Thursday, July 12, 2007

Granny No More!

Cartoonist Robert 'Buck' Brown, the creator of "Granny" for Playboy Magazine died Monday at the age of 71. I don't know why, but was surprised to learn that Brown was African-American. Brown had been drawing for Playboy since the 1962 and had done over 600 cartoons for the magazine. Over the years he created many characters for Playboy, but the most popular was 'Granny,' a naughty little old lady who graced the pages of Playboy for decades.

He never named the character. As his daughter, Tracy Hill related, "She was just an older woman my father drew," she said. "But every time he would go into the Playboy offices, the receptionist would laugh and say, 'I love that little granny of yours.' And the name stuck."

Granny first appeared in 1966, in Brown's first color cartoon for the publication. Granny's trademark sagging torpedo tits were as much an icon of Playboy as the bunny logo. His latest cartoon for Playboy is in the August 2007 issue.

Brown's work also appeared in Ebony, Jet, Dollars and Sense, the New Yorker and Esquire magazines and in the Chicago Sun-Times. His work was filled with social commentary about the civil rights movement of the 1960s. Though most famous for his cartoons, Brown also was a noted painter of what he called "soul genre paintings" — humorous, slice-of-life images.

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