Eldon Dedini

Eldon Dedini (1921-2006) sold his first cartoon to Esquire Magazine while at Salinas Junior College in 1942. After graduating from the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles in 1944 he took a job as an artist for Universal Studios and then quickly moved to Disney where he did story sketches in connection with writers in the Story Department.  He joined Esquire in 1946 and stayed with the magazine until 1950, when he moved to The New Yorker. He added Playboy to the New Yorker job in 1960.  Over the course of his career, he drew over 1,200 cartoons for Playboy, many featuring his now readily recognizable cast of sexually brash satyrs in joyful pursuit of astoundingly proportioned, equally lusty nymphs.  He was always proudest of his gag work, including the 630 cartoons he drew for the New Yorker, noting in one interview that “[t]he gag is the whole secret of cartooning” and that “style alone will never sell a bum joke. … A million people can draw. The question is, are you funny?”  Eldon Dedini most definitely was.