Max Fleischer’s Animation Studio

When we think of animated cartoons, Walt Disney is the first name that may come to mind, certainly not Max Fleischer. But there was a time when Fleischer was as famous as Disney, maybe even more so. Max Fleischer has been called “the unsung hero of animation” for his artistic and technical innovations in cinema.

Fleischer’s cartoons would be much better known today if… Paramount Pictures hadn’t done some questionable dealing, or brothers Max and Dave Fleischer had not been feuding, or had received better legal advice, or had a better understanding of intellectual property rights. Otherwise their heirs today might still have the film rights to Fleischer Studios’ best-known creation: Betty Boop. In August 2020, Betty celebrated her 90th birthday, but she has barely aged a day. She’s still the sassy, sexy gal Max invented in the 1930s. But she actually started out as a poodle. Yes, you read that right. A poodle.

We’ll get back to Betty and all that, but first, who was Max Fleischer?

Maximilian “Max” Fleischer (1883-1972) was a Jewish Austrian-American cartoon animator, inventor, film director, and producer. In 1921, with his younger brother Dave (1894-1979), he co-founded the animation studio Out of the Inkwell Films in New York City (1921-1929). The firm was renamed Fleischer Studios in 1929 and lasted until May 1941. That was when the Paramount Pictures corporation suddenly and unexpectedly terminated its agreement with the Fleischers, outmaneuvered them legally, and forced them to surrender all rights to their copyrights, trademarks, and patents. The end result was bankruptcy and the end of the Fleischer Studios (renamed Famous Studios under Paramount) – until its rebirth on a limited scale in the 1950s, and again in the 1970s.

In its prime, Fleischer Studios was famous for Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, Superman, and other popular animated characters. Of those, only Koko and Betty Boop were actually created by the studio. Max Fleischer was also an innovator and inventor responsible for a number of cinematic technological advances, including the rotoscope (still used today), the “bouncing ball” song films, and a 3D stereo-optical process for creating more realistic animated films. Max Fleischer’s son Richard, born in 1916, became a noted Hollywood film director.

Majer Fleischer, later Max Fleischer, was born to a Jewish family on July 19, 1883 in Kraków, then part of the Austrian-Hungarian province of Austrian Poland (aka Galicia), not in Vienna, Austria, as some online bios erroneously claim.[1] His parents were the tailor Aaron Wolf Fleischer (later Wilhelm, then William) and Malka “Amelia” Palasz. (The German surname Fleischer means “butcher” in English.) In 1887, when he was just four years old, Max, his mother and his older brother Charlie arrived in the United States aboard the SS Rotterdam. His father had already crossed the Atlantic in August 1886 and had established himself in New York City as a tailor. (Wilhelm’s brother Leon, also a tailor, arrived in 1888.) The family settled in New York City, where Max and his siblings attended public school. The Fleischers eventually added four more children to their brood in America.

Galicia and Billy Wilder The great Hollywood director Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Some Like It Hot) was also a Jew from Galicia. Wilder often complained about being labeled German rather than Austrian, although he did work as a filmmaker in Berlin before going to California.

The Early Days in Brooklyn

At first Max and his family enjoyed a good middle-class lifestyle in their new homeland. As a tailor, William Fleischer specialized in women’s riding habits, and had a shop – complete with a stuffed horse – in Manhattan catering to some of New York’s elites. But after about a decade of success as a tailor to prosperous clients, William was hit by a double whammy. First, right after being invited to move his business to the B. Altman’s department store (around 1892), he was suddenly fired in order to basically steal his enterprise – something that would later also happen to his son Max.

Second, times were changing. Garments were now being mass produced at prices far below the custom work that William provided. Following the department store debacle, he had a difficult time trying to reestablish himself, and soon their worsening financial situation forced the family to move to the far less prosperous Jewish neighborhood of Brownsville in Brooklyn.

Max’s Education
Upon arrival in New York City, Charles and Max were only six and five years old respectively, young enough to quickly master English and lose their Austrian-German accents. They and their siblings attended public school. When Max was in his teens, he continued his education despite financial hardship. Although he never graduated from high school, Max demonstrated a talent for drawing. He studied commercial art at Cooper Union and had formal art instruction at the Art Students League of New York. He also attended the Mechanics and Tradesman’s School in midtown Manhattan. His younger US-born brother Dave also studied at Cooper Union.

In 1900 Max started out as an errand boy at The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, soon advancing through the ranks. After a stint as a photographer and photoengraver, he became a staff cartoonist. At first he drew editorial cartoons, but soon moved on to full cartoon strips that reflected his rough-and-tumble life in Brownsville and his interest in technical and mechanical devices. It was at this time he met newspaper cartoonist and early animator, John Randolph Bray, who would give him his start in animation, and with whom he later would often work directly or indirectly.

In December 1905, Fleischer married his childhood sweetheart, Ethel (Essie) Goldstein. Bray helped him get a job as a technical illustrator for the Electro-Light Engraving Company in Boston. Later, after working in Syracuse, New York as a catalog illustrator, in 1910 he returned to New York City as art editor for Popular Science magazine.

