Max Fleischer

Max Fleischer, an American animator, film director and inventor, was born in July 19 1883. Over his years he brought about many well known animations as well as new means of animating.

Early Life

Fleischer was born in Kraków, Poland. Soon after he moved to the Austrian-Hungarian province of Galacia. At the age of four his family emigrated to the US of A to settle in New York City. Here he attended public schools in Brownsville and Brooklyn, yet his interest in art sparked when he attended Evening High School. Soon after he received commercial art training at Cooper Union to then attend The Mechanics and Tradesman's School.

During his teens he worked as an errand boy for The Brooklyn Daily Eagle. This also lead Fleischer to meet the newspaper cartoonist, John Randolph Bray. Bray was also an early day animator and this lead to Fleischer learning of how being an animator was in them present days. Soon after, in 1906, he accepted an illustrator's job in Boston for a catalogue company. He stayed in this occupation for six years and then moved back to New York City to be an Art Editor for the Popular Science magazine. As a home occupation he used to also write books, such as Noah's Shoes.

The Rotoscope

Fleischer moved on from these generic jobs and decided to delve into making his own ideas more than just books or newspaper cartoons and thus the Rotoscope was born. The Rotoscope makes use of already recorded footage and a transparent sheet on an easel. The footage is shone on to the transparent material and the image is made visible on both the sheet and to the viewer. Due to the footage being visible Fleischer was able to trace over the footage on to the easel. Any footage being displayed could be used as inspiration for his cartoons as well as outlines he could trace in a more humorous manner.

The Rotoscope was invented in 1914 and patented in 1915. During this time lapse Max and his brother Dave made their own cartoon to demonstrate the invention's capabilities. This lead to the Out of the Inkwell series that began in 1919 and starred the well known characters Koko the Clown and Fitz the dog.

Fleischer Studios

Up until 1921 Max and his two brothers, Dave and Lou, created the Out of the Inkwell series for the Bray Studios. The successes of these films lead to the three brothers establishing their own organisation, Fleischer Studios. Koko and Fitz were still in use up until now and in 1927 their cartoons were renamed to the Inkwell Imps.

The Fleischer brothers became well known over the years across America and soon Lee DeForest, Edwin Miles Fadiman and Hugo Riesenfield took an interest. These were very influential names at the time and their convergence with the Fleischer Studios lead to the Red Seal Pictures Corporation being born. The corporation, over the years, amassed thirty-six studios all across the east coast.

DeForest's Phonofilm Process

Lee Deforest's most notable invention is the Phonofilm sound-on-film process. This lead to images and sound being stored together and being played in sync rather than via two mutually exclusive devices. This process made use of a microphone that was attached to a machine that's capable of photographically recording all of the inputs onto tape to be played later.

The Fleischer Brothers Successes

The brothers collaborated together to along invent another novel idea for films at the time, the 'follow the bouncing ball' technique. Most of the cartoons of that day and age made use of single sound effects, little dialogue and/or music. This lead to a lot of films simply being musicals that were intended for the audience to join in on for fun. The problem with this was that not everyone knew the songs and they perhaps wanted to sing along on the first viewing. Films weren't cheaply accessible to everyone so they would only be able to view a film once rather than numerous times.

The 'follow the bouncing ball' technique was implemented into musicals to help the audience with the timing of lyrics. The words being present of screen isn't sufficient to have an audience sing the song in time, so a bouncing ball was implemented into the film to bounce up and down on each syllable to tell the audience when to say what. The ball itself isn't actually recorded on film however, instead the Fleischer brothers took advantage of projectors using high saturation levels to attach a glowing ball on to the end of a dull stick and have an orchestrator bounce the ball alongside the film. Only the ball would appear due to these saturation levels and all the audience would see is the pre-recorded film and the presently waved around stick.

Contrary to popular belief Steam Boat Willy was not the first film with synchronised sound, merely the first hugely successful film to make use of this technique, so naturally it’s the most accredited. The Fleischer brothers rightfully hold this success when they began to have sound play throughout their entire films in 1926, 13th of April. My Old Kentucky Home was this first such film and it made use of a cartoon character saying “Follow the ball, and join in, everybody” on screen. These films were all made via the Phonofilm sound-on-film process developed by Lee Deforest.

Before this step in animation history, Max had also made notable animations with sound effects depicting Einstein’s theory of relativity and Darwin’s theory of evolution as well as a much later twenty minute film of how sound on film works in 1929 (Finding His Voice). These were meant as educational films with a cartoon edge to make them appeal to a wider audience, i.e. the up and coming generation.

Max also tread along a fine line at the time of his early sound era films. Within his films he liked to have soundtracks with live or rotoscoped accompanying black jazz performers. At this time of day there was a great deal of stigmatism towards black people and Max’s insistence of using characters such as Cab Calloway and Louis Armstrong lead to a bold reputation. These times of denigrations against mere racial attributes lead to Max essentially fighting the masses and succeeding in a widely viewed skill, entertainment.

