Max Fleischer (born Majer Fleischer ; July 19, 1883 – September 25, 1972) was an American animator, inventor, film director and producer, and studio founder and owner. Born in Kraków, Fleischer immigrated to the United States where he became a pioneer in the development of the

animated cartoon Animation is a method by which image, still figures are manipulated to appear as Motion picture, moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent cel, celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited ...

and served as the head of

Fleischer Studios Fleischer Studios () is an American animation studio founded in 1929 by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer, who ran the pioneering company from its inception until its acquisition by Paramount Pictures, the parent company and the distributor of i ...

, which he co-founded with his younger brother

Dave Dave may refer to: Film, television, and theater * ''Dave'' (film), a 1993 film starring Kevin Kline and Sigourney Weaver * ''Dave'' (musical), a 2018 stage musical adaptation of the film * Dave (TV channel), a digital television channel in the ...

. He brought such comic characters as Koko the Clown,

Betty Boop Betty Boop is an animated cartoon character created by Max Fleischer, with help from animators including Grim Natwick.Pointer (2017) She originally appeared in the '' Talkartoon'' and ''Betty Boop'' film series, which were produced by Fleisch ...

Popeye Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar.Superman to the movie screen, and was responsible for several technological innovations, including the rotoscope, the " follow the bouncing ball" technique pioneered in the ''

Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes '' Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes'', ''Song Car-Tunes'', or (some sources erroneously say) ''Sound Car-Tunes'', is a series of short three-minute animated films produced by Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer between May 1924 and September 1927, pioneering t ...

'' films, and the "

stereoptical process While the history of animation began much earlier, this article is concerned with the development of the medium after the emergence of celluloid film in 1888, as produced for theatrical screenings, television and (non-interactive) home entertai ...

". Film director

Richard Fleischer Richard O. Fleischer (; December 8, 1916 – March 25, 2006) was an American film director whose career spanned more than four decades, beginning at the height of the Golden Age of Hollywood and lasting through the American New Wave. Though ...

was his son.

Early life

Majer Fleischer was born July 19, 1883, to a Jewish family in Kraków, (then part of

Austria-Hungary Austria-Hungary, often referred to as the Austro-Hungarian Empire,, the Dual Monarchy, or Austria, was a constitutional monarchy and great power in Central Europe between 1867 and 1918. It was formed with the Austro-Hungarian Compromise of 1 ...

Austrian Partition The Austrian Partition ( pl, zabór austriacki) comprise the former territories of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth acquired by the Habsburg monarchy during the Partitions of Poland in the late 18th century. The three partitions were conduc ...

). He was the second of six children of a tailor from

Dąbrowa Tarnowska Dąbrowa Tarnowska ( yi, Dombrov) is a town in Poland, in Lesser Poland Voivodeship, about north of Tarnów. It is the capital of Dąbrowa County. Before reorganization (in 1999) Dąbrowa Tarnowska was part of Tarnów Voivodeship (1975–1998) ...

, Aaron Fleischer, who later changed his name to William in the United States, and Malka "Amelia" Pałasz. His family immigrated to the United States in March 1887, settling in New York City, where he attended public school. During his early formative years, he enjoyed a middle-class lifestyle, the result of his father's success as an exclusive tailor to high society clients. This changed drastically after his father lost his business ten years later. His teens were spent in Brownsville, a poor Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn. He continued his education at evening high school. He received commercial art training at

Cooper Union The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art (Cooper Union) is a private college at Cooper Square in New York City. Peter Cooper founded the institution in 1859 after learning about the government-supported École Polytechnique i ...

and formal art instruction at the

Art Students League of New York The Art Students League of New York is an art school at 215 West 57th Street in Manhattan, New York City, New York. The League has historically been known for its broad appeal to both amateurs and professional artists. Although artists may stu ...

