Max Fleischer

Biography

Max Fleischer was an American animator, inventor, and film producer from Krakow. As an inventor, Fleischer is primarily known for inventing the rotoscope, an animation technique that allowed animators to draw realistic images and movements, based on live-action images. He later co-founded the short-lived animation studio Fleischer Studios (1929-1942), and served as the studio head for its entire history. The studio was primarily known for creating short film featuring the animated characters Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, and Bimbo the Dog. It also introduced the first animated adaptations of both Popeye and Superman. Fleischer lost control over his studio to Paramount Pictures, though he would continue to work in animation for decades. In 1883, Fleischer was born to a Jewish family in Krakow, Austria-Hungary. His father was the tailor Aaron Fleischer, and his mother was the housewife Malka "Amelia" Palasz. The Fleischer family emigrated to the United States in 1887, settling in New York City. Aaron became an exclusive tailor to high society clients, and the family enjoyed a middle-class life for about a decade. Aaron lost control over his tailor shop in the late 1890s, forcing the family to move to an impoverished section of Brooklyn. Fleischer received commercial art training at the Cooper Union, a private college located at Cooper Square in New York City. He received formal art training at the Art Students League of New York. His teacher there was the Canadian painter George Bridgman (1864-1943). Fleischer also received further education at "Mechanics and Tradesman's School". After completing his education, Fleischer was hired as an errand boy by the newspaper "The Brooklyn Daily Eagle" (1841-1955, 1960-1963). He remained there for years, working variously as a photographer, a photoengraver, and a staff cartoonist. He initially drew only single-panel editorial cartoons. He later created the satirical comic strips "Little Algie" and "S.K. Sposher, the Camera Fiend". Fleischer left the newspaper c. 1905, in order to work as a technical illustrator for the Electro-Light Engraving Company in Boston. In 1909, he was hired as a catalog illustrator for the Crouse-Hinds Company. In 1910, he was hired as an art editor by the magazine "Popular Science". By 1914, the first commercially produced animated short films appeared in movie theaters. The characters; movements were generally "stiff and jerky", and so Fleischer started working on a method to trace images from a live-action film. He worked on his rotoscope from 1914 to 1916, and was granted a patent for the invention in 1917. This allowed the production of realistic animation. Fleischer partnered up with his brother Dave Fleischer, to produce the animated film series "Out of the Inkwell" (1918-1929). It included 62 animated films, mostly featuring Koko the Clown as the protagonist. The character was inspired by Dave's previous job as a clown at Coney Island. The selling point of the series were the on-screen interactions between live-action artists and their pen and ink creations. The Fleischer brothers were eventually able to hire the experienced animator Dick Huemer, who produced more fluid animation for their films. In 1924, Fleischer and a number of partners co-founded the film company Red Seal Pictures Corporation, which owned 36 theaters on the East Coast of the United States. One of Fleischer's partners was the inventor Lee de Forest (1873-1961). De Forest was working on a method to produce sound-on-film recordings for films. Fleischer gained access to de Forest's Phonofilm process, and went to work in creating animated short films with sound. The first of them was "My Old Kentucky Home" (1926), which also featured the first use of lip-synch in animation. Fleischer eventually worked on 19 early sound films, but the Red Seal went bankrupt in 1927. From 1927 to 1929, the Fleischer brothers had a brief business partnership with film producer Alfred Weiss. They agreed to produce animated short films for Paramount Pictures, which would serve as their distributor. The partnership dissolved due to the mismanagement of Weiss, but the Fleischer brothers would maintain a working relationship with Paramount for the following 15 years. In 1929, Fleischer co-founded the Fleischer studios. The company's staff initially set up operations at the Carpenter-Goldman Laboratories in Queens. Only 8 months later, they moved to a new location in Broadway. This would remain their main headquarters until 1938.Fleischer and his staff started work on the film series "Screen Songs" (1929-1938). It featured sing-along animated shorts, teaching the lyrics of various songs to the audience. The short films featured performances by popular musicians of the 1930s, such as Lillian Roth, Ethel Merman, and Cab Calloway. The short film "Dizzy Dishes" (1930) introduced the character of Betty Boop, a caricature of a Jazz Age flapper. She quickly became a recurring character, and served initially as an imitation of real-life singer Helen Kane (1904-1966). Betty was a hit with the audience, and she was granted her own film series in 1932. She starred in 90 films between 1932 and 1939, and had guest-star roles in other 36 films between 1930 and 1933. She was the most popular character of the Fleischer Studios, regarded as the first "sex symbol" on the animated screen. In late 1932, Fleischer licensed the rights to the comic strip character Popeye the Sailor. The character was granted a film series of his own, appearing in 109 short films between 1933 and 1942. The series introduced animated adaptation of several comic strip characters from the series "Thimble Theatre" (1919-1994), such as the damsel-in-distress Olive Oyl, the muscular bully Bluto, and the gluttonous scam artist J. Wellington Wimpy. The characters became household names, with Popeye himself said to surpass Mickey Mouse in popularity by the end of the 1930s. Due to a business deal, the Fleischer Studios acquired much of its funding from a long-term partnership with Paramount Pictures. At times when Paramount itself was facing financial problems, the studio found itself suffering from a lack of funding. Fleischer was initially unable to secure rights to the innovative three-color Technicolor process in 1932. The studio introduced its first color cartoons in 1934, but had to use the limited two-color processes of Cinecolor (red and blue) and Two-Color Technicolor (red and green). They introduced their first film in three-color Technicolor in 1936. By that point, the rival studio Walt Disney Animation