Naturalized Citizens Not one of the many Max Fleischer biographies (books or online) I have found mentions the fact that the cartoonist, who was born in Galicia, Austria-Hungary and arrived in New York Harbor in 1887, became a naturalized US citizen on 20 July 1948. For some reason Max waited 61 years following his arrival in America as a young boy to become a US citizen. (He also lied about his age on the 1948 naturalization card, stating his age as 63, when he was in fact 65 years old in 1948.) His father, William Fleischer, did not wait so long. He arrived in New York City on 15 August 1886, but William completed his naturalization on 29 December 1898, only 12 years and four months after immigrating to the United States. Max’s one-year-older brother Charles Fleischer, also born in Galicia, probably also went through the naturalization process, but we have been unable to find any official documents for that. See a copy of the naturalization card for Max Fleischer below.

Dave Fleischer
The first all-American Fleischer, Joe, was born in New York 1889. Lou Fleischer entered the world in 1891. David Fleischer, the brother who would later become Max’s studio business partner, was born in 1894. Dave was almost the opposite of Max in many ways, and that probably contributed to their later falling out. Dave was gregarious, street-wise, and a poor student. Unlike Max, Dave spoke English with a strong New York accent and poor grammar. Dave also liked to bet on the horses. In fact, it was his winnings in a race bet that allowed him to match the $800 Max put up to start their new Out of the Inkwell studio in 1921, after Max left the John Bray operation. (Ethel, the family’s only daughter, was born in 1898. A sixth brother, Saul, was born in 1900, but died at age two of typhoid fever.)

The Birth of an Animation Studio

While working at The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper, Max had met newspaper cartoonist and early animator, John R. Bray, who would later give him his start in the animation field. After getting film work with the Pathé Exchange, where his brother Dave was working as a film cutter, Max’s film about Theodore Roosevelt was rejected. Looking for another job, Fleischer was reunited with John Bray, now at Paramount, in 1914. Bray hired Fleischer as a production supervisor. When World War I broke out, Max was sent to Fort Sill, Oklahoma to produce Army training films.

Out of the Inkwell Films, Incorporated (1921)
Following the war, in 1918, Fleischer began working on his Out of the Inkwell film series for the Bray Studio featuring “The Clown,” a character his brother Dave had developed while working as a sideshow clown at Coney Island. The films used a mix of live action and animated characters, a process made possible by an invention Max and his brothers had begun testing in 1914, and Max had patented in 1917: the rotoscope.

Although mixing live action and animated figures was not entirely new, Max’s rotoscope invention made the films less artificial and jerky. The Bray Studio “Inkwell” film series ran from 1918 until 1921, when the Max and Dave Fleischer established their own studio: Inkwell Films, Incorporated. In 1923 the nameless clown was dubbed Ko-Ko (later Koko). The Inkwell series usually featured live action in which Max would draw a character on paper, or would open an inkwell, allowing the characters to pop out into “reality.” The Fleischer-produced series continued until 1929. Paramount renamed the series The Inkwell Imps in 1927. The entire series (1918-1929) consisted of 118 films. Koko the Clown did not reappear until 1931, when he became a pal of Bimbo and Betty Boop.

Working with animator Dick Huemer of Mutt and Jeff fame, the Fleischers redesigned the clown and developed the concept of the “inbetweener.” Not wanting to waste the talents of an artist like Huemer, the studio devised the process of having the key art drawn by Huemer and then using assistant artists, including women, to fill in the frames in-between the key poses. By the 1930s the technique became standard in the industry, yet another Max Fleischer innovation.

The Inkwell studio was enjoying greater success and had a growing staff. On 30 November 1923, the studio moved to larger quarters on the sixth floor of the Studebaker Building at 1600 Broadway, a more prestigious location only a block north of the Paramount Building at Broadway and 7th Avenue.

In 1924, Max and several partners formed the Red Seal Pictures Corporation which had 36 movie theaters on the East Coast. At this time Max invented a precursor to karaoke: “Follow the Bouncing Ball” for his “Koko Song Car-Tunes” series of animated sing-along shorts. A dozen of these films (out of 36) used the De Forest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. The first of these animated sound films was My Old Kentucky Home in 1926, preceding Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie by two years. Disney’s 1928 film has been erroneously cited for decades as the first cartoon to synchronize sound with animation, when it was in fact Fleischer’s bouncing ball film.

Disney and Fleischer would be fierce rivals for many years. In the end, Walt Disney would come out on top, but Max Fleischer could still claim several animation firsts. Later, in the 1930s, Popeye the Sailor (created by E.C. Segar) would become the Fleischer Studio’s most popular animated series, surpassing even the success of Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse cartoons.

It was in part the Red Seal deal that led to the later downfall of Max, Dave, and Inkwell. Two years after signing that deal, Red Seal was overextended and bankrupt. In 1926, the film lab demanded up-front payment of $218,000 in unpaid bills, holding the studio’s negatives as collateral. It was far more than Max and Dave could cover. By October 1926 Red Seal and Inkwell were headed for receivership.

Suddenly out of nowhere, as if in answer to a prayer, an angel investor named Alfred J. Weiss popped up. Weiss offered Max and Dave a Paramount contract with a deal they felt they could not refuse. Weiss would become the President of Red Seal and Inkwell, with Max hired as Vice-President and Dave as Art Director, each earning $200 per week and scheduled increases. The Paramount part of the arrangement provided financing and distribution. Max and Dave signed the deal in January 1927. In the process the Fleischer brothers lost a large degree of control over their own company, but they had little choice in the face of bankruptcy. Red Seal ceased to exist and Weiss got ownership of the films held up by the lab.

