I’ve spoken about a couple of important American animators in the past that I feel are not as well known as they should be but, with regard to those, they are relatively recent animators who began to work in the 50s before later starting to direct films in the 70s and 80s. Today, I want to take a look at an animation legend who began working on animation in the very early 1900s, Max Fleischer, and why you should know about him.
To give a quick background to Max Fleischer before he started his animation career, he was born on July 19th, 1883 in Krakow which was then part of the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria, also known as Austrian Poland. He migrated with his family to the US in 1887 and he later studied and learned about art at the Art Students League of New York. He eventually got a job at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, a newspaper, working as an errand boy before eventually becoming a cartoonist for them. He met fellow cartoonist John Randolph Bray while working there and later worked with him at Paramount to produce animation.
His first animated work, Out of the Inkwell, which was a series of silent animated short films that were released between 1918 and 1929, immediately proved to be a revolutionary work of animation due to the development of a technique known as rotoscoping. For anyone unfamiliar with the term, rotoscoping refers to animation that’s traced over live-action footage to achieve realistic, smooth movement. This technique’s patent expired in 1934 and would go on to become an incredibly important process within the animation industry from Disney’s first feature animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to the works of Ralph Bakshi in the 70s and 80s.
Another stunning technique that Max Fleischer developed was “Follow the Bouncing Ball” which first appeared in his 1924-1927 animated short films Song Car-Tunes. Basically, as the song plays, text appears at the bottom of the screen and a bouncing ball hops from syllable to syllable to help indicate to the audience how to sing the song. I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how prevalent this technique is as I clearly recall seeing it appear in countless media.
In 1929, Max Fleischer, along with his brother Dave Fleischer, founded Fleischer Studios, an animation studio that would go on to have quite an impact on the medium of animation. This studio predominantly released animated shorts with some particularly notable examples being Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor and Superman. They also released two feature length animated films with the 1939 film Gulliver’s Travels being a box office success while their second film, Mr. Bug Goes to Town, was released in 1941 and bombed at the box office.
Tragically, Paramount, who had been funding Fleischer Studios, seized control of the studio due to a failure to make repayments and soon forced Max Fleischer, along with his brother Dave, to resign. After having lost his studio, Max Fleischer struggled to continue his career in the animation industry. He later directed the 1948 animated short film Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and, in 1958, he revived Out of the Inkwell in colour and with sound but his poor health resulted in him moving into a side by side cottages with his wife in Motion Picture Country House in California. On the 25th of September, 1972 at the age of 89, he suffered arterial sclerosis of the brain and passed away.
It seems that relatively few people are familiar with Max Fleischer these days but the impact he had on animation through his techniques and films should not be underestimated. Let me know your thoughts on the animation legend Max Fleischer, whether you’ve seen any of his works, what you think about the techniques he developed, his legacy and any additional information you might have on the topic.
Hopefully you have found this article interesting and informative and, if you wish to seek any of the works I mentioned, don’t hesitate to use amazon.co.uk or amazon.com for all of your needs!