, studying under

George Bridgman George Brant Bridgman (November 5, 1864 – December 16, 1943) was a Canadian-American painter, writer, and teacher in the fields of anatomy and figure drawing. Bridgman taught anatomy for artists at the Art Students League of New York for some ...

. He also attended the Mechanics and Tradesman's School in midtown Manhattan. Fleischer began his career at '' The Brooklyn Daily Eagle''. Beginning as an errand boy, he advanced to photographer, photoengraver, and eventually, staff cartoonist. At first, he drew single-panel editorial cartoons, but then graduated to the full strips "Little Algie" and "S.K. Sposher, the Camera Fiend". These satirical strips reflected his life in Brownsville and his fascination with technology and photography, respectively—both displaying his sense of irony and fatalism. It was during this period he met newspaper cartoonist and early animator, John Randolph Bray, who would later give him his start in the animation field. On December 25, 1905, Fleischer married his childhood sweetheart, Ethel (Essie) Goldstein. On the recommendation of Bray, Fleischer was hired as a technical illustrator for the Electro-Light Engraving Company in Boston. In 1909 he moved to

Syracuse, New York Syracuse ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Onondaga County, New York, United States. It is the fifth-most populous city in the state of New York following New York City, Buffalo, Yonkers, and Rochester. At the 2020 census, the city's ...

, working as a catalog illustrator for the Crouse-Hinds Company, and a year later returned to New York as art editor for '' Popular Science'' magazine under editor Waldemar Kaempffert.

Career

The rotoscope

By 1914, the first commercially produced animated cartoons began to appear in movie theaters. They tended to be stiff and jerky. Fleischer devised an improvement in animation through a combined projector and easel for tracing images from a live-action film. This device, known as the rotoscope, enabled Fleischer to produce the first realistic animation since the initial works of Winsor McCay. Although his patent was granted in 1917, Max and his brothers Joe and Dave Fleischer made their first series of tests between 1914 and 1916.

First venture

The Pathé Film exchange offered Max his first opportunity as a producer due in part to the fact that Dave had been working there as a film cutter since 1914. Max chose a political satire of a hunting trip by Theodore Roosevelt. After several months of labor, the film was rejected, and Max was making the rounds again when he was reunited with John R. Bray at Paramount. Bray had a distribution contract with Paramount at the time and hired Max as production supervisor for his studio. With the outbreak of World War I, Max was sent to

Fort Sill Fort Sill is a United States Army post north of Lawton, Oklahoma, about 85 miles (136.8 km) southwest of Oklahoma City. It covers almost . The fort was first built during the Indian Wars. It is designated as a National Historic Landmark ...

, Oklahoma to produce the first Army training films on subjects that included ''Contour Map Reading'', ''Operating the Stokes Mortar'', ''Firing the Lewis Machine Gun'', and ''Submarine Mine Laying''. Following the

Armistice An armistice is a formal agreement of warring parties to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, as it may constitute only a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace. It is derived from the L ...

, Fleischer returned to Bray and the production of theatrical and educational films.

The Inkwell Studios

Fleischer produced his '' Out of the Inkwell'' films featuring "The Clown" character, which his brother Dave originated; he had worked as a sideshow clown at Coney Island. It was one of the later tests made from footage of Dave as a clown that interested Bray. Fleischer's initial series was first produced at the

Bray Studios Bray Productions was a pioneering American animation studio that produced several popular cartoons during the years of World War I and the early interwar era, becoming a springboard for several key animators of the 20th century, including the ...

and released as a monthly installment in the ''Bray-Goldwyn Pictograph Screen Magazine'' from 1919 to 1921. In addition to producing ''Out of the Inkwell'', Max's position at Bray was primarily production manager, and supervisor of several educational and technical films such as ''The Electric Bell'', ''All Aboard for the Moon'', and ''Hello, Mars''. And it was as production manager that Fleischer hired his first animator, Roland Crandall, who remained with him throughout the active years of Fleischer's studio. ''Out of the Inkwell'' featured the novelty of combining live action and animation and served as semi-documentaries with the appearance of Max Fleischer as the artist who dipped his pen into the ink bottle to produce the clown figure on his drawing board. While the technique of combining animation with live action was already established by others at the Bray Studio, it was Fleischer's clever use of it combined with Fleischer's realistic animation that made his series unique. In 1921, Max and Dave established Out of the Inkwell Films, Incorporated, and continued production of ''Out of the Inkwell'' through various states-rights distributors. "The Clown" had no name until 1924, when Dick Huemer came aboard after animating on the early ''

