"It will be a great pleasure to pinch your claw"

Letter from Jim to his longtime friend Gene Deitch, 1972

Gene Deitch: Flora had an "overpowering influence" on my style

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 1940s—and which had an overpowering influence on my own graphic attempts.  Everyone who followed my work in the Record Changer magazine, reproduced in the Fantagraphics book, THE CAT ON A HOT THIN GROOVE, knows that much of my stuff was flat-out Flora imitation-emulation, though I clearly knew all the while that Jim's endless graphic invention was inimitable.

Jim himself was in many ways a parallel of his iconic images, a sum of many parts, just as all the convoluted sassy segments strung-out in space joined into a dazzling whole.  A genius of his order may have had every reason to be arrogant, distant, or cold—yet Jim was downright jolly, warm-hearted, caring and helpful. He never berated me for stealing his stuff, but rather encouraged me and worked with me. I tried to work more with him, but am grateful that I was at least able to produce animated versions of his FABULOUS FIREWORKS FAMILY at Terrytoons and LEOPOLD, THE SEE-THROUGH CRUMB-PICKER here in Prague. Best of all, I am proud that he became my close friend and regular correspondent.  His final letter to me lingers in my heart. This new book of his further ensures that I will never forget him.

Gene's The Cat On a Hot Thin Groove was recently republished by Fantagraphics with a new cover:

The Fabulous Firework Family (cartoon)

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 the original book." Jerry also explains that it was "the last cartoon Deitch personally produced at the studio." Flora's close friend Gene moved to Prague with his wife in '59 and to this day continues to live and prosper there. Deitch makes periodic contact with us to convey recollections of his departed friend Jim and share rare Flora artifacts. Gene also wrote the Foreword for our first book of Floriana, The Mischievous Art of Jim Flora.

good taste edifies

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)

William Bernal

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 would see and do them. The story is about Leopold, an invisible animal, who likes Minerva, a little girl who has lost her two front teeth. When she eats cookies, she makes a lot of crumbs and Leopold loves crumbs. He follows Minerva to school one day and proceeds to get into a lot of trouble. This is followed by a mad chase through town until he is arrested and finally made visible. I thought it was a good story even though it didn't sell well. Once again, good fortune intervened in the shape of Bill Bernal, an independent film producer. He liked Leopold very much and thought it would make a fine short film. He, too, knew Gene Deitch who had made my first film [ed.: The Fabulous Firework Family] and who now lived in Czechoslovakia where he was in charge of the government's animation studios. Bill commissioned Gene to make the film and he turned out a very smart and lively seven-minute film. Book sales picked up and the film is still available from Weston Woods, who distributes it to schools and libraries.

Deitch dropped us a note and three jpgs in July 2006:

I recently came across my original storyboard plus three original color studies [see above] for our production of Leopold, The See-Through Crumbpicker. The color studies were made by Jim personally. They are not actual illustrations from the book. Jim made them as guides for our animators.

Now gawk at this safe-driving cartoon from the 1950s, Stop Driving Us Crazy!, written by Bernal, animated in classic UPA style, and starring — Martians.