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| General info : | | John Dempsey (born 1919 in Sierra Madre, USA - died May 18, 2002, La Jolla, USA (aged 83)) was a magazine cartoonist whose cartoons appeared in Playboy magazine for five decades.
Born in Sierra Madre, Dempsey spent his early years Los Angeles. After graduating from Monrovia High School he worked on a cattle ranch in southern Arizona
During World War II, he served in the Navy Seabees. While stationed in Hawaii, he became a staff artist for Seabee magazine and began contributing cartoons to Yank magazine.
After his discharge from the Navy, Dempsey attended Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles. But after two years, he sold one of his cartoons to Collier’s magazine and quit school to focus on freelancing. He began selling his cartoons to Colliers, Cosmopolitan, Look, the Saturday Evening Post and other national magazines.
Then, in 1954, he submitted a batch of single-panel cartoons to a new men’s magazine, Playboy. His first cartoon ran in the December 1954 issue, and from then on one if not two Dempsey cartoons ran in virtually every issue of Playboy.
In 1960, he moved to Laguna Beach, where he joined a close-knit group of fellow Laguna cartoonists.
“He was the most California of all the artists,” said Michelle Urry, Playboy’s cartoon editor. "He did very California figures.”
Dempsey did surfers on the beach. He did the first “Mrs. Robinson” cartoon, in which the older woman is eyeing her daughter’s boyfriend. And, most famously, he did cartoons set in nudist clubs.
Dempsey had just finished working on a drawing in his studio in downtown Del Mar, a few blocks from his home, when he suffered the stroke.
A Del Mar resident since 1970, Dempsey contributed to ZOO NOOZ, the magazine of the San Diego Zoo; and the local Del Mar newspaper, the Sandpiper.
In addition to his daughter, Dempsey is survived by his wife of 35 years, Ann; a son, Jason of Paris; a brother, Sam of Lemon Grove; and a sister, Dorothy of West Covina.
Dempsey died of complications of a stroke May 18 at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla. | |
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| Source : | | https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jun-25-me-dempsey25-story.html (www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2002-jun-25-me-dempsey25-story.html) | |
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| Image | | John Dempsey Cartoonist.jpg | |