There were other changes, but the “angel” Weiss turned out to be a devil. After some shady contract alterations by Weiss, Max and Dave saw no future with him. They both left their own studio in 1928.

But as fate would have it, a lucky break allowed them to continue providing Paramount with cartoons. The Inkwell Imps were out of their hands because of Weiss, but a replacement fell into their laps. Charles Mintz, the creator of the successful Krazy Kat cartoon series, left Paramount for Columbia, putting the Fleischers in a position to be the exclusive providers of cartoons to Paramount. But it was not that simple. Max and Dave were still broke and without a real studio or staff.

And then a true angel appeared. An old friend of Max had heard about his troubles. Frank Goldman, the owner of the Carpenter-Goldman film processing lab in Long Island City, offered Max space in his firm’s building for free, for as long as he wanted. (It would be seven months.) Goldman, a film pioneer in his own right, thus rescued the Fleischer studio – just as sound was beginning to change the entire film industry in 1927/1928.

Fleischer Studios, Inc. (1929)
The Fleischer enterprise was reborn in March 1929. The studio’s first deal with Paramount called for a revival of the Screen Songs series with sound. In addition to theatrical cartoons for Paramount, Fleischer Studios was once again producing industrial films. One of these was Finding His Voice, explaining the Western Electric sound-on-film audio process that would remain the industry standard until 1956. Using animated gag figures, the film demonstrated technical aspects such as the difference between the old silent film speed of 60 feet per minute and the new sound film speed of 90 feet per minute. Another early sound era problem was accurately managing to synchronize the cartoon figures’ spoken dialog. But that was solved within the first year or so.

By the time of the “Black Friday” stock market crash of October 29, 1929, the Fleischer Studios were fully solvent. Max, Dave, and their staff of 90 people moved back to their former headquarters at 1600 Broadway. Lou Fleischer, the musician of the family, joined the operation as Music Producer. The move to sound also meant that animation now required more precise timing and planning than in the silent era. Lou was also able to help with technical aspects and synchronization.

Emanuel “Mannie” Cohen and the Missed Opportunity
In the midst of the Great Depression, Emanuel Cohen was dismissed as Vice-President at Paramount. Shortly before Max was due to renew his distribution contract with Paramount, Cohen invited Max Fleischer to his home to discuss an offer he had in mind.

Looking back with 20/20 hindsight, this was a missed opportunity for the Fleischers to escape Paramount before it was too late. Cohen told Max that he had an offer that would allow Max to escape from what Cohen considered a bad contract with Paramount. Cohen told Max he shouldn’t renew the Paramount deal. He offered to become the Fleischers’ distributor with no strings attached, even offering to deposit $500,000 in a bank account of Max’s choice to be used for production. All he wanted was to distribute all of their films.

Max turned him down, preferring to stay with Paramount. It was a fatal mistake he would later come to regret. But Fleischer had already had bad experiences with outside partners, and he also suffered from a naive sense of loyalty. He failed to see what Cohen already knew: Paramount did not share the same loyalty, and was in fact taking advantage of Max. Cohen told Max bluntly, “If you don’t know how Paramount is doing you, you’ll find out when it’s too late.”

And that is exactly what happened. In the end Max would lose his studio after Paramount screwed him over. Even after Paramount filed for bankruptcy in 1930 and went through several reorganizations and four name changes throughout the 1930s, Max stuck with them. Cohen knew that Paramount was not as financially sound as it appeared to outsiders. He also knew that with every new contract Max Fleischer was permitting Paramount to take a greater share of his studio than was justified.

But until then things were going well for the Fleischers. The studio was about to enter its greatest phase of creativity and popularity with the “Queen of the Animated Screen” and a spinach-eating sailor.

The Birth of Betty Boop

Wisconsin-born Myron “Grim” Natwick (1890-1990) studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and spent three years in Vienna learning to draw the female figure. He began his commercial art career before going to work at the Hearst International Studio as an animator in 1916. The experienced artist replaced Dick Huemer at the Fleischer Studios in 1930. It was Natwick who received the original assignment from Dave Fleischer to create a companion female dog character for Bimbo the dog. Over time, the appearance of both Bimbo and his companion would metamorphose considerably. It was the birth of Betty Boop, the Fleischer’s most successful original character. But the “Queen of the Animated Screen” did not pop up overnight. She didn’t even have her famous name right away.

When she was first created in 1930 by the Fleischer Studio, Betty Boop was an anthropomorphic cartoon canine character who sang, danced and wagged her dog ears. Only a year later she became a fully human female animated character, with her big ears transitioning into large hoop earrings. Unlike other female animated figures at that time (Minnie Mouse, Olive Oyl), Betty was not in a supporting role. She was a strong female character in her own right. As she evolved, she became even more feminine, sassy, and sexy, pushing the limits of what was acceptable on screen in the early 1930s. Her cleavage and curves left little doubt about her sexuality – until the National Legion of Decency and the Hays Code forced the studio to tone things down. Betty was billed as “the first and only feminine cartoon star” and she was actually modeled after some real-life female stars of the day.

The studio designed Betty Boop as a parody blend of film star Clara Bow and a popular singer named Helen Kane. Kane’s voice resembled that of Betty (or vice versa) to such an extent that Helen Kane sued Fleischer for stealing her singing style and voice. However, during the ensuing trial it came out that Kane had borrowed her singing style and boop-oop-a-doop catchphrase from a Black singer named Esther Jones who had been popular in the 1920s.

