Return To Advertising
While at the top of his game, Bob decided to retire from television and go back into advertising. On February 24, 1979, after offering the job to several of his researchers, including film historian David Del Valle, he relinquished the Creature Features hosting duties to San Francisco Chronicle writer John Stanley (1979–1984). Wilkins continued his program on KTXL as The Bob Wilkins Double Horror Show from May 9, 1970 through February 14, 1981. Wilkins's fans include actor Tom Hanks and Bay Area filmmaker George Lucas, who watched the Sacramento programs as a youth in Modesto.
Although no longer a fixture on television, Wilkins periodically made appearances at comic book and fantasy conventions, film screenings and tributes, until two years before his death. After his departure from television, Wilkins concentrated on his advertising agency, which handled accounts such as the Chuck E. Cheese restaurant chain. In the 1990s, he and his wife, Sally, retired and moved to Reno, Nevada.
John Stanley, Wilkins's replacement on Creature Features, reported in an interview on the radio program Coast to Coast on August 14, 2007 that Wilkins was stricken with Alzheimer's disease and was then living in Sacramento. He succumbed to the disease at age 76 on January 7, 2009 in Reno.
In 2008, a feature-length documentary on Creature Features, Watch Horror Films, Keep America Strong!, debuted in several theaters in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 75-minute documentary features interviews with Bob Wilkins and John Stanley, as well as other key figures close to the show, both behind-the-scenes and in front of the cameras, and contains vintage clips spanning the history of the show, which took place during an era when local broadcasting was much more a creative and experimental medium than it would subsequently become.
Read more about this topic: Bob Wilkins (television Personality)
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