‘Nudnik’ Returns To His Bumbling On Cable
“Nudnik” is coming out of the box.
After a 29-year absence from screens, the irrepressible theatrical cartoon character returns this week on The Cartoon Network.
Ten of the 13 shorts, one of which was nominated for an Oscar, are being featured on the network’s popular alternative “Toon Heads.” Nudnik cartoons ran in the United States between 1964 and 1967.
The cartoons - and the film library of its production company, Rembrandt - were discovered in storage boxes in New Jersey by Adam Snyder, 42, whose father, William L. Synder, was the owner of Rembrandt Films from 1948 through 1969, when the company closed shop.
Rembrandt began its foray into animation in 1959. Over the years the company won five Academy Awards for animation, including one for Jules Feiffer’s “Munro.”
Rembrandt produced such classic children’s book fare as the animated versions of two of Ludwig Bemelmans’ “Madeline” series, James Thurber’s “Many Moons,” and Eve Titus’ “Anatole.”
One of the company’s most memorable ventures was 1952’s “The Emperor’s Nightingale,” a puppet animation film with an animated Boris Karloff, who did the narration. The same puppet animation technique was later used in Tim Burton’s 1993 “Nightmare Before Christmas.”
The return of “Nudnik” is a collaboration between the senior Snyder and creator-animator Gene Deitch, who once headed up the U.S. animation houses UPA and Terrytoons and created Tom Terrific for “Captain Kangaroo.”
Deitch, now 71, originally went to then Stalinist Prague, where Rembrandt’s animation was based, for 10 days in 1959 to supervise production. There he met and married Zdenka, a Czechoslovakian animation producer, and never returned to the United States, creating Nudnik in Prague.
From his home in Prague, Deitch says, “Nudnik came from me. I’ve always been very clumsy.”
Deitch tells a story of working on a Moviola while still at Terrytoons in the mid-‘50s: “My tie got threaded into the machine, and my teeth almost got knocked out! That kind of stuff was always happening to me, so I got to thinking about a character to whom everything went wrong. I have a very close affinity to Nudnik.”
Both Deitch and his wife, who live in the center of the historic city, are still active in animation production.
Synder agrees that Nudnik is Everyman, “He can’t quite get anything right, but he always keeps on going with that irrepressible smile.”
xxxx PROGRAM TIMES “Nudnik” airs on “Toon Heads” nightly through Friday at 9 on The Cartoon Network (channel 63 on Cox Cable Spokane).