An excerpt from Gene Deitch’s How to Succeed in Animation (Don’t Let a Little Thing Like Failure Stop You!).

Some of Gene’s fans know him only as the “CAT-toonist" who drew the cartoons and covers for the old Record Changer magazine in the mid-’40s and ’50s.

My fans seldom meet. They are few and they are diverse. I am virtually unknown in the mass media. My name rings no bells in the gossipy movie biz. My fans are isolated. They rarely know each other, but they do love me... YES! They really love me!

I may have the most diverse fanhood going:

• There are those ancient “Mouldy Fygges,” the hard-line traditional jazz and blues fans who only know me as the fanatic “CAT-toonist” who drew the cartoons and covers for the old Record Changer magazine in the mid-’40s and ‘50s.

• There are those intense comic strip researchers who even know about my short-lived daily and Sunday newspaper feature for United Features Syndicate, “Terr’ble Thompson, the progenitor of Tom Terrific.”

• There may be one or two who remember my work at The Jam Handy Organization in Detroit, where I first made use of my UPA roots and laid the foundation for whatever I did later.

• There are the dedicated animation historians who recognize the pioneering work I directed in the palmy days of animated TV commercials.

• There are the animation historians who especially love the obscure, and many of my efforts fall neatly into that category. They are obsessed with my truncated renaissance at CBS-Terrytoons in the mid-’50s, and even find praise for the films I did there that sank like stones in the corporate pool.