Various voice actors lent Betty her onscreen voice, but it was Mae Questel who became Betty Boop’s best-known voice. Ironically, Questel had won a Helen Kane look-alike contest in 1925.

The 1934 Lawsuit and Trial
Beginning in 1932, Betty Boop was no longer an incidental character in other series. She was now a star in her own right. But that increased attention and popularity led to the famous Helen Kane $250,000 lawsuit and trial.

Kane claimed that Betty Boop was modeled after her likeness, and that the series of cartoons featuring Betty had ruined her career. On 4 May 1932 Helen Kane filed suit against Paramount-Publix Corporation, Fleischer Studios, Inc., and Max Fleischer personally. Almost two years later, her case went to trial before the New York Supreme Court in April 1934. Over a period of three weeks, Max and members of his staff testified on the origin of Betty’s singing style. Mae Questel also testified about seeing Kane on stage and getting an autographed photo signed: “To Mae Questel, the only ‘other’ Helen Kane.” That knocked a hole in Kane’s claim that her image had been damaged. The “boop-oop-a-doop” issue was countered by a film clip showing Esther Jones using a similar phrase. In the end the court ruled in favor of Fleischer and Paramount.

Later the studio had to file its own Betty Boop lawsuit. Betty’s popularity was so high that people were making knockoff dolls and other products without obtaining the rights to the character. In November 1934 Fleischer Studios sued the Freundlich Doll Company for violation of copyright. They won despite the doll maker’s claim that the copyright notice had omitted “Inc.”

By today’s standards, the studio displayed a very sexist, male-oriented attitude with Betty Boop. The studio and animation in general was dominated by men. The storylines and treatment of the Betty Boop character lacked real imagination, romance, and even a hint of a female point of view. James Culhane, one of Betty’s animators expressed his frustration: “…the story department was never sophisticated enough to take full advantage of Betty. Sex was usually depicted as endless attempts on her virginity. …the scripts were like vaudeville skits, sometimes veering dangerously towards burlesque…”[2]

This narrow, chauvinistic way of dealing with Betty, along with the new Production Code, contributed to Betty Boop’s fadeout by the late 1930s. (She and Mae West both suffered a similar fate.) Betty made her final onscreen appearance in Rhythm on the Reservation in 1939. But she would make an offscreen comeback decades later.

Popeye the Sailor

Max Fleischer was not lucky enough to invent Popeye. The wise guy sailor character first appeared in Elzie Crisler Segar’s “Thimble Theatre” comic strip on January 17, 1929. But Max was lucky enough and smart enough to buy the animation rights. In November 1932, Max signed a contract with the King Features Syndicate for the film rights to the Popeye character.

Better known as E.C. Segar (1894-1938), Popeye’s creator was born in a small town in Illinois. At the age of 18 he decided to become a cartoonist and took a correspondence course. After moving to Chicago, Segar (SEE-gar, as in cigar), the budding cartoonist worked his way up until he was working as a cartoonist at William Randolph Hearst’s Chicago Evening American. Then he was in New York working for the King Features Syndicate drawing the “Thimble Theatre” comic strip. In 1929, his Castor Oyl character needed a mariner to navigate his ship. Castor picked up an old sailor at the docks named Popeye. Soon Popeye stole the show and became the main character in Segar’s strip. In fact the strip’s name was later changed to “Popeye.”

Popeye’s Spinach The Fleischers did not invent the Popeye character, but they did make him more famous – and added one key trait: spinach eating. In the original Popeye comic strips by E.C. Segar spinach played a very minor role. Rather than spinach, Popeye gained special powers by rubbing a chicken’s head, specifically Bernice the Whiffle Hen. When Popeye rubbed Bernice’s head, she would grant him good luck, sparing him from danger or injury. The spinach gag was rarely used in the cartoon strip. But in the Fleischer Studios animated version, Popeye became known for downing a can of spinach whenever he needed super powers. (In some films characters other than Popeye also ate spinach for strength.) Some film historians say it was Max Fleischer’s idea to emphasize the spinach-eating gag, while others say Paramount insisted on it over Fleischer’s objections. In any case, Popeye is now best known for eating his spinach to gain strength.

Although he had secured the film rights, Max still had to convince Paramount’s skeptical executives that Popeye could successfully make the transition from the printed page to the animated screen. So he decided to first give Popeye a tryout in a Betty Boop cartoon. The animated version of Popeye debuted in Popeye the Sailor (1933). Popeye became one of the most popular screen adaptations of a comic strip character ever. (Oddly, Betty Boop only made a small cameo appearance in Popeye’s debut.) The gritty Fleischer style of animation was perfectly suited to the odd-looking, one-eyed sailor with a corncob pipe. The Popeye animated cartoons became one of Fleischer’s biggest hits, soon rivaling even Disney’s Micky Mouse. Critics also praised the Popeye series’ artwork and camerawork.

The original voice of Popeye was William “Billy” Costello, whose raspy voice soon became a Popeye trademark. Unfortunately, fame went to Costello’s head and he soon became difficult to work with. When he showed up drunk for a Popeye recording session, Dave Fleischer fired him. After a brief period with a fill-in, the studio found an even better replacement in their own midst.

