2019 by Ian Willoughby
Gene Deitch, the American director best known for the Oscar-winning short film, Munro, has died from natural causes at the age of 95.
Deitch, full name Eugene Merrill Deitch, was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 8, 1924. Five years later, his family moved to Hollywood and he graduated from Los Angeles High School in 1942. His first job was at North American Aviation, drawing blueprints for aircrafts. He started training to be a pilot the following year, only to be honorably discharged after catching pneumonia. It was in his time at North American Aviation that Deitch met his first wife, Marie, with whom he had three sons, Kim, Simon, and Seth, who are now comic book writers and artists. Deitch then spent the next few years in the music industry contributing covers and interior artwork to The Record Changer, and working as an audio engineer for Connie Converse.
In 1955 he started an apprenticeship at United Productions of America (UPA) and later became the creative director of Terrytoons, where he created characters such as Sidney the Elephant and Gaston Le Crayon. In the same year he started at UPA, Deitch started writing and drawing the United Feature Syndicate comic strip, “The Real-Great Adventures of Terr’ble Thompson!, Hero of History,” which ran for six months. It was in 1958 that Deitch received his first Academy Award nomination for Sidney’s Family Tree, although come August that year, he was fired from Terrytoons and set up Gene Deitch Associates, Inc. in New York. At his company, Deitch mostly made TV commercials and won the Gold Medal of the New York Art Directors Club for best TV commercial twice in the late 1940s and early 1950s.
It was in 1959 that one of Deitch’s clients, Rembrandt Films, promised the funding for Munro, which prompted Deitch to move to the company’s base in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He only planned to stay in Prague for a short period of time, but quickly met his eventual wife, Zdenka Najmanová, and so he chose to stay. The pair married in 1964. Munro made its premiere in Czechoslovakia in September 1960, and in the U.S in October 1961, appearing as a short before Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Munro won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film that year, and became the first short film created outside of the U.S. to do so. Following this, Deitch directed Popeye with King Features and Rembrandt and, during the same period directed 13 new Tom and Jerry shorts. From 1969 up until 1993, he worked at Weston Woods. Deitch retired in 2008.
In 2003, the Annie Awards’ Winsor McCay Award was awarded to Deitch for his lifetime contribution to animation. Deitch’s memoir, For the Love of Prague, was published in 2018.
Deitch is survived by his wife, Zdenka, and his three sons, Kim, Simon, and Seth.