Mutt and Jeff ''Mutt and Jeff'' was a long-running and widely popular American newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Bud Fisher in 1907 about "two mismatched wikt:tinhorn, tinhorns". It is commonly regarded as the first daily comic strip. The concept ...

'' cartoons. He set the style for the series, redesigning "The Clown", and named him "Ko-Ko". Huemer created Ko-Ko's canine companion, known as Fitz, and moved the Fleischers away from their dependency on the Rotoscope for fluid animation, leaving it for special uses and reference points where compositing was involved. Because Max valued Huemer's work, he instructed Huemer to make just the key poses and have an assistant fill in the remaining drawings. Max assigned Art Davis as Huemer's assistant and this was the beginning of the animation position of "inbetweener", which was essentially another Fleischer "invention" that resulted in efficient production and was adopted by the entire industry by the 1930s. It was during this time that Max developed

rotoscoping Rotoscoping is an animation technique that animators use to trace over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce realistic action. Originally, animators projected photographed live-action movie images onto a glass panel and traced o ...

, a means of photographing live action film footage with animation cels for a composited image. This was an improvement over the method used by Bray where a series of 8" x 10" stills were made from motion picture film and used as backgrounds behind animation cels. The Rotograph technique went into more general use as "aerial image photography" and was a staple in animation and optical effects companies for making titles and various forms of matte composites. In addition to the theatrical comedy films, Fleischer produced technical and educational films including ''That Little Big Fellow'' and ''Now You're Talking'' for A.T.&T. In 1923, he made two 20-minute features explaining

Albert Einstein Albert Einstein ( ; ; 14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest and most influential physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory ...

's Theory of Relativity and

Charles Darwin Charles Robert Darwin ( ; 12 February 1809 – 19 April 1882) was an English naturalist, geologist, and biologist, widely known for his contributions to evolutionary biology. His proposition that all species of life have descended fr ...

's ''Evolution'' using animated special effects and live action.

Red Seal

In 1924, Fleischer partnered with Edwin Miles Fadiman,

Hugo Riesenfeld Hugo Riesenfeld (January 26, 1879 – September 10, 1939) was an Austrian-American composer. As a film director, he began to write his own orchestral compositions for silent films in 1917, and co-created modern production techniques where film ...

and

Lee de Forest Lee de Forest (August 26, 1873 – June 30, 1961) was an American inventor and a fundamentally important early pioneer in electronics. He invented the first electronic device for controlling current flow; the three-element "Audion" triode v ...

to form Red Seal Pictures Corporation, which owned 36 theaters on the East Coast, extending as far west as

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

. During this period, Fleischer invented the " Follow the Bouncing Ball" technique in his ''

'' series of animated sing-along shorts. In these films, the lyrics of a song appear on screen and theater patrons are encouraged to sing along with the characters. An animated ball bounces across the top of the lyrics to indicate when words should be sung. Of the 36 ''Song Car-Tunes'' 12 used the De Forest Phonofilm sound-on-film process, the first of which was ''

My Old Kentucky Home "My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night!" is a sentimental ballad written by Stephen Foster, probably composed in 1852. It was published in January 1853 by Firth, Pond, & Co. of New York. Foster was likely inspired by Harriet Beecher Stowe's anti-sla ...

'' in 1926. This preceded Walt Disney's ''

Steamboat Willie ''Steamboat Willie'' is a 1928 American animated short film directed by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. It was produced in black and white by Walt Disney Animation Studios, Walt Disney Studios and was released by Pat Powers, under the name of Celeb ...