Winfield “Jack” Mercer had worked in the Inking Department before being promoted to an inbetweener. Mercer had a habit of imitating the voices of characters he was working on. One day Lou Fleischer happened to hear Mercer doing Popeye. He asked whose voice that was, and soon Jack Mercer was doing not only Popeye, but also other characters at the studio. His Popeye voice was first heard in King of the Mardi Gras (1935). Mercer’s voicing was less gruff than Costello’s version. He brought a lighter, more comedic, sympathetic mood to the character. He became one of the studio’s most versatile voice actors. (Voice actors at the time received no onscreen credit.)

Color vs Black-and-White
By 1936 the three-color Technicolor process finally became available to the Fleischers, after being used exclusively by Disney since 1932. Hindered by the inferior two-color Cinecolor and Technicolor processes because of Paramount’s penny-pinching, the studio’s Popeye and other cartoons suffered by comparison to Disney’s richer, more lifelike color films. The animated 9-minute-long Somewhere in Dreamland short was released in 1936 as the Fleischer Studio’s first Technicolor film. Set during the ongoing Great Depression, the story follows two impoverished children who dream about a land full of candy and ice cream.

Most of the 109 Popeye cartoons released by the Fleischer Studio and Paramount between 1933 and 1942 were one-reel, black-and-white films, 6 to 10 minutes in length. Only three 20-minute Popeye “featurette” films, known as Popeye Color Specials, were made in full Technicolor. The first color release was Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (1936), which was also one of the very first Technicolor films by the Fleischer Studio. A year later came Popeye the Sailor Meets Ali Baba’s Forty Thieves (1937), followed by Aladdin and His Wonderful Lamp (1939). All three are now in the public domain in the United States.

Following the Paramount takeover in 1941/1942, 122 more Popeye films were made under the new Famous Studios brand from 1942 to 1957. Only the first 14 of those were in black and white. Baby Wants a Bottleship (1942) was the final Popeye production by the Fleischers.

The Popeye film franchise continued for almost 25 years at Paramount, unfortunately without Max Fleischer after May 1941. That was when Mannie Cohen’s prediction about Paramount became ugly reality, with Max forced out, losing his own studio in a nasty Paramount takeover.

But that event was still five years down the road. In the meantime, business was booming. Perhaps a bit too much.

The Strike

By 1936 the Fleischer Studio was enjoying the huge success of the Popeye series and three others, with 52 releases a year, one per week. There was a lot of pressure and tension for the studio staff trying to crank out so much content in crowded conditions with harsh deadlines. Paramount kept demanding more and more of the product they were making money from. The increasing work load began to affect the physical and mental health of the studio’s employees. Max and Dave Fleischer ignored the complaints and management problems for far too long.

In May 1937 the dam burst. The resulting labor strike by the studio’s employees lasted five months. It was viewed as a test case, the first in the film industry. (A similar five-week strike would hit the Disney animation studios on the West Coast in 1941.) In addition to the work stoppage, Fleischer films already released were being boycotted. Paramount finally put pressure on the Fleischers to settle the dispute. That happened on 12 October 1937.

The Move to Florida

But there was another fateful event in 1937. It came from a rival studio in California. Walt Disney released the groundbreaking full-length animated feature Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. The film’s huge success allowed Max to tell Paramount, “I told you so.”

Over the previous three years Max had been trying to convince Paramount to finance an animated feature film. Snow White meant he could no longer be ignored. Paramount now wanted an animated color feature for a Christmas 1939 release. But thanks to the strike, the studio was in disarray, and there were bad feelings between the strikers and the Fleischer management.

The Fleischers had considered moving the studio to Miami before. Max had bought a winter home in Miami Beach in 1933. In September 1934, an article in The Miami News had speculated about Max (and Betty Boop) making a move to Florida. There were tax advantages, and the weather was better than in New York. They could also build new, more spacious facilities. But now there was another factor: healing the wounds of the strike. Max felt betrayed by his employees, whom he had always regarded as family. But he could not see things from their perspective. (And even he and Dave were at odds over Dave’s salary.) Moving to Florida would allow a fresh start. Those who wanted to stay in New York could do so. Those attracted to Florida could make the move.

But Max had yet another motivation for the move to Miami. He wanted to meet the Disney challenge by moving to a warm climate, similar to that in Southern California. He was obsessed with outdoing Disney. For Gulliver’s Travels Max even hired some of the Disney voice actors from Snow White. Pinto Colvig, chosen for the voice of the town crier Gabby, a key role, had voiced Grumpy and Sleepy in Snow White, as well as Goofy before that.

Following the 1929 Wall Street crash, the price of property in Florida had fallen precipitously. At first glance, it seemed like an unbeatable deal. However, what Max (and Paramount) failed to do was compare his financial arrangement with Paramount to Disney’s financial ties with United Artists, RKO, and The Bank of America. The Disney finances were far more solid than anything the Fleischers had. Instead of going to a bank for a loan, the Fleischer Studios turned to Paramount for funding. If the new feature film failed to be the big hit everyone hoped for, then the Fleischers would be on the hook, not Paramount.

Disney’s new facilities in Burbank were largely paid for with the profits from Snow White, with limited borrowing. Max’s new Miami construction project was almost completely financed with a $300,000 10-year loan, using the studio’s assets as collateral. Failure meant the Fleischers could lose everything. Paramount was concerned about that, but they weren’t risking a lot, surely not their entire operation.

