Ink Runs Out On Interlandi’s Interlude

Frank Interlandi, standing, and his brother, Phil. photos courtesy of Mia Interlandi Ferreira Frank Interlandi, a renowned editorial cartoonist and beloved longtime resident, passed away on Thursday, Feb. 4, due to complications of old age. He was 85. His death severs an important link to a golden era, where Interlandi and his identical twin, Phil, also a cartoonist, were part of a legendary coterie of cartoonists and other artists in Laguna during the 1960s and ‘70s, renowned as the West Coast version of the Algonquin’s round table.

Interlandi’s work, which for years appeared under the title, “Below Olympus,” appeared in newspapers throughout the United States and Europe.

Friends and family will gather at the gazebo at Heisler Park at noon on Friday, Feb. 12, to celebrate his memory, and the celebration will continue at the Marine Room immediately following the memorial.

Born in Chicago, Ill., in 1924 to Sicilian immigrant parents, Interlandi joined the army at age 17 and served as a medic in WWII. After the war, Interlandi pursued a master’s in fine arts at the University of Iowa. As a nod to an intellectual inclination that was never far from the surface, according to his daughter, Mia Interlandi-Ferreira, he minored in philosophy/religion. He met his wife, Mitzi, at the university and they married in 1955.

Frank Interlandi Interlandi drew “Interlude with Interlandi,” a daily panel cartoon published in the Daily Iowan, a university paper, and later in a book collection sold in college book stores nationally. “College Cartoons: 50th Anniversary Edition,” a collection of 455 cartoons created by Frank Interlandi, Dean Norman and Richard Watson while they were students at the University of Iowa, was published by Trafford Publishing in 2003.

Still at school, Interlandi was hired to pen editorial cartoons for the Des Moines Register, eventually becoming syndicated. Retaining his job, he moved in 1953 to Laguna Beach, following his brother’s lead.

In 1961 Interlandi received the Society of Professional Journalists’ Sigma Delta Chi award for an edi- torial cartoon, and the next year he was hired by Otis Chandler at the Los Angeles Times. He continued working as an editorial cartoonist for the op ed page, along side his good friend Paul Conrad, until 1981.

Interlandi’s circle in Laguna was a Who’s Who of contemporary cartoonists. They included his brother Phil and John Dempsey, who both worked for Playboy, and Dick Oldden, whose work appeared in the New Yorker, among others. They gathered daily at the bar of the White House restaurant after posting their cartoons off to their various publications.

Laguna Beach resident Paul Darrow, a contemporary of the Interlandis who is still a working cartoonist, recalls that quotidian ritual as “a kind of cartoonist’s therapy.”

During the Nixon years, when the president was often in residence in San Clemente, the White House restaurant’s throng of cartoonists formed a softball team that competed with one recruited from the ranks of the White House press corps. They all got a kick out of that, according to Interlandi- Ferreira.

In the mid-70s, the cartoonists shifted their shenanigans over to what was the Ivy House to be closer to the post office, which had moved to Forest Avenue. There, they were jokingly referred to as “the Street Gang” by management.

Local insurance broker Gary Watkins met Interlandi tending bar at the Ivy House and remained friends over four decades. “I really enjoyed his company. He was one of the good guys,” said Watkins. He recalled some of the cartoonists’ goofiness, such as saying they planned to hop a train to Catalina and hiring a barge to transport their train car or using Laguna streets as a golf course.

Council member Kelly Boyd, owner of the Marine Room Tavern, which became another of their regular haunts, also recalls their antics. “They used to do crazy things together,” he said, such as “sailing” to Las Vegas, putting a boat on a car trailer and sitting in the boat en route.

“Being funny is not a funny business,” said Darrow, pointing out the cartoonist’s need to immerse himself in topical news in order to devise commentary that could be translated into a captioned illustration “that made people laugh without getting them mad at you.”

Interlandi-Ferreira said her father was a private person who was actually very modest about his work. With the expectation that he would produce five cartoons a week, he was constantly in search of content, which meant that “the news was on the entire day, every day,” on both television and radio, a practice that, ironically, limited cartoon viewing for the kids, she said.

Still, their father’s lifestyle did offer other perks. It was “a fascinating way to grow up because there was always some famous artist, cartoonist, director, or sculptor at our house,” said Interlandi-Ferreira. “There was always someone sleeping on our couch.” Watkins particularly remembers visits by the political cartoonist Pat Oliphant, and Hank Ketcham, creator of “Dennis the Menace.”

Though he is best known as a cartoonist, Interlandi was also a serious painter, a self-described Abstract Expressionist. While working as a cartoonist, he painted and exhibited at the Festival of Arts for nearly four decades. His work was also exhibited in various Laguna galleries.

Even as his contemporaries moved or passed on, Interlandi remained in Laguna. Up until last November, when frailty caused him to move closer to his son in San Diego, his daily jaunts around town were his lifeline, going to the post office, stopping in the Marine Room to catch up with friends, and then making his way to the Saloon to congregate with others.

“He was just a great guy,” said Boyd. “He’ll be missed.”

Interlandi is predeceased by his brother Phil, who died in 2002. He is survived by his daughter Mia Interlandi-Ferreira, his son Frank Phillip Interlandi, and two grandsons, as well as his wife of 42 years (now divorced since 1997) Mitzi Interlandi.