Tribute Set for Laguna Icon Frank Interlandi

 Memorial Feb. 12

Tribute Set for Laguna Icon Frank Interlandi

Friends and family will gather at the gazebo at Heisler Park at noon on Friday, Feb. 12, to celebrate the memory of longtime Laguna Beach resident and famous cartoonist Frank Interlandi who passed away on Feb. 4. The celebration will continue at the Marine Room immediately following the memorial service.

Interlandi, best known as an editorial cartoonist for the Los Angeles Times, moved to Laguna Beach in the early 1950s, following his twin brother Phil, the Playboy cartoonist. The brothers, who both studied at the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts, were an integral part of a colorful group of cartoonists in Laguna that included Ed Nofziger, John Dempsey, Don Tobin, Roger Armstrong, Dick Shaw, Virgil Partch and Dick Oldden, among others. The group regularly met in the bar at the White House on Coast Highway. Beginning in the mid 1970s they also frequented the Ivy House (now the Lumberyard Restaurant), where they were jokingly referred to as the “Street Gang” by the management.

Interlandi lived in an apartment at the corner of Legion and Glenneyre Streetsand, until recently was often seen walking all about town, going to the post office and stopping in to see friends at the Marine Room. It was only in the last six months, as he became frail, that he moved to San Diego to be closer to his son.

Last July, Allan Holtz, a self-described comic strip historian, wrote about Interlandi in his blog, “The Stripper’s Guide.” He was particularly taken with “The Cynic’s Corner,” a feature Interlandi drew for the Des Moines Register that ran from 1953 to 1956. He praised Interlandi’s use of a “fascinating double-line technique” such that the “cartoons just seem to pop right off the page,” and that was combined with “delightfully pungent gag lines.”