Miami at that time was still an underdeveloped area desperate for business and growth. The city and county offered land and tax breaks to entice Max. Groundbreaking for the new $250,000 studio complex took place on 1 March 1938 at N.W. 17th Street and 30th Avenue in Miami. A photo in The Miami Daily News shows those in attendance, including officials from the Miami Chamber of Commerce, studio owners and staff, and their wives, plus Dade County (Miami-Dade since 1997) officials. Max and Essie bought a new mansion on two lots in Miami Beach facing Biscayne Bay. The master bedroom had a concert grand piano in a corner.

Gulliver’s Travels

The Fleischers’ answer to Snow White was Gulliver’s Travels, originally a novel written by the Anglo-Irish author Jonathan Swift in 1726. The screenplay is a very loose adaptation of Swift’s novel that concentrates on the first part and its tale of the kingdoms of Lilliput and Blefuscu. The story centers around Lemuel Gulliver who washes onto the beach of Lilliput after a storm at sea, and is seen as a giant by the tiny people of Lilliput.

Max’s son, Richard, in his 2005 book about Max and the studio, wrote, “I wasn’t at all surprised when [Gulliver] was chosen. I knew it was my father’s favorite book since he used to read it to me as a bedtime story when I was a child.” Richard also notes in his book that the studio had briefly considered having Popeye play Gulliver.[3]

Story work began in New York prior to the move to Miami. The new Florida facility opened in September 1938, and Max was forced to offer top dollar in the industry to attract animators to Miami, defeating one reason for the move in the first place. The Florida crew was a mix of new talent plus former strikers and “loyalists” from New York, each faction with different attitudes towards Max and management. Despite the divisions, the December 1939 deadline set by Paramount for the completion of Gulliver meant everyone was under the gun, with little time to worry about past problems. It also meant that production shortcuts and compromises had to be made. The lack of Disney-style ruthless story editing would be most apparent in the end.

Gulliver’s Travels premiered in New York on 20 December 1938, with general release on the 22nd. The public response was positive, and the early box-office results were good. But most moviegoers and reviewers could not help comparing Gulliver to Disney’s Snow White, and the Fleischer effort paled in comparison. The New York Times review called the new film “a pleasant and diverting animated picture-book, drawn in the brightest Technicolor…” But the reviewer added, “…by any other standards than those of the juvenile audience, the film is so far beneath the level of Disney’s famous fantasy that, out of charity, we wish we did not have to make the comparisons demanded by professional responsibility.” Pulling no punches, he goes on to talk about what Gulliver lacks: “the wit, the freshness, the gayety and sparkle, the subtlety, the characterization and, for that matter, the good drawing that are the trademarks of the Disney factory.”[2]

Max and Walt Meet in 1956 On 4 January 1956, following the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California, Max Fleischer, then 72, met Walt Disney at a special luncheon hosted by Disney for previous Fleischer employees now working for Disney. It was the first and only time the two met in person. Max’s son, Richard O. Fleischer (1916-2006), who had recently directed Disney’s first live action movie, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), had arranged for his dad and Walt to meet. Although the meeting went well, Max never got over the rivalry between him and Walt. In his 2005 biography of his father, Richard Fleischer writes: “Almost from the very beginning Walt Disney was an annoying pebble in my father’s shoe, a pebble that eventually grew into a rock. Max never talked about it much, but Disney’s constant winning of awards, for the beauty and graceful animation of his cartoons, rankled.”

Production Costs
The original budget for the production of Gulliver’s Travels was half a million dollars. The actual cost was three times that figure: $1.5 million. At a time when the adult admission price for a movie was just under a dollar, Gulliver’s Travels brought in about $3 million. Paramount still made a profit of at least $1 million domestically. Paramount even wanted to order another Fleischer feature.

But 1939 was a banner year for Hollywood cinema. In that year alone, filmgoers had a choice of high-quality films, including The Wizard of Oz, Gone With the Wind, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Stagecoach, and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Gulliver’s Travels peaked by February 1940, having earned less than half of what Snow White had brought in. And Snow White had a wider release, running for another two years.

Turmoil in the Fleischer Studios

Dave Fleischer, as director, had been under a lot of pressure with Gulliver. His marriage was already suffering before that. Adding to the problems was the worsening of Max and Dave’s relationship. The move to Florida had only made things worse. If they passed each other in the hall, there were glares and silence. Dave was having an affair with a secretary, a fact that Max was aware of, having learned about it indirectly from Dave’s wife. Dave had also moved his New York bookie down to Florida, to help him continue his race horse gambling at Hialeah, where he was frequently seen with his secretary Mae. He knew it would irritate his brother Max, and it did.

Things only got worse after Max, wishing to reward Dave’s hard work, foolishly signed an agreement granting Dave a 50 percent share of the studio, a salary raise, and total charge of production in May 1939. The agreement took away Max’s power to fire Dave. Dave soon took over the creative side of production. His name now appeared larger on the screen than Max’s. Max found himself shunted aside and reluctantly turned his creative efforts towards technical innovation. Dave arrogantly began to be nasty and disrespectful towards Max. But after Gulliver’s Travels Max was more concerned that Dave’s irresponsible behavior was impacting the delivery of the studios short films, a fact that also had come to the attention of Paramount. The people at Paramount felt that things at Fleischer Studios were getting out of control. And they were.

