An excerpt from Gene Deitch’s book, How To Succeed In Animation (Don’t Let A Little Thing Like Failure Stop You!).

Read UPA: Back to the Future — Part 1 from the beginning.

Bert & Harry Piel almost stirred up a controversy as Aryan Bert. The series of commercials won Deitch his second NY Art Directors Club Gold Medal in 1953.

We did the first commercials ever with Saul Steinberg, working with him personally. I was dazzled at the chance to visit my cartoon idol in his wondrous clock and rocking chair filled apartment. The spots were for Jell-O Instant Pudding, of all things, but they won me my first New York Art Director’s Club Gold Medal.

Our biggest commercial success was in the long series of Bert & Harry Piel beer spots. The beer was dreadful, but the commercials boosted its sales phenomenally. (When Piel’s finally switched to another ad campaign, the company quickly collapsed!) The characters and dialog were actually created by Young & Rubicam writer, Ed Graham, and were voiced by the phenomenal Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding, Bob & Ray, but my design and direction of the series won me my second NY Art Directors’ Club Gold Medal and a lot of career points. The most hilarious fall-out was from the original name of the series, Harry & Bert. A woman viewer wrote a scathing letter to the Piel’s Beer company, castigating them in a fierce diatribe for their “fascist advertising campaign about Aryan Bert!” The company flipped out, and were demanding we immediately cancel the series, until we saved the situation and our hides by simply reversing the order of the names to Bert & Harry.

The most run TV spot of all is the NBC color peacock, which Deitch animated in the ‘50s. © 2003 NBC, Inc. All rights reserved.

Producing the first animated version of the NBC color peacock, in those days long before any sort of digital enhancement, we tried every which way to achieve the required maximum color brilliance on film. I went shopping in a theatrical supply house and got some color gels of the kind used over Broadway stage lights. Using the bottom lights of our Acme animation stand, normally for shooting pencil tests, and working with our experienced photographer cameraman, Wardell Gaynor, we achieved a stained glass window effect, which did the trick. There was no easy computer coloring in those days! The animated NBC peacock, only five seconds long, was probably the most run TV shot of all. It was shown at the beginning of every color broadcast for years. “The following program is brought to you in living color!” I assigned an unknown but brilliant young composer, Irwin “Bud” Bazelon to write the NBC color musical theme. The royalties made Bud a rich man and a lifelong friend.

Then we did the original opening titles for Alistair Cook’s landmark Omnibus show, and we had to devise in-camera tricks to get the drama needed for that. The Omnibus opening won me my third New York Art Directors Club Gold Medal.

I am especially proud of two of my UPA-NY films, produced in 1952-3, both now obscure to the point of invisibility. One was a custom made 2-reeler for The American Heart Association, called Pump Trouble. My good friend, writer Bill Bernal, the same who first brought me to UPA in Hollywood, helped me with the story, for which we cribbed some ideas from Citizen Kane. Cliff Roberts did the design, and Grim Natwick and Duane Crowther were the animators.