Studios was considered to be more innovative in its uses of color animation. In the mid-1930s, Fleischer patented the use of three-dimensional effects in animation. He promoted these under the name the "Stereoptical Process". The process was used to great effect in the featurettes "Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor" (1936) and "Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves" (1937). Max Fleischer started petitioning Paramount to fund an animated feature film, but their executives were doubtful of its commercial value. Following the box office success of the animated feature film "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), Fleischer received sufficient funding to work on his own feature film. In 1938, the Fleischer Studios moved its headquarters to Miami, Florida. The studio staff started working on "Gulliver's Travels" (1939), the second American animated feature film to be produced. During its production, the personal relationship between brothers and business partners Max and Dave Fleischer deteriorated. Max reportedly disapproved of Dave's love life, and attempted to end one of Dave's romantic relationships. The film was eventually completed and grossed more than $3 million dollars at the American box office. To Max Fleischer's disappointment, the Fleischer Studios found itself in debt due to their first feature film. Paramount received a lion's share of the profits from the American box office, and the animation studio had no rights to any profits from the film's releases in foreign markets. In addition, Paramount penalized the animation studio with the debt of 350,000 dollars. The film had exceeded its original budget, and this violated a contract agreement with Paramount. The Fleischer Studios were now indebted to their distributor. In 1940, Fleischer Studios introduced three new animated series: "Gabby", "Animated Antics", and "Stone Age Cartoons". "Gabby" was a spin-off from "Gulliver's Travels" , featuring the adventures of the film's town crier. "Animated Antics" was an anthology series, often featuring supporting characters from "Gulliver's Travels". "Stone Age Cartoons" featured a surprisingly modern take on Stone Age life, and has been cited as a precursor to "The Flintstones". All three series were regarded as commercial failures, generating little interest from exhibitors. In search for a more viable series, Fleischer licensed to the superhero character Superman. The studio created a short-lived series for the character, releasing 9 short films between 1941 and 1942. It was the character's first animated adaptation, and featured more technically complex elements than most of its contemporaries in animation. Each episode had a budget of about 50,000 dollars, twice the budget of the typical Popeye cartoon in the same period. Frustrated that they had to animate the character leaping from place to place (as in the comics), the Fleischer brothers came up with the idea that Superman could fly on his own. The high cost of the series turned out to be a problem, but the series was popular. Meanwhile, the Fleischer brothers were working on their second animated feature, at the request of Paramount. The film in question was "Mr. Bug Goes to Town", a tale of anthropomorphic insects. It was scheduled for release in early December 1941, but its release was postponed for months due to the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Theater owners showed only a limited interest in the film, and it turned out to be a box office bomb. With the Fleischer Studios heavily in debt to Paramount and Dave Fleischer having already resigned, Paramount decided to claim ownership over the animation studio and its characters. Max Fleischer was forced to resign, while the studio was re-organized into the Paramount subsidiary Famous Studios (1942-1967). The most notable character of the new studio was Casper the Friendly Ghost. Fleischer was briefly out of work. He subsequently was hired as the head of the animation department for "The Jam Handy Organization", a Detroit-based company owned by film producer (1886-1983). Fleischer primarily worked on animated training films for the Army and Navy during World War II. He continued working for Handy until 1953. His most notable film for this entire period was "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" (1948), the first animated adaptation of a 1939 Christmas story by Robert L. May. Fleischer personally directed the film. In 1953, Fleischer was hired as a production manager by Brayco. It was a company which primarily produced filmstrips from the late 1960s to its closing in 1963. It had formed as a corporate successor to the animation studio Bray Productions (1912-1928), where Fleischer had briefly worked in his early career. In 1955, Fleischer won a lawsuit against Paramount Pictures. They had the rights to re-release most of his former films, but the court decided that they did not have the right to remove Fleischer's name from the film credits. In 1958, Fleischer and his new partner Hal Seeger (1917-2005) founded the minor animation studio "Out of the Inkwell Films". They had the intention to revive "Out of the Inkwell" as a television series. They eventually produced 100 color episodes of the new series, released from 1960 to 1961. Due to his failing health, Fleischer decided against appearing in person in the live-action segments. For most of the 1960s, Fleischer made efforts to reclaim ownership over Betty Boop, his most popular character. Paramount had sold its rights to the character in 1958, but the courts were unable to decide which person or company held the exclusive rights to the character. In 1967, Fleischer and his wife Essie retired to the Motion Picture Country House, a retirement community for film industry people. The retirement community was located at the southwest end of the San Fernando Valley, and had been operational since 1942. In September 1942, Fleischer died there, due to "arterial sclerosis of the brain". He was 89-years-old at the time of his death, having survived several of his former partners and employees. Fleischer's animated works eventually found a new audience in animation fans who regard them as an alternative to Walt Disney's works, and who often find them to be more appealing to older audiences. Works of the Fleischer Studios have also been popular with animation historians, which regard them highly for their innovations. Fleischer remains one of the most famous animated film producers of the 20th century, but his reputation mostly endures due to the cult following of some of his characters.