Gene Deitch draws his creation, Tom Terrific, in the late-1950s. His soon-to-be-famous cartoonist sons, Kim (l.) and Simon, are standing around him.
I recently received a nice email about CARTOON MODERN from Fifties-era designer and director Gene Deitch. Gene, who is 82 now and lives in the Czech Republic, is still directing new animated shorts based on children’s books for Weston Woods/Scholastic. Also a new book collecting his long-lost newspaper comic strip TERR’BLE THOMPSON will be released by Fantagraphics this holiday season. Here’s what Gene has to say:
Hello Amid! Today I received your book CARTOON MODERN from Amazon, and it is a truly thrilling compendium! I guess I never realized fully what a golden era the 1950s were. When I see it all together in your book, it becomes clear that we were all doing slight variations of the same thing. We were all working under common influences, and many of the key designers, were doing work for various studios. We all felt that we were on the high road. Some of us may feel we were the first, or the pioneers. It probably all started at UPA Hollywood. We did feel that we were opening the door to the wider world of graphic design and content for animation.
I am certainly pleased with what you wrote about my naive attempt to create an animation Camelot at Terrytoons. I thank you for such a broadly covered review of our output. I’m proud to be so well placed in your book! Many thanks.
Besides being a special souvenir for myself, your book is rich display of all the great people of those days, and with so many of the rarest photographs of the talented and brilliant people who worked with me and made me look good. You have an astonishing collection of photographs. For example, it never occured to me to take a photo of Cliff Roberts, and I am glad to see him once again within your pages. Cliff was my trademark designer and close friend, for many years, and I treasure his memory. We also spent many happy evenings drumming together. He shared my passion for hand drumming. We couldn’t resist beating on anything that could make a noise, driving everyone around us mad, but immensely enjoying ourselves..
What with Dan Nadel’s book and your book, I’m getting a very nice late-in-life boost. Next month my most obscure creation of all, my 50-year-old United Features Syndicate comic strip, Terr’ble Thompson will be restored in book form from Fantagraphics.
