Don Orehek – RIP
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Cartoonist Don Orehek has passed away.
Donald August (Don) Orehek
August 9, 1928 – December 6, 2022
The Berndt Toast Gang has passed on the sad news that
the famed and prolific magazine cartoonist has died:
The Berndt Toast Gang regretfully announces that, Don Orehek, longtime BTG member, incorrigible cartoonist, lighting quick caricaturist and all round wonderfully funny guy passed away this morning. Don was incredibly prolific with thousands of gag cartoons working their way from his pen to the pages of all the major magazines.
Don career as a professional magazine cartoonist began in the middle of the 20th Century and ran into this century. The last four years of the 1940s saw Don in the U. S. Navy where he did get to create a comic strip for military newspapers.
Out of the service Don began his career.
From a 1974 interview in Cartoonist PROfiles:
By 1956 Don had become a full-time cartoonist.
He would contribute gag cartoons to a long list of magazines: Saturday Evening Post, 1000 Jokes, Look, Good Housekeeping, Playboy, McCall’s, Humorama, Christian Science Monitor, Modern Maturity, Family Circle, Cavalier, True Adventure, Broadway Laughs, Saturday Review, Reader’s Digest, and more.
Also in the late 50s Don would begin a long association with Cracked Mazagine,
which is where I first discovered him in the 1960s.
From that 1974 interview:
Even with monthly Cracked assignments and dozens of cartoons to dozens of magazines every month Don found time for books.
That Yankee Doodle Dandies is a favorite.
Don was a frequent contributor to King Feature’s Laff-A-Day
and McNaught Syndicate’s This Funny World.
Don also drew sexy cartoon women. While the Playboy cartoons showing off his curvy lines are too racy for this family friendly site, a couple of his French Cartoons and Cuties covers will give you an idea.
The Grand Comics Database has a chronological listing of only a few of Don’s cartoons.
Mike Lynch has a look at a couple of Don’s Cracked pages.
I only knew Don through his cartooning,
yet news of his passing saddens me.
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