Filed Under: "Gene Deitch"

Letter from Jim to his longtime friend Gene Deitch, 1972

Animation legend GENE DEITCH was a longtime friend of Jim Flora, a friendship that commenced in the 1940s and ended only with Flora’s death in 1998. Today Gene wrote to us: Pete Jolly Duo EP from back cover of The High Fidelity Art of Jim Flora THE HIGH-FIDELITY ART OF JIM FLORA arrived!  This latest treasury of Jim’s art is the closest to my heart, as it covers the exact material that led me to him in the mid…

Flora’s first children’s book, published in 1955, was adapted for animation by UPA‘s Terrytoons in 1959. It was directed by Al Kousel and produced by Flora’s longtime friend Gene Deitch. Jerry Beck of Cartoon Brew posted it to YouTube and wrote about the project at his blog here. We agree with Jerry’s assessment: “Though Flora was involved with adapting the story to the screen, the final result wasn’t entirely successful in translating the charm of…

Absolute good taste edifies absolutely. Cartoonist/animator Gene Deitch, in a 2003 interview with AllAboutJazz.com, about his then-new book, The Cat on a Hot Thin Groove: AAJ: What is your favorite piece of album cover artwork? Deitch: Any by James Flora. Left: detail, Shorty Rogers Courts the Count (1955, RCA Victor)

Producer/writer Bill Bernal was a dear friend of Jim Flora. In an autobiographical reminiscence penned in 1987, Flora recalled an intercession by Bernal that upscaled one of the artist’s less successful children’s books: In 1961 Leopold, the See-through Crumbpicker was published. It did not make much of a splash. It was illustrated differently than my other books and that may have been a mistake. I tried to see and do the illustrations as a child…