Gene Deitch 1924 - 2020

Gene Deitch, Academy Award winning animator, TV animation pioneer and cartoonist, passed away of natural causes on April 16th. He was 95. According to a family friend, the cause was not coronavirus-related.

He was born in Chicago, and raised in Los Angeles. Upon graduating Los Angeles High School in 1942, he went to work drawing blueprints for North American Aviation. He was drafted, and began pilot training. But he had a bout with pneumonia and was honorably discharged. He began working with CBS Radio as an assistant art director. It was during this time that he created covers, interior illustrations and cartoons for "The Record Changer," a jazz enthusiast publication.

"Gadfrey, they've finally done it! ... Unbelievable, no surface noise at all, never wears out, full range fidelity, plays at any speed, plays under water, needs no needle or amplifier, plays forward or backward, projects a picture of the band on the wall, and costs only two bits. ... Tsk! A pity my hearing's gone."

His work caught the attention of United Productions of America (UPA), a new animation studio began by ex-Disney workers who had been fired for striking.

From CartoonBrew:

"In 1949, Deitch moved to Detroit, Michigan, where he directed his first professional films at the Jam Handy Organization, an industrial film producer that counted General Motors as its largest client. His work at Jam Handy was interrupted when he was invited to rejoin UPA, this time at its new studio in Manhattan.

"While he initially joined UPA-NY as a production designer in mid-1951, he soon took over as creative director, leading the studio during its heyday as one of the most recognized and critically lauded producers of animated TV commercials in the United States."

Gene Deitch left to head the CBS-owned Terrytoons cartoon division.

From the book Cartoon Modern by Amid Amidi:

"The studio, in the New York City suburb of New Rochelle, was in such sorry run-down shape that CBS kept delaying taking Deitch to the studio during negotiations. When he first arrived at the studio, his first order of business was to simply create better working conditions for the Terrytoons artists. With the support of CBS, Deitch had the studio repainted, bought new furniture, and gave inkers and opaquers their own cubicles to work in (replacing the sweatshoplike arrangement of long rows of desks). A state-of-the-art projection system and new animation cameras were also installed. Deitch redesigned the Terrytoons logo and created a title card—signed by every staff member—which appeared in front of the films, a gesture meant to show his appreciation for each artist’s contribution. In another gesture of goodwill, Deitch promised not to fire any of the artists, instead opting to construct his modern vision around the studio veterans. He augmented the existing crew with as many like-minded young artists as he could, including Jules Feiffer, Tod Dockstader, Al Kouzel, Ray Favata, Ernie Pintoff, and Len Glasser."

It was to last three years, with Deitch creating popular animations, in particular the Tom Terrific shorts for CBS' Captain Kangaroo series. 

CartoonBrew:

Fired from Terrytoons in 1958, he set up his own studio, Gene Deitch Associates. A client, Rembrandt Films, offered to fund a short he wanted to make, an adaptation of Jules Feiffers’s comic Munro, if he would help fix some of their existing productions in Communist Czechoslovakia. Deitch agreed to travel behind the Iron Curtain for a ten-day trip, but remained there for the rest of his life, in the process becoming one of the only Americans to live full-time in the country until its transition to a democratic state began in 1989. Incidentally, that first project, Munro, became a big success, earning him an Oscar for best animated short in 1961. 

In the 1960s, he created TV animation based on licensed characters like Popeye, Tom and Jerry, and Krazy Kat.

From Wikipedia:

In 1966, he worked with Czech animator Jiří Trnka on a feature-length animated film adaptation of The Hobbit. However, producer William L. Snyder couldn't secure the funds, and in order to not let the rights for the novel expire, he asked Deitch to produce a short film adaptation in 30 days. Deitch and illustrator Adolf Born made a 13-minute animated film never intended for distribution; the film was long considered lost until it was rediscovered by Snyder's son and released on YouTube in 2012.

From 1969 until his retirement in 2008, he was lead animation director for Weston Woods Studios,  adapting children's books to film. His first was Drummer Hoff.





ASIFA-Hollywood gave him the Annie Award's Winsor McCay Award in 2003, Deitch for a lifetime contribution to the art of animation.

Related:

So much more at CartoonBrew. 

And a trove at DailyCartoonist.

More Record Changer graphics at the Who's Out There blog.

Gene Deitch on the First NBC Peacock Animated Logo in 1957
Video: Deitch talks about living in Communist Czechoslovakia as an American, and later in the Czech Republic following the 1989 Velvet Revolution.