'' (1928), which has been erroneously cited for decades as the first cartoon to synchronize sound with animation. The ''Song Car-Tunes'' series lasted until early 1927 and was interrupted by the bankruptcy of the Red Seal company—just five months before the start of the sound era. Alfred Weiss, owner of Artcraft Pictures, approached Fleischer with a contract to produce cartoons for Paramount. Due to legal complications of the bankruptcy, the ''Out of the Inkwell'' series was renamed ''The Inkwell Imps'' and ran from 1927 to 1929. This was the start of Fleischer's relationship with the huge Paramount organization, which lasted for the next 15 years. After a year, the Fleischer brothers started experiencing mismanagement under Weiss and left the company in late 1928. Inkwell Films, Inc. filed for bankruptcy in January 1929, and Fleischer formed Fleischer Studios, Inc. in March 1929.

Fleischer Studios, Inc.

In 1935, the Mother Goose-themed short film '' The Kids in the Shoe'' was released. Fleischer first set up operations at Carpenter-Goldman Laboratories in Queens with a small staff (see

). After eight months, his new company was solvent enough to move back to its former location at 1600 Broadway, where it remained until 1938. At Carpenter-Goldman, Fleischer began producing industrial films including '' Finding His Voice'' (1929), a demonstration film illustrating the Western Electric Variable Density sound recording and reproduction method. Despite the conflicts with Weiss, Fleischer managed to negotiate a new contract with Paramount to produce a revised version of the "Song Car-tunes", produced with sound and renamed'' Screen Songs'', beginning with ''

The Sidewalks of New York "The Sidewalks of New York" is a popular song about life in New York City during the 1890s. It was composed in 1894 by vaudeville actor and singer Charles B. Lawlor (June 2, 1852 – May 31, 1925) with lyrics by James W. Blake (September 23, ...

''. At this early stage in the sound era, Fleischer produced many technically advanced films that were the result of his continued research and development that perfected the post-production method of sound recording. Several of these devices provided visual cues for the musical conductor to follow. As dialogue and songs became major elements, more precise analysis of soundtracks was possible through other inventions from Fleischer such as "The Cue Meter".

Betty Boop

Max Fleischer's

character was born out of a cameo caricature in the early '' Talkartoon'', ''

Dizzy Dishes ''Dizzy Dishes'' is an animated cartoon created by Fleischer Studios in 1930, as part of the '' Talkartoon'' series. It is noted for being the first cartoon in which Betty Boop appears. Plot The cartoon begins with four anthropomorphic flapper c ...

'' (1930). Fashioned after popular singer Helen Kane, she originated as a hybrid poodle/canine figure and was such a sensation in the New York preview that Paramount encouraged Fleischer to develop her into a continuing character. While she originated under animator Myron "Grim" Natwick, she was transformed into a human female under

Seymour Kneitel Seymour Kneitel (March 16, 1908 – July 30, 1964) was an American animator, best known for his work with Fleischer Studios and its successor, Famous Studios. Early years Kneitel was born in New York City where he graduated from P.S. 10 in Manh ...

and

Berny Wolf Bernard "Berny" Wolf (July 18, 1911 – September 7, 2006) was an American animator and television producer. Wolf was born in New York City. His career in animation started in 1927, when he began work as an inker on Charles Mintz' Krazy Kat silen ...

and became Fleischer's most famous character. The "Betty Boop" series began in 1932 and became a big success for Fleischer. That same year, Helen Kane filed a lawsuit against Fleischer, Fleischer Studios, and Paramount claiming that the cartoons were a deliberate caricature of her, created unfair competition, and had ruined her career. The suit went to trial in 1934. An early-sound test film of an obscure Black performer, "Baby Esther" Jones, was shown as key evidence—disproving Kane's claims as originator of the singing style. Judge Edward J. McGoldrick ruled, "The plaintiff has failed to sustain either cause of action by proof of sufficient probative force." In his opinion, the "baby" technique of singing did not originate with Kane.'' The Mansfield News'', May 5, 1934.

