist, writer, and illustrator. He was born in San Francisco, one of 11 children in the Dorgan family. By 1910 he had moved to New York City, studied art at the National Academy and the Art Students League, and began selling cartoons in 1913. His first published work appeared in The New York Call, and he later contributed to The Broadside, a naval reserve magazine, from 1918 to 1920. He served as a Seaman Second Class in the U.S. Naval Reserve during World War I.
Dorgan is best known for illustrating Thorne Smith’s Biltmore Oswald books, The Diary of a Hapless Recruit (1918) and Out o’ Luck (1919). He worked as a writer and illustrator for Photoplay Magazine in the 1920s and 1930s and did newspaper art as well. He was the brother of Tad Dorgan, a well-known cartoonist and sportswriter.
He collaborated with Ring Lardner, drawing the comic strip You Know Me Al from 1923 to 1926, and he illustrated many of Ring Lardner’s Weekly Letter columns (1919–1927). Dorgan also created a boxing-themed daily panel, Kid Dugan, in the late 1920s, which later evolved into Divot Diggers (circa 1929–1940). Around 1930–1932 he created Colonel Gilfeather for the Associated Press, a strip that Al Capp later took over in 1932 and that Milton Caniff and others reshaped in subsequent years as The Gay Thirties.
In addition to his comic work, Dorgan wrote and illustrated slang-style reviews for Photoplay, including a famous spoof of Rudolph Valentino in “Giving ‘The Sheik’ the Once Over from Ringside” and the provocative piece “A Song of Hate.”
Dorgan was married to Amelia Jane Murray, and they had a son, Richard W. Dorgan, Jr. He died on May 5, 1953, in Bayside, New York.
This page was last edited on 2 February 2026, at 06:33 (CET).