Movies - Fleischer Studios

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Fleischer Studios, Inc. is an American corporation which originated as an animation studio located at 1600 Broadway, New York City, New York. It was founded in 1921 by brothers Max Fleischer and Dave Fleischer, who ran the company from its inception until being fired by parent company Paramount Pictures in January 1942. In its prime, it was the most significant competitor to Walt Disney Productions, and is notable for bringing to the screen cartoons featuring Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, and Superman.

Silent Films

The company had its start when Max Fleischer invented the rotoscope which allowed for extremely lifelike animation. Using this device, the Fleischer brothers got a contract with Bray Studio in 1919 to produce their own series called Out of the Inkwell
which featured their first character, Koko the Clown. This became a very successful series which gave them the confidence to start their own studio in 1921.

Throughout the 1920s, the studio was one of the top producers of animation, with clever humor and numerous innovations. These included Ko-Ko Song Cartunes, sing-along shorts (featuring "The Famous Bouncing Ball"), which were a precursor to music videos; and extended length educational films on subjects like relativity.

The studio even produced some experimental sound films years before The Jazz Singer
. The sound shorts attracted little interest at the time though, in part because only a few theaters were then equipped with electronic speakers.

The studio used Lee De Forest's methods to produce over a dozen early cartoons with synchronized sound tracks, including, Come Take a Trip in My Airship, Darling Nelly Gray, My Old Kentucky Home, and In the Good Old Summer Time.

Sound and Color

With the full adoption of sound films in the late 1920s, the studio was one of the few animation companies to successfully make the transition with Screen Songs
, a continuation of the earlier Ko-Ko Song Cartunes. The first of these was The Sidewalks of New York, released on February 5, 1929. In October of that same year, the Fleischers introduced a new series called Talkartoons
. Earlier entries in the series were mostly one-shot cartoons, but a new character, Bimbo became eventually a staple of the series. Bimbo was quickly upstaged by his girlfriend, Betty Boop, who quickly became the star of the studio. Betty was the first featured female character in American animation, and she reflected the distinctive adult urban orientation of the studio's product.

The Fleischers' success was further solidified when they licensed E.C. Segar's comic strip character Popeye the Sailor for a cartoon series of his own. Popeye eventually became the most popular series the Fleischers ever produced, and its success rivaled that of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoons. Three Technicolor Popeye featurettes were produced in the late 1930s, which were billed in many theatres alongside with or above the main feature.

Unfortunately, the studio's fortunes began to turn as the 1930s continued. In 1934, the Hays Code was enacted in Hollywood, which meant severe censorship for films. As a result, Betty was desexualized and much of her charm was lost. Even worse, the Fleischers caved in to pressure from their distributor, Paramount Pictures, to begin emulating the style and content of Walt Disney's cartoons, which robbed the studio of their distinctive flavor. The most notable example of the Fleischers' adaptation of the Disney style was their Color Classics
series, which was essentially a copy of Disney's Silly Symphonies
.

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