Popeye the Sailor

Fleischer's greatest business decision came with his licensing of the

comic strip A comic strip is a sequence of drawings, often cartoons, arranged in interrelated panels to display brief humor or form a narrative, often serialized, with text in balloons and captions. Traditionally, throughout the 20th and into the 21st ...

character Popeye the Sailor, who was introduced to audiences in the Betty Boop cartoon short, '' Popeye the Sailor'' (1933). Popeye became one of the most successful screen adaptations of a comic strip in cinema history. Much of this success was due to the perfect match of the Fleischer Studio style combined with its unique use of music. By the late 1930s, a survey indicated that Popeye had eclipsed Mickey Mouse in popularity, challenging Disney's preeminence in the market.

Paramount

During its zenith by the mid-1930s, Fleischer Studios was producing four series, ''

'', ''

Popeye Popeye the Sailor Man is a fictional cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar.Screen Songs'', and '' Color Classics'', resulting in 52 releases each year. From the very beginning, Fleischer's business relationship with Paramount was a joint financial and distribution arrangement, making his studio a service company supplying products for the company's theaters. During the Great Depression, Paramount went through four bankruptcy reorganizations, which affected their operational expenses. As a founding member of the

Society of Motion Picture Engineers The Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) (, rarely ), founded in 1916 as the Society of Motion Picture Engineers or SMPE, is a global professional association of engineers, technologists, and executives working in the ...

, Fleischer was aware of the technical advancements of the industry, particularly in the development of color cinematography. Due to Paramount's financial restructuring, he was unable to acquire the three-color Technicolor process from the start. This created the opportunity for Walt Disney, who was then a small fledgling producer, to acquire a four-year exclusivity. With this, he created a new market for color cartoons beginning with ''

Flowers and Trees ''Flowers and Trees'' is a 1932 ''Silly Symphonies'' cartoon produced by Walt Disney, directed by Burt Gillett, and released to theatres by United Artists on July 30, 1932. It was the first commercially released film to be produced in the full-c ...

'' (1932). In 1934 Paramount approved color production for Fleischer, but he was left with the limited two-color processes of

Cinecolor Cinecolor was an early subtractive color-model two-color motion picture process that was based upon the Prizma system of the 1910s and 1920s and the Multicolor system of the late 1920s and the 1930s. It was developed by William T. Crispinel and ...

(red and blue) and Two-Color Technicolor (red and green) for the first year of his '' Color Classics''. The first entry, ''

Poor Cinderella ''Poor Cinderella'' (original title as ''Betty Boop in Poor Cinderella'') is a 1934 Fleischer Studios animated short film featuring Betty Boop. ''Poor Cinderella'' was Fleischer Studios' first color film, and the only appearance of Betty Boop in ...

'' (1934) was made in the two-emulsion/two-color Cinecolor Process and starred Betty Boop in her only color appearance. By 1936, Disney's exclusivity had expired, and Fleischer had the benefit of the three-color Technicolor Process beginning with '' Somewhere in Dreamland''. These color cartoons were often augmented with Fleischer's patented three-dimensional effects promoted as the "Stereoptical Process", a precursor to Disney's Multiplane animation. This technique used 3-D model sets replacing flat pan backgrounds, with the animation cels photographed in front. This technique was used to the greatest degree in the two-reel ''Popeye Features'' '' Popeye the Sailor Meets Sinbad the Sailor'' (1936) and '' Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba's Forty Thieves'' (1937). These double-length cartoons demonstrated Fleischer's interest in animated feature films. While Fleischer petitioned for this for three years, it was not until the New York opening at Radio City of Disney's '' Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs'' (February 1938) that Paramount executives realized the value of animated features and ordered one for a 1939 Christmas release.

