Tags
Betty Boop, Gulliver's Travels, Hay's Code, Max Fleischer, Paramount Pictures, Popeye, Superman, Walt Disney
When I first saw Max Fleischer’s 1934 animated short, Little Dutch Mill, the enlightened ending knocked me out! As a wicked miser is about to put Hansel and Gretel’s tongues on fire (yikes!) the villagers race to the rescue. Rather than punishing, they actually rehabilitate the filthy culprit by scrubbing him and his house clean. (How Dutch!) I had to find out more about the creator Max Fleischer who has been overshadowed by his rival Walt Disney.
Richard Fleischer’s loving biography of his father, Out of the Inkwell sheds light on a decent family man, studio head and artist, who created Betty Boop and breathed animation into the established characters of Popeye and Superman. “It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!” was Max’s brainstorm. He created the concepts along with the technical methods and artistic style for his animations.
I wanted insight into the juxtaposition of the philosophy of the Little Dutch Mill to the Nazi’s rise to power in 1934 but Richard doesn’t touch on that. We can surmise the circumstances when in 1887, the child Max emigrated with his Jewish family from Austria to America. When Richard is asked to direct Disney Studio’s 2,000 Leagues Under the Sea, he honorably asked his father’s permission before agreeing to the project. Unheard of in Hollywood!
A pioneer in animation, in 1914 Max invented the Rotoscope, the technique that simplified motion capture for his first short about a clown…the precursor to his Koko the Clown. After filming his brother Dave in sequential poses, he painstakingly traced, then inked each of the 2600 frames so the action flowed seamlessly in the final cartoon. The series, Out of the Inkwell was born.
A creative force, Max moved fast to ride on the movie boom that came out of the great depression. Gulliver’s Travels with its dreamy storybook illustrations and Color Classics: Somewhere in Dreamland, including 30 of Fleisher’s works (as early as 1936) are available on DVD. In Christmas Comes But Once a Year you can watch the wild inventiveness of Max through his avatar Professor Grampy as he replaces the defective presents in the orphanage by reconfiguring all manner of household objects into exciting toys, as a train with a percolating coffee pot for the engine.
Contained in the biography is a cautionary tale about copyright and contracts for after overwhelming success and recognition, Max was stripped of ownership of his creations to the profit of Paramount Pictures. His name was scrubbed from the credits of the cartoons shown on television. He ultimately declined into near poverty. He died before he saw the revival of Fleischer Studios and his most favorite creation Betty Boop who fell out of public favor after being ‘too sexy’ for the Hays Code. Max never saw his name reinstated on the credits as respectfully shown here.
































