Playboy cartoon editor, Winnipeg-born Michelle Urry, dies

Michelle Urry, the Canadian-born cartoon editor of Playboy magazine, has died at the age of 66. Ironically, it was of cancer of the eye.

“My feeling about cartoons is that they are truth-tellers,” Urry said in a 2004 interview with the Columbus Dispatch in Ohio. “The better the cartoon, the more truth is in it.”

She became Playboy’s cartoon editor in 1972, working with famous and fledgling talents. She was She is credited with helping launch the career of the late B. Kliban, best known for his cartoons of vivacious cats. Besides working for Playboy, she consulted on cartoons with other magazines, such as Good Housekeeping and Modern Maturity.

(The notebook sketch by cartoonist Ron Hill was done a in 2004 when Urry made a presentation to a cartoonists' convention. At the time, Ms Urry said she bought approximately $1 million worth of cartoons a year.)