>> PRAGUE -- Gene Deitch, an American Oscar-winning illustrator, animator, film director and producer has died. He was 95. His Czech publisher, Petr Himmel, told The Associated Press Deitch died unexpectedly during the night from Thursday to Friday in his apartment in Prague’s Little Quarter neighborhood. No further details were given. Deitch’s movie “Munro” won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film in 1960. He was also nominated for the same award twice in 1964 for “Here’s Nudnik” and “How to Avoid Friendship.” Earlier, he had created the “Tom Terrific” series, while the “Sidney’s Family Tree," which he co-produced was nominated for an Academy Award in 1958. Born Aug. 8, 1924, in Chicago, Deitch arrived in Prague in 1959 intending to stay for 10 days, but fell in love with his future wife, Zdenka, and stayed in the Czechoslovakian capital. Working from behind the Iron Curtain, he directed 13 episodes of “Tom and Jerry” and also some of the “Popeye the Sailor” series. He captured life in communist Czechoslovakia and later in the Czech Republic after the 1989 anti-communist Velvet Revolution in his memoirs “For the Love of Prague.” In 2004, he received the Winsor McCay Award for his lifelong contribution to animation. Deitch is survived by his wife and by three sons from his first marriage, all of whom are cartoonists and illustrators.
I used to borrow a DVD from the library that had this as one of the animated shorts, and was a huge part of my childhood. Just found this again today after 15 years of remember the "I'm only four!" line haha
Thank you for posting this gem! I just thought of this the other day and I went looking for the "little boy gets drafted into the army cartoon" and here it is! Wonderful! i haven't seen this in probably thirty years!
I can't decide whether it's satirical- because if it's serious it's pretty sickening. I thought for a second it was made in 1969 and was just waiting for him to get shipped of to a Jungle fluent in Vietnamese and die horribly in some very badly done unsubtle anti-war message, but when you get to the end it's just looks naive and disturbing.
According to Leonard Maltin's of Mice and Magic Paramount picked up this and distributed it in America. (Deitch moved to Prague,Czechoslovakia after leaving Terrytoons) After it won for best short the studio allowed Deitch to work freelance on several cartoons (like Krazy Kat) when demand was too great.
This silly story has a very small bit of truth in real life. During WWII soldiers as young as 15 tried to get into the Army by lying about their age. My father in law served in the Navy at age 16-17 like a lot of others who sneaked in. He also met others trying to get out by doing outrageous things like being naked on guard duty when snowing. What a strange time that must have been for a teenager.
It’s not a mystery. He wasn’t artistically invested in Tom And Jerry, because he thought slapstick was a “simplistic” form of comedy. But when MGM comes knocking…it’s a bit hard to turn down such a renowned studio.
I'm tired of the bad rap people give Deitch. I'll be the first to admit his Tom & Jerry series paled in comparison to the Hanna-Barbera product -- but so did the Chuck Jones version. Besides, had Deitch had a better crew at his disposal and a bigger budget (his was $10,000 per cartoon versus $50,000 by the end of the HB era) it would've perhaps been a different product.
@morganfitzp Is that who was responsible for those weird cartoons? cool to know, I was looking up information about him because I saw on neatorama that he had begun working on an animated version of "The Hobbit" that was never completed.
This is great! How did Gene Deitch go from the abstract but interesting Howdy Doody Cartoon for UPA, this cartoon, and then go onto make the horrible Tom and Jerry Cartoons for 2 yrs for MGM?
All Tom and Jerry,including the one before Hanna Barbera are great. I like Tall in the Trap and Landing Stripling the best. And the one that take place in ancient Greece. Very funny.
Isn't this where the writer of The Partridge Family got the idea from or inspired. There's an episode where Danny had been drafted in the army by mistake and Mrs Partridge had tried to tell them that.
RIP, Gene Deitch, 1924-2020. I notice that the name is pronoucned not MUNroe, but MunROE (Like Marilyn or Vaughn MonROE.) Ironic that a Paramount cartoon that won wasn'[t one of their own productions...but a studip that worked for them on some King Features cartoon shows..whcih, though in Czech, USSR, used Hollywood based Howard Morris..but, then, like the Beetle Baileys that both east coast Par.cartoons AND West coast main office and some foreign companies did, along with the Popeyes, and such, voice work and such was imply divided..I rememebr seeingthis..