Decline

The popularity of the Popeye cartoons created a demand for more. To meet Paramount's demands, the studio was challenged with rapid expansion, production speed-ups, and crowded working conditions. Finally, in May 1937, Fleischer Studios was affected by a five-month strike, resulting in a boycott that kept the studio's releases off theater screens until November. Having a paternal attitude towards his employees, Max took it personally, as if he had been betrayed, and thus developed an ulcer. Following the strike, Max and Dave Fleischer decided to move the studio for more space and to escape further labor agitation. In March 1938, Paramount approved Max's proposal to produce a feature just when he was preparing to move the studio from New York City to Miami, Florida. Once in Miami relations between Max and Dave began deteriorating, beginning with the pressures to deliver their first feature, complicated further by Dave's adulterous affair with his secretary, Mae Schwartz. Jonathan Swift's classic novel '' Gulliver's Travels'' was a favorite of Max's and was pressed into production. Fleischer and Paramount originally budgeted the film '' Gulliver's Travels'' at $500,000—the same miscalculation made by Disney with ''Snow White''. The final cost for ''Gulliver's Travels'' was three times budget, or $1.5 million. It played limited engagements in only 30 theaters during the 1939 Christmas season, but grossed more than $3 million, giving Paramount a profit of $1.5 million before going into foreign release. But Fleischer Studios was penalized $350,000 for going over budget, and the contract did not allow Max and Fleischer Studios participation in the foreign earnings. This was the beginning of the financial difficulties of Fleischer Studios with reduced royalties due to this debt to Paramount. In 1940, Max was relegated to business affairs and continued technical development. His efforts resulted in a reflex camera viewfinder and line transfer methods to replace the time-consuming and tedious process of cel inking. That same year Fleischer and Paramount experienced lost revenues due to the failure of the new series '' Gabby'', '' Animated Antics'', and '' Stone Age'', all launched under the leadership of Dave. After Republic Studios allegedly failed to develop Superman as a live-action serial, Max acquired the license that fall and initiated development. The cost for the '' Superman'' series has been grossly overstated for decades, based on Dave Fleischer's 1968 interview. The actual figure stated in Fleischer's contract was in the $30,000 range, twice the cost of a Popeye cartoon. ''Superman'' was a reflection of the type of "serious" cartoons that were not being made by rival studios. Their science fiction/fantasy elements appealed to Max's interests, finally leading the studio into maturity and relevance for the 1940s. The early returns on ''Gulliver'' prompted Paramount President, Barney Balaban, to order a second feature for their 1941 Christmas release. This second feature, ''

Mr. Bug Goes to Town ''Mr. Bug Goes to Town'' (also known as ''Hoppity Goes to Town'' and ''Bugville'') is a 1941 American animated Technicolor feature film produced by Fleischer Studios, previewed by Paramount Pictures on December 5, 1941, and released in California ...

'', was unique, having a contemporary setting. It was technically superior to ''Gulliver's Travels''. Paramount had high hopes for its Christmas 1941 release, which was well-received by critics during its December 5 preview. However, the exhibitors rejected it, fearing that it would not do business, and with the bombing of Pearl Harbor two days after the preview, the original Christmas release was cancelled. With the cancellation of the release of ''Mr. Bug Goes to Town'', Max was called to a meeting with Balaban in New York, where Max was asked for his resignation. Dave had resigned the month before, following the completion of post-production on the film. Paramount finished out the remaining five months of the 1941 Fleischer contract with the absence of both Max and Dave Fleischer, and the name change to Famous Studios became official on May 27, 1942. Paramount installed new management, among them Max's son-in-law,

Later career

Unable to form a studio due to the demand for military training films, Fleischer was brought in as head of the Animation Department for the industrial film company, The Jam Handy Organization in Detroit, Michigan. While there he supervised the technical and cartoon animation departments, producing training films for the Army and Navy. Fleischer was also involved with top-secret research and development for the war effort including an aircraft bomber sighting system. In 1944, he published '' Noah's Shoes'', a metaphoric account of the building and loss of his studio, casting himself as Noah. Following the war, he supervised the production of the animated adaptation of ''

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer is a fictional reindeer created by Robert L. May. Rudolph is usually depicted as the ninth and youngest of Santa Claus's reindeer, using his luminous red nose to lead the reindeer team and guide Santa's sleigh on ...

