max fleischer (july 19, 1883 – september 11, 1972) was born in kraków and emigrated to the united states in 1887. he worked as a staff cartoonist at the brooklyn daily eagle before moving into film. his brother dave fleischer, a former side-show clown, became the model for their first character, the inkwell clown later called ko-ko.
fleischer's first contribution was a tool. to get lifelike movement he built the rotoscope, a projector and easel for tracing live-action film frame by frame; his patent was granted in 1917, after tests made from 1914 to 1916. the device supported out of the inkwell, which mixed live action with animation. the films were first made at bray productions in 1918; in 1921 the brothers founded out of the inkwell films, dave directing and max producing.
in 1924 fleischer partnered with edwin miles fadiman, hugo riesenfeld and lee de forest in the red seal pictures corporation. in the ko-ko song car-tunes he introduced the follow-the-bouncing-ball sing-along, a ball hopping across lyrics on screen. a number of those films, beginning in 1926, used de forest's phonofilm sound-on-film process, adding sound to animation before steamboat willie.
after inkwell went bankrupt, max and dave formed fleischer studios in march 1929 and signed with paramount pictures. talkartoons began that year; betty boop grew from a cameo in dizzy dishes (1930) into her own series in 1932. fleischer licensed e. c. segar's popeye the sailor in 1933, first presenting him in the betty boop short of that name, and released popeye cartoons through 1942. the stereoptical process set animation cels in front of three-dimensional model sets, used most fully in the two-reel popeye features popeye the sailor meets sindbad the sailor (1936) and popeye the sailor meets ali baba's forty thieves (1937).
paramount ordered an animated feature; the studio moved to miami, florida in 1938. gulliver's travels (1939), budgeted at $500,000, finally cost about $1.5 million; mr. bug goes to town followed in 1941. from 1941 it produced technicolor superman shorts, fleischer studios making the first nine and its successor the remaining eight through 1943. paramount took over the company and renamed it famous studios on may 27, 1942. fleischer then oversaw animation for military training films at the jam handy organization, supervised the animated rudolph the red-nosed reindeer (1948), and in 1958 revived out of the inkwell films with hal seeger for a hundred color television shorts.
related profiles; Paul Terry, Ralph Bakshi, John Kricfalusi
sources; wikipedia: max fleischer, wikipedia: fleischer studios, wikipedia: out of the inkwell, wikipedia: song car-tunes, wikipedia: superman (1940s cartoons)
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