Playboy's Phil Interlandi Cartoons (1971) Magazine

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Phil Interlandi says, "The cartoonist is a writer-director-producer, all in one. He writes the script, casts the parts, designs the sets and costumes, plans the camera angles. It's capsule theater, a one-frame movie."
As for his work habits, Interlandi adds, "Would you believe I've actually dreamed many of my ideas? It's true. When you've trained your mind to think in terms of cartoons, virtually every experience is filed away in the unconscious for future use."
He says that his is "a realistic kind of drawing. That may sound crazy, calling a drawing style realistic, but that's about all I can think to call it. I mean, mine is not a highly stylized approach like that, say, of Steinberg. My humor also tends to be realistic rather than far-out–that is, more or less real people in more or less real situations–unlike Partch, let's say, who is wonderful but whose philosophy of humor is completely different-from mine. He'll have a guy maybe hanging on a wall and another guy saying, 'What's Harry hanging around for?'–something like that–and it's great when he does it, it cracks you up, but for me it
wouldn't be right."
Interlandi, the son of Sicilian immigrants, was born in Chicago and attended John Marshall High School. His art training took place at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. A stretch in the army figures among his experiences, as does a five-year stint in advertising. "Working in an ad agency was interesting while it lasted, but it was like quicksand. It sucks you down, slowly, pleasantly, and you don't dare struggle. Much too much time is wasted in office bull sessions. I once suggested to the boss that I could come in just three days a week and still get everything one– provided I could lock my door and stay out of all that. He said he knew I could, but if he let me do it my way, the rest of the office would revolt. So I quit and moved out here to Laguna, where I've been for something like eighteen years."
His work has been enjoyed by millions, but Interlandi is especially fond of the time Barnaby Conrad wrote a letter to PLAYBOY commenting on one of his cartoons. This particular drawing (you'll find it on the back over of this book) depicted a young man and woman in a rocky glen: They have obviously just finished enjoying each other's company to the fullest extent, and he is sentimentally inscribing their initials on a nearby rock, plus a detailed artistic rendering in the nude of their recent amorous activity. The girl is saying, "Couldn't you just let it go at initials?" Conrad wrote, "I immediately spotted the initials 'B. C.' and, endowed as I am with lightning reasoning, I figured out who that could be (although the possibilities of Bennett Cerf or Bing Crosby are not to be discounted). But the other initials–'M. S.'–who did they represent? I ran through every girl I've known over the past three decades. Couldn't think of a single one who fit. It was only an hour later, when my gorgeous wife called me to dinner, I remembered that when I married her, her name was Mary Slater. I intend to sue Interlandi, if I can stop laughing long enough."
Interlandi's first PLAYBOY cartoon appeared in the October1955 issue, and he has been drawing steadily for the magazine ever since. Before PLAYBOY, he says, "cartoonists had to deal with those other magazines, the big slicks with their hang-ups and taboos and sacred cows. We were forced to turn out cartoons on about the ten-year-old level.
"Then along came PLAYBOY and opened up the whole thing. It was a revolution for the cartoonists. We finally got to work with humor on an adult level. We were challenged to exercise our minds, stretch our talents, reach for the best that was in us.
"Another thing about PLAYBOY is that it gives cartoons the emphasis they deserve. Before PLAYBOY, cartoons had been mostly relegated to the back pages of magazines, just little postage-stamp-size fillers. PLAYBOY gives them prominence–size, space, color."
Here now are some of the best of PLAYBOY cartoons–all of them by Phil Interlandi.
–the editors of PLAYBOY

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Playboy Newsstand Special Magazine Back Issue, June 1971

Playboy's Phil Interlandi Cartoons (1971) Magazine

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