Sadly by the late 1926’s both the DeForest Phonofilm Corporation and Red Seal Pictures had gone bankrupt, halting the production of the Song Car-Tunes series. Thankfully in 1928 the series was revived and renamed to ‘Screen Songs’, starting with ‘The Sidewalks of New York’ in January 1929 through Paramount Pictures. Out of the Inkwell Films Incorporate was also reorganised as Fleischer Studios in January 1929 following their bankruptcy. During this time Walt Disney, a close competitor, was gaining a lead on Max with the commonly known Mickey Mouse series.

The High and the Low

This setback put the Fleischer brothers in a bit of a rut, however they soon got back in business with the release of the film Dizzy Dishes in 1930. This film revolved around one of their older characters, Bimbo, an angry nameless gorilla and a new addition, Betty Boop. The film was intended to promote Bimbo, however the side character, Betty, soon became the new star of Max's creations. Oddly enough Betty Boop was originally just an anthropomorphic French poodle, complete with ears. This soon changed to the character resembling a close image of Helen Kane and less of the poodle. Over the years Betty's success lead to the Fleischer brothers becoming well known once again.

This was mostly down to the adult humour of Betty Boop's cartoons however, and in 1934 the Hays Code was released. In the short this law made it that the originally over proportioned curves of Betty Boop had to be less extreme.

As you can see in the comparison Betty Boop soon became a typical animated woman with a famous face. The original character had a lot of sexually suggestive behaviour, meaning it was aimed at the older generation. Soon after the Hays Code there were numerous other laws brought into play that lead to Betty Boop losing the jewellery and a lessening of the hair curls. From the original stage performer in 1933 Betty Boop soon became a husbandless housewife with a more mature personality. This lead to a decline in popularity for the older generation and a greater appeal to the younger generation. With this in mind the cartoons took on a much tamer attitude. In a vain attempt to lessen the decline in popularity the Fleischer brothers implemented additional characters such as Freddie in She Wronged Him Right (1934) and a puppy named Pudgy in Betty Boop's Little Pal (1934).

Soon seeing that this was going be just a decline Max soon moved onto new ideas, such as the implementation of Popeye the Sailor. Originally Popeye was just a comic strip character, however after securing the rights to the ownership of this character in 1933 Max soon brought about adding Popeye to a Betty Boop film short as a means of introduction and then his own series of films. This series was much more popular than Betty Boop and much less interfered with legally. Popeye's films were in production up until 1957, during which time he even overtook Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in terms of both popularity and earnings for a short span.

The reason for Disney having greater earnings is down to Max's means of funding these films. The Fleischer studios were a major operation in New York under the support of Paramount Studio. The trouble with this is that Max's creations were at the mercy of Paramount's management, both in pitching and funding. While Max was capable of brilliance and Paramount were aware of this the Great Depression that spanned across the 1930's to the 1940's lead to funding being a huge problem for Max. Paramount Studios underwent four name changes and reorganisations due to bankruptcies, all of which created barriers for Max.

Another obstacle for Max came about with the invention of Technicolour processes. This method was much more expensive and Paramount vetoed the implementation of colour cartoons for Max due to budget issues. This gave Disney another advantage over Fleischer, novelty of colour films. Two years after this Paramount approved colour films for Max, however only with the Cinecolour (red and blue) and two-strip Technicolour (red and green) methods. Where Disney had all three primary colours at their disposal Max could only make use of two at a time. Disney's head start and Fleischer's limitations lead to another rapid decline. Fleischer still tried in vain to compete however, where there were Disney's Silly Symphonies, Fleischer had his own idea, the Colour Classics (1934).

Another nail in the coffin was the later creation of Gulliver's Travels in 1939. This film was made in response to Disney's Snow White and the Seen Dwarfs in 1937. Max had been arguing with Paramount to gain funding for a feature film length animation before Disney's creation and Paramount's mistake to approve lead to Gulliver's Travels simply being second best and much less profitable. The film ran $500,000 over the intended budget and while it was fairly popular it did not actually make any profit at all. Soon after Dave and Max began to drift apart and the eventual separation of the two brothers lead to further problems.

In short Dave had moved to California while Max remained in New York. The two brothers were still contracted together for films such as Mr. Bug (1941) however they were both part of separate organisations. Due to the link between the two organisations being an issue because of the competing studios the two were forced to merge, the larger organisation, Paramount, succeeding Fleischer Studios. Soon after it renamed itself to Famous Studios and it was during this time Max's Superman shorts were in production. The first half were created in the Fleischer Studios and the convergence of both organisations lead to the latter half being made by Famous Studios.

While Superman was still popular, Walt Disney still spearheaded the animation industry and eventually this lead to Max being left in the dust. Eventually the two rivals, Max Fleischer and Walt Disney actually formed a friendship and united. Walt recognised Max's abilities and offered to employ him in a high position of his own organisation.

The rift between Max and Dave was never resolved so Max was under no obligation to stay with Dave in job or location and so he moved with his wive, Essie, to the Motion Picture Country House in 1967. Soon after, in September 11 he died due to heart failure. Henceforth he was recognised in the Time magazine as the 'Dean of Animated Cartoons' and a great pioneer who invented an industry. All that remained was his son, Richard Fleischer, who entered the film industry in 1940 and carried on Max's Betty Boop merchandising.