Frank Interlandi

(Click on illustrations to enlarge.)

With Frank in Laguna Beach - 1989

I met Frank and Mitzi Interlandi in the public bar of the William IV public house in Hampstead.  Memory - notoriously unreliable - suggests it was around the mid- to late-1950s.  What is more certain is that it was between my first two marriages, because I was still living in my original marital home in Hornsey and I was with my best buddy, Sasha Lyons, when we met the Interlandis in the William IV.

The pub was crowded and very noisy and everyone had to shout over the hubbub to make themselves heard.  Thus we were aware of the strong north-American accent coming from the couple.  Not that there was ever any reticence about speaking to strangers in pubs in those days, but this at least gave us a good excuse to initiate a conversation.

We learned that Frank and Mitzi had just arrived in London and were looking for somewhere to stay that would not cost the arm and leg of an hotel.  With a typically generous - if somewhat quixotic - gesture I offered to accommodate this transatlantic pair - these old friends whom I had known for the best part of one hour - in my 4-bedroomed Victorian house in Hornsey, occupied at that time by only myself. This is what has helped to pinpoint the date.

They, of course, with initial reluctance and repeated requests for reassurance about my seriousness, but with the background of an American culture in which such gestures are fairly common ("mi casa es su casa" etc), agreed and spent the next two weeks as my house guests.  A decision I never had the slightest reason to regret.

Frank was on a sabbatical of sorts from his post as editorial cartoonist with the Los Angeles Times.  Mitzi, his wife, had been a well-known jazz singer in the Laguna Beach, southern California, town from which they hailed.  The intention was to produce a series of cartoons based around the stereotyped figure of a travelling American: loud shirts, pot-belly, panama hat, and half-a-dozen cameras slung around his neck, and provide these to his newspaper from each of the places they visited in Europe.  Whether this was ever achieved, I cannot say.  I have never seen this series of cartoons, and googling has only produced examples of his more usual work based on a cynical approach to life, such as the following:

After their departure for their whistle-stop trip around the rest of "Yurrup", I believe I saw them just once more when we had dinner together in a West End restaurant.  And then, after their return to California, there were the usual exchanges of greetings cards, gradually diminishing, eventually ceasing.  That could have been the end of it- for me!   I say "for me", because my friend Sasha did manage to renew some contact years later when he purchased a "condo" in Beverley Hills, Los Angeles.  And thereby hangs the tale of my own renewed acquaintance in 1989 - a tale that involves also friend Sasha and also the singer Shirley Jones.  Both those stories feature elsewhere in this Cast of Characters.

But, for now, suffice it so say that I was spending a week in Sasha's LA "pad" in 1989 in the course of a Round-the-World trip, discovered that the Interlandis were alive and still living in Laguna Beach, and drove down to meet them.  The photos at the head and foot of this page were taken at that time.  Frank's appearance startled me.  He had put on a tremendous amount of weight, mainly the consequence of a vast daily intake of alcohol.  His tipple of choice was vodka, and his favourite Laguna Beach bar was his home throughout the daylight hours of most days.  Mitzi seemed hardly to have changed.  I was not surprised to learn that they had divorced a few years later.

More recently I had occasion once more to Google Interlandi only to learn that he had recently died, was mourned by a large number of Laguna Beach residents who held him in much esteem,  and a memorial service had been provided.  I felt privileged to be allowed to add my name and comments electronically to the "tablet".

 

With Mitzi in 1989 - Laguna Beach