Under Dave Fleischer’s direction, the studio was losing money on shorts that the theaters no longer wanted. Popeye they wanted, but not the others. In 1940 the resulting losses amounted to $250,000. The move to Florida had also proved to be more expensive than anticipated. The operation now required more business acumen than the Fleischers had. Both brothers were making poor decisions. One has to wonder why Paramount continued doing business with the Fleischers at that point. The brothers needed, and Paramount wanted, another Popeye-like hit to keep the studio relevant in the 1940s.

Superman to the Rescue?
The DC Comics character Superman more or less fell into the laps of the Fleischer Studios, and just when they needed it. But they didn’t really want to take on a new project while they were in the midst of working on the major project Mr. Bug Goes to Town, the second animated feature Paramount had ordered following the success of Gulliver’s Travels. But Paramount was insisting.

The Superman project was an animated color film that would require a high level of technical, artistic, and writing skill in order to do it justice. The Fleischers thought they had a way to dodge Superman. Reflecting the truth, but with some exaggeration, they told Paramount if they wanted a decent Superman series it would cost $100,000 per short, about four times the typical budget for a six-minute Popeye episode. To the surprise of the Fleischers, instead of a flat no, Paramount wanted to negotiate. They offered to pay $50,000 per episode, still double the normal rate, plus provide strong marketing support. It was an offer the Fleischers couldn’t refuse.

The first film in the series, simply titled Superman, was released on September 26, 1941. It was nominated for the 1941 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons. It lost to a Pluto cartoon from Walt Disney Productions, the Fleischers’ arch enemy. That first Superman short is still considered the best in the series. Its $50,000 budget was reduced to $30,000 for each of the following 16 films.

Overall, critics have praised the quality of the Superman cartoons, calling them some of the Fleischer studio’s best work. As with Popeye before, in Superman’s transition from the printed page to the screen, the character got a new feature. Only “able to leap tall buildings in a single bound” in the comics, on screen he gained the ability to truly fly. That was mostly because mere leaping looked a bit silly in animation. Flying looked cool.

But not even Superman was able to save the Fleischer Studios. After producing the first nine of a total of 17 Superman cartoons, the studio was taken over by Paramount, and the brothers were out.

The End the Fleischer Animation Studio

By the end of 1941 it was apparent that the animation empire originally created by Max and Dave Fleischer in 1921 was facing extinction. After two decades of being a significant factor in the cartoon animation industry, Max was now facing the loss of both his studio and the rights to his cinematic characters.

This was a shock that would shorten Max Fleischer’s life, leave him and his brother Dave destitute, and upset the world of many people who had once worked for or with the Fleischers. Max and Dave would never really fully recover after 1941, and neither one of them would ever enjoy the kind of business success they had in the previous 20 years.

What Happened and Why?
Not all details of the collapse are entirely known. Paramount intentionally destroyed most of the records stored at the Fleischer Studios in Florida. Burning the records was an act that made it difficult for Max and others to establish or prove how they might have been wronged. So the story of the fall of the Fleischer empire is a murky, confused one. But there are some key contributing factors that we do know:

• Max and Dave Fleischer were poor businessmen. | There were numerous times over the 20 years they were in the animation business when Max and Dave failed to negotiate better deals and/or get better legal advice. Particularly when it came to protecting their rights to things they had created, or to better protect the business financially, the brothers made major errors in judgment. Max Fleischer was a good man who expected others to treat people fairly. Multiple times he blindly trusted Paramount to be an honest partner, even when there was clear evidence that his distributor was being less than honest. More than once, Max’s feelings of family and loyalty got in the way of good business decisions, ultimately hurting the studio and its employees.
• Max and Dave’s feud helped bring down their operation. | Besides just being stupid, the brothers’ feud caused chaos and confusion at a time when it was critical. They allowed personal feelings to get in the way of what would have been good for the business.
• Paramount was taking advantage of the Fleischers. | As Emanuel Cohen, the former Paramount executive, had tried to warn him in 1929, Paramount was not being totally honest and above board with Max Fleischer. But even when Max had the legal right to do so (even as he faced bankruptcy!), he never demanded an audit of Paramount’s finances. He failed to ever look at their books or to get a better picture of the revenue his films were producing. As a result, Paramount was able to place most of the financial burden on the studio. They as the distributor managed to hide the real value of the Fleischer product they were renting out to cinemas.
• Max Fleischer never realized the true value of his films. | If Max had had a better idea of the real value of his product, he never would have accepted the deals Paramount offered.
• The move to Florida was a mistake. | Other than better weather, Florida never really paid off for the studio. Max’s obsession with Disney led him to make several poor decisions, the Florida move and letting Paramount lend him the money for the studio being the worst. Despite getting the land almost for free, Miami never provided the cost reductions that were the main justification for the move. Being farther away from the Technicolor lab and other film services in New York also caused time delays. Miami also helped worsen the brothers’ feud.

The Sad Aftermath
After losing their studio and suffering financial losses in early 1942, Max and Dave Fleischer went separate ways, but in the end they both faced a similar fate. Neither Max nor Dave ever again enjoyed anything close to the business success they had as studio owners. After initial efforts and the kindness of friends, both Max and Dave got new jobs, but not for long. In the end, Max and his wife were living off of Social Security and depended on an allowance from their film director son Richard Fleischer.

Max’s last attempt at a comeback came in 1958 to develop Out of the Inkwell in color for television. But due to budget and artistic restrictions, the project failed. New cartoons were actually produced, but it took a few years before that happened. Max was weak, ill, and unable to fully participate.

