Max Fleischer
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Max Fleischer (July 19, 1883 – September 11, 1972) was an important Austrian-American pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon. He brought such characters as Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Popeye, and Superman to the movie screen, and was responsible for a number of technological innovations.
Born to a Jewish family in Kraków, then part of the Austrian province of Galicia, Fleischer was the second oldest of six children. His family immigrated to the USA in 1887 and settled in New York City.
Fleischer had the idea of using frames of a live action film as the basis for drawing animation, his patent for the rotoscope was granted in 1917, although Max and Dave Fleischer made their first cartoon using the device in 1915. Extensive use of this technique was made in Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series, one of the highlights being a boxing match between the cartoon Koko the Clown and a live kitten.
In 1919 he established Fleischer Studios for producing animated cartoons and short subjects. At one point, all of his siblings (as well as his son Richard Fleischer) worked there. Other studio employees included Lillian Friedman, first woman in America to become an animator; Frank Sherman; Jack Kirby, later of Marvel Comics.
Fleischer produced the first sound animated cartoons in May 1924 using the Lee DeForest Phonofilm sound-on-film process. This series was known as "Song Car-Tunes" and featured the follow the bouncing ball gimmick, so the audience could sing along. (This was several years before Steamboat Willie (1928), which The Walt Disney Company says is the first Mickey Mouse cartoon with sound, but makes no effort to imply as the first sound cartoon ever).
In 1923, Fleischer made a 50-minute animation film about Albert Einstein's theory of relativity. In 1925, he made a feature-length film about Charles Darwin's theory of evolution combining animation and live action.
Several of Fleischer's cartoons had soundtracks by (and often live or rotoscoped footage of) some of the leading jazz performers of the time, perhaps most notably Cab Calloway. By doing this, Fleischer broke many racial barriers, and helped make Cab Calloway a big-time star in the segregated 1930's. Many black musicians also became the main songwriters of the songs in Betty Boop cartoons as well.
In 1938, Fleischer Studios moved from New York City to Miami, Florida to avoid pending unionization of the New York studios. On May 24, 1941, Paramount Pictures, taking advantage of a significant debt owed to them by Fleischer Studios, took over the studio and renamed it Famous Studios. Fleischer and his brother ran the company for another year before resigning. He later tried unsuccessfully to sue Paramount and get money back from the company for selling his cartoons to television, often cutting them heavily to fit particular time-slot requirements.
He later took a job of producing and directing the Handy Corporation's rare cartoon shorts, one of which was Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer. Fleischer left Handy in 1954 and went to Bray Studios (which he had worked for in 1916).
In his late years, Fleischer was poor and ended up living at the Motion Picture Country House, where he died from congestive heart failure in 1972. Ironically, he died eleven days after signing a contract with King Features to reintroduce Betty Boop to the world, a deal which would have made him millions.
[edit] References
- Richard Fleischer, Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleisher and the Animation Revolution, University Press of Kentucky, 2005, ISBN 0-8131-2355-0
- Review by Mindy Aloff, The Animated Life of a Film Giant", The Forward October 14, 2005. Accessed 1 July 2006.