'' (1948), sponsored by

Montgomery Ward Montgomery Ward is the name of two successive U.S. retail corporations. The original Montgomery Ward & Co. was a world-pioneering mail-order business and later also a leading department store chain that operated between 1872 and 2001. The curre ...

. Fleischer left Handy in 1953 and returned as Production Manager for the

in New York, where he developed an educational television pilot about unusual birds and animals titled, '' Imagine That!'' In 1954, Max's son,

, was directing ''

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas'' (french: Vingt mille lieues sous les mers) is a classic science fiction adventure novel by French writer Jules Verne. The novel was originally serialized from March 1869 through June 1870 in Pierre-Jul ...

'' for Walt Disney. This brought about the honorary luncheon that united Max with his former competitor and reunited him with several former Fleischer animators who were then employed by Disney. This meeting of the former rivals seemed cordial, and Max remarked that he was very happy making educational films at this point in his career. However, in his collection of memoirs entitled ''Just Tell Me When to Cry'', Richard relates how, at the mere mention of Disney's name, Max would mutter, "that son-of-a-bitch". Fleischer won a lawsuit against Paramount in 1955 over the removal of his name from the credits of his films. While Fleischer had issues over the breach of contract, he had avoided suing for a decade to protect his son-in-law, Seymour Kneitel, who was a lead director at Paramount's Famous Studios. In 1958, Fleischer revived Out of the Inkwell Films, Inc. and partnered with his former animator Hal Seeger, to produce 100 color '' Out of the Inkwell'' (1960–1961) cartoons for television. Actor Larry Storch performed the voices for Koko the Clown and supporting characters Kokonut and Mean Moe. While Max appeared in the un-aired pilot, he became too ill to appear in the series, and, in poor health, he spent the rest of his life attempting to regain ownership of

. Fleischer and wife Essie moved to the Motion Picture Country House in 1967. Fleischer died from arterial sclerosis of the brain on September 25, 1972, two months after his 89th birthday, and in announcing his passing the press labeled him "dean of animated cartoons". His death preceded the reclaiming of his star character, Betty Boop, and a national retrospective. The anthology film '' The Betty Boop Scandals of 1974'' started the Fleischer Renaissance with new 35mm prints of a selection of the best Fleischer cartoons made between 1928 and 1934. This was followed by '' The Popeye Follies''. These special theatrical programs generated interest in Max Fleischer as the alternative to Walt Disney, spawning a new wave of film research devoted to an expanded interest in animation beyond trivial entertainment.

References

;Notes ;Citations

Bibliography

* * * * * * * *

External links

* *
Freely downloadable Max Fleischer cartoons

The history of the Fleischer's ''Popeye'' seriesMax Fleischer
at the

TCM Movie Database Turner Classic Movies (TCM) is an American movie-oriented pay-TV network owned by Warner Bros. Discovery. Launched in 1994, Turner Classic Movies is headquartered at Turner's Techwood broadcasting campus in the Midtown business district of At ...

*
Max Fleischer Biography

Out of the Inkwell

''Ko-Ko Song Car Tunes''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Fleischer, Max 1883 births 1972 deaths Fleischer family American animators Austro-Hungarian emigrants to the United States American people of Austrian-Jewish descent American people of Polish-Jewish descent Artists from New York City American animated film directors American animated film producers American surrealist artists Surrealist filmmakers Jewish American artists Film directors from New York City Film producers from New York (state) 20th-century American inventors Fleischer Studios people Popeye Bray Productions people