In failing health in the 1960s, Max and his wife Essie moved into side-by-side cottages at the Motion Picture Country House (MPCH) in Southern California. It was all arranged by Richard and his wife. A nearby place was also arranged for Max’s loyal longtime secretary Vera. But Max continued to decline. He suffered a stroke that made it difficult for him to speak. The announcement of his death came on 25 September 1972. Essie outlived Max by many years, reaching 103 at the MPCH.

Surviving on social security in the 1960s and ’70s, Dave Fleischer and his former secretary wife Mae (with whom he had wrecked his first marriage) were living in a cheap apartment complex on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. That is where Dave died on 25 June 1979.

Sadly, neither brother enjoyed any real professional success after the 1941 split. Following a failed lawsuit trying to get money from Paramount, they both had to settle for lives that were nothing close to the old studio days. Ironically, it was in failure that the two New Yorkers ended up in Southern California, the home to Hollywood and the Walt Disney headquarters.

Epilogue – Betty Boop

Betty made her glorious Technicolor return to the silver screen in 1988 with a cameo in Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, directed by Robert Zemeckis. The new Betty Boop, animated by Roger Chasson, was a hit, but all attempts since then to revive Betty onscreen have failed. But she has had some success offscreen. She has been a featured balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade since 1985.

Today’s Fleischer Studios, set up by Richard Fleischer and now headed by Richard’s son Mark Fleischer works with Betty’s image, licensed through King Features Syndicate.

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CITATIONS

1. To avoid confusion and to simplify matters, Max listed his birthplace as Vienna, Austria on various official records. Although he was born in the region of Galicia in Austria-Hungary, he was not born in the Austrian capital.
2. Quoted in The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer: American Animation Pioneer by Ray Pointer
3. Quoted in Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution by Richard Fleischer

Learn more about these books below.

Fleischer Books

Here are some of the best books written about Max Fleischer, his studio, and his animated films.

• The Art and Inventions of Max Fleischer: American Animation Pioneer
  by Ray Pointer. Kindle, Paperback. McFarland & Company, Publishers (2017)
  Amazon.com: “The history of animated cartoons has for decades been dominated by the accomplishments of Walt Disney, giving the impression that he invented the medium. In reality, it was the work of several pioneers. Max Fleischer, inventor of the Rotoscope technique, was one of the most prominent. By the 1930s, Fleischer and Disney were the leading producers of animated films but took opposite approaches. Where Disney reflected a Midwestern sentimentality, Fleischer presented a sophisticated urban attitude with elements of German Expressionism and organic progression.”
• Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution with a Foreword by Leonard Maltin
  by Richard Fleischer. Kindle, Paperback, Hardcover, Audio. Kentucky (2011)
  Richard Fleischer, the son of Max Fleischer, has written a biography of his father, the unsung hero of animation.
  Amazon.com: “Max Fleischer was for years considered Walt Disney’s only real rival in the world of cartoon animation. The man behind the creation of such legendary characters as Betty Boop and the animation of Popeye the Sailor and Superman, Fleischer asserted himself as a major player in the development of Hollywood entertainment. [This book] is a vivid portrait of the life and world of a man who shaped the look of cartoon animation.”
• The Definitive Betty Boop Vol. 1
  by Max Fleischer, Bud Counihan (Illustrator, Artist) – Kindle, hardcover.
  Amazon.com: “Before Marilyn and Madonna, Betty booped and wriggled her way into hearts worldwide with her unique mix of wide-eyed innocence and powerful cartoon sensuality. Although she made her film debut as a curvaceous canine cabaret singer in the Max Fleischer short Dizzy Dishes on August 9, 1930, Betty Boop remains animation’s first leading lady and a glamorous international icon. – This beautiful volume collects Betty’s adventures as they appeared in the funny pages of daily newspapers in the 1930’s, capturing all the cheeky fun embodied by the character.”
• Betty Boop’s Guide to a Bold and Balanced Life: Fun, Fierce, Fabulous Advice Inspired by the Animated Icon
  by Susan Wilking Horan, Kristi Ling Spencer, Zac Posen. Kindle edition.
  Amazon.com: “Betty is certainly an icon, in fashion, attitude, and lifestyle. You know her when you see her, and you know the character she’ll bring to the screen: fierce, feisty, independent, ethical – a strong woman who knows her own mind. [The authors] have taken the character of Betty Boop and tied those positive attributes, from Courage and Confidence to Health and Humor, together to create a book that entertains, enlightens, and educates with the light touch that Betty herself brought to so many classic screen appearances.”
  — Greg Moody, CBS Denver, Critic at large

More | Featured Bios

Related Pages
AT THE GERMAN WAY

• Germans (and Others) in Hollywood – About the three main waves of Germanic immigration to Hollywood
• Austria – Country Information – Learn more about Fleischer’s homeland.
• Mini Bios A-Z – Brief biographies of people from the German-speaking world
• Featured Biographies – More detailed bios of notable people from the German-speaking world

ON THE WEB

• Fleischer Studios – fleischerstudios.com – The new studio featuring Betty Boop
• Max Fleischer Studio – toonopedia.com
• Richard Fleischer – IMDb
• Max Fleischer – from lambiek.net
• Popeye (the Sailor) and Elzie Segar – About the creator of the comic strip version of Popeye – Wikipedia

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