Oscar-nominated Czech-American Writer, Director and Animator Paul Fierlinger Dies at 89

We are sad to hear that acclaimed indie writer, director and animator Paul Fierlinger has passed away. He died on Friday (April 4) at his home in Penn Wynne, PA, age 89.

The Czech-American director was best known for his 1979 Oscar-nominated short, It’s So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House, his memorable Sesame Street spots, the 2001 Peabody Award-winning PBS special Still Life with Animated Dog and the acclaimed 2009 feature that he co-wrote and co-directed with his wife Sandra Fierlinger, My Dog Tulip (based on J.R. Ackerley’s popular book). [Read our interview with them here.]

Fierlinger was born on March 15, 1936 in Ashiya, Japan (nee Pavel Fierlinger). His father Jan was a Czechoslovak diplomat, and his uncle Zdenek Fierliinger was a key figure in the Czechoslovak communist regime from 1948 until 1968. Paul created his first animated film when he was only 12 by shooting drawings from his flipbook with a 16 mm Bolex Camera.

In the late ’50, he became an independent animation producer in Czechoslovakia and was able to privately produce animated films from his home studio in Prague. He created approximately 200 films, from 10-second station breaks to 10-minute animated shorts. In 1971, he formed AR&T Associates in the U.S. to produce animated segments for ABC’s Harry Reasoner specials and PBS’s Sesame Street (including the popular Teeny Little Super Guy series), network ID for TVPaint and Nickelodeon and other clients. He produced over 7000 shorts and commercials, including the Oscar-nominated It’s So Nice to Have a Wolf Around the House, and the Ottawa Prize-winning 1989 film And Then I’ll Stop. His work also appeared on The Electric Company, Square One TV, 3-2-1 Contact and Shining Time Station.

In the 1990s, he met and married his frequent collaborator Sandra Schuette, a fine-arts painter and printmaker at the Boston Museum of Art School. Together, they developed Amby & Dexter: The Way of Silent, a series of interstitials for Nickelodeon, a Sesame Street series tilted Alice Kadeezenberry, and a children’s song collection titled Playtime for the Children’s Book of the Month Club. He also made Drawn from Memory, a one-hour autobiography for PBS’ American Playhouse anthology series, and was awarded a PEW Fellowship in the Arts in 1997. In 2001, his animated PBS special Still Life with Animated Dogs premiered on public broadcaster, and won the Peabody Award as well as the first prize at the Intl. Festival of Animation in Zagreb the following year the Peabody Award in April 2001. Around the same time he made Drawn from Life, a series about real women and their lives for the Oxygen network, which went on to win the grand prize at the 2000 Ottawa Intl. Animation Festival.

Paul and Sandra Fierlinger’s  independent 2D-animated feature film My Life with Tulip (created with TVPaint) received much acclaim when it arrived on the festival circuit in 2009. Based on the popular memoir of BBC editor and novelist J.R. Ackerley, it charted the author’s 15-year relationship with his beloved German Shepherd companion. New Yorker Films released it in 2010. In 2015, they followed it up with another hand-crafted 2D-animated feature, titled Slocum at Sea with Himself, a two-hour about the legendary voyager Joshua Slocum who circumnavigated the globe in a small sailboat.

His friend, animator Chris Sullivan shared the news of his passing on Facebook on Sunday. He wrote, “I have been knowing this day would come, though almost indestructible, Paul Fierlinger has left his mortal coil. He and Sandra’s body of work is important and lasting, from One more and then I’ll stop, to A Room Near By, My Dog Tulip, and Slokum….He has many filmmaking friends, and people who love him, whether he likes it or not. Let us all take up his baton, and make works we care about… warm thoughts from Chris.”