The Pol­ish-Amer­i­can immi­grant who changed the face of animation

By all accounts, Walt Dis­ney is the reign­ing king of Amer­i­can ani­ma­tion. But for a while, he shared the title with Max Fleis­ch­er, a Pol­ish immi­grant and one of the great car­toon­ists of the 20^th cen­tu­ry, whose grit­ty, sub­ver­sive work was a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenger to Walt’s whole­some creations.

Orig­i­nal­ly from Krakow, Fleis­ch­er moved to New York City as a child in 1887. He lived through the Jazz Age and wit­nessed the Roar­ing Twen­ties crash into the Great Depres­sion. He also grew up in America’s inven­tion era, and was among the first to see Thomas Edison’s pro­jec­tion machine cast a flick­er­ing image onto the side of the New York Her­ald build­ing on 34^th street.

The sto­ry goes that after see­ing Win­sor McCay’s 1914 ani­ma­tion Ger­tie the Dinosaur, Fleis­ch­er saw the poten­tial of mov­ing car­toons and began his own exper­i­ments. By 1915, he and his broth­er Dave had invent­ed the roto­scope, a process that allowed the artist to trace the filmed move­ment of a per­son frame by frame, result­ing in a smoother, more life­like ani­ma­tion. The Fleis­ch­er broth­ers’ inno­v­a­tive tech­nique is still used to this day, recent­ly form­ing the basis of Lov­ing Vin­cent and Tehran Taboo.

After var­i­ous ani­ma­tion jobs, the Fleis­ch­ers set up Inkwell Stu­dios in 1921, which lat­er became Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios, where they began pro­duc­ing car­toons on behalf of Para­mount. They enjoyed mas­sive pop­u­lar­i­ty dur­ing the silent era thanks to their ​‘Song Car-Tunes’. A pre­cur­sor to karaōke, these inter­ac­tive car­toons invit­ed audi­ences to sing along by fol­low­ing a lit­tle ball that bounced along the top of the words on-screen. One such short, 1926’s My Old Ken­tucky Home, was actu­al­ly the first ever car­toon to syn­chro­nise voice record­ing with ani­ma­tion, pre­ced­ing Disney’s Steam­boat Willie by two years. Not that Dis­ney admit­ted this – he claimed the achieve­ment as his own and attempt­ed to have ref­er­ences to these ear­ly Fleischer’s ear­ly works swept under the rug.

Voice car­toons allowed Fleischer’s edgy New York team to flour­ish. Their dark, sin­is­ter ani­ma­tions often fea­tured char­ac­ters based on the down­town wise guys Max and his broth­er encoun­tered in East Brook­lyn grow­ing up, as well as music per­for­mances from pop­u­lar artists of the day. In the 1933 ani­ma­tion St James’ Infir­mary Blues, Koko The Clown per­forms a jazzy dance (roto­scoped from the legs of Cab Cal­loway) through a dark cave, its black­ened walls adorned with inked skele­tons shoot­ing dice. And in the 1930 car­toon Swing You Sin­ners, ghouls armed with razors and noos­es chase Bim­bo – a chub­by car­toon dog – through a haunt­ed ceme­tery after he steals a chick­en. The world melts and mutates around him until even­tu­al­ly, he’s devoured by a giant, laugh­ing skull.

Bet­ty Boop, a doe-eyed flap­per girl, would go on to become one of the studio’s most endur­ing cre­ations. Orig­i­nal­ly the love inter­est of Bim­bo, she was an anthro­po­mor­phic French poo­dle with dog ears before she was made into a human girl based on the singer Helen Kane. Her flop­py ears were trans­formed into hoop ear­rings, and she lost her canine but­ton nose. Kane her­self spot­ted the sim­i­lar­i­ty and tried to sue Para­mount and Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios for steal­ing her like­ness – though the case fold­ed when lawyers right­ly point­ed out she had, in turn, appro­pri­at­ed the style and voice of Gertrude Saun­ders (stage name Baby Esther), an African-Amer­i­can singer who reg­u­lar­ly per­formed at The Cot­ton Club in Harlem.

Bet­ty remained a pop­u­lar sex sym­bol right up until the Pro­duc­tion Code of 1934, which imposed restric­tions on adult con­tent and cramped the studio’s style. Her hem­line was low­ered to puri­tan­i­cal lev­els and her naugh­ti­ness was reigned in, mas­sive­ly reduc­ing her appeal. With­out her overt raunch­i­ness, she had no pur­pose. Gone were the days where she’d whack a lech­er­ous old man in the face and seduce Bim­bo into join­ing a cult. The stu­dio was los­ing its bite, while an ambi­tious Walt Dis­ney was wait­ing in the wings, soon to steal the spotlight.

Two oppos­ing ani­ma­tion styles were devel­op­ing at oppo­site ends of the coun­try. Fleischer’s grit­ty streets of New York vers­es Disney’s sun­baked Mid­west. The former’s phi­los­o­phy was ​‘if it can be done in real life, then it isn’t ani­ma­tion’, and his NYC stu­dio con­tin­ued pro­duc­ing wild char­ac­ters who melt­ed and mutat­ed, in a grimy, ripped-up urban set­tings. But Walt ulti­mate­ly had a bet­ter grasp of what sold. He steered clear of sex, jazz and psy­che­del­ic sur­re­al­ism, instead train­ing his artists to cre­ate lush, bright car­toons full of cute char­ac­ters who behaved more realistically.

Dis­ney took big­ger risks while diver­si­fy­ing his out­put, shift­ing his focus to fea­ture-length ani­ma­tions, TV car­toons, and even­tu­al­ly, theme parks. He also realised ear­ly on that the entire movie indus­try was mov­ing to Hol­ly­wood on the West Coast, and set up a stu­dio in sun­ny Cal­i­for­nia. East Coast stu­dios were clos­ing up, but Max refused to budge.

Storm clouds were gath­er­ing over Fleis­ch­er Stu­dios. The broth­ers had fall­en out due to Dave’s adul­ter­ous affair with his sec­re­tary. Mean­while, Paramount’s unre­al­is­tic pro­duc­tion demands put a strain on the team and final­ly, in May 1937, the work­ers went on a bit­ter five-month strike. Fol­low­ing this, the broth­ers decid­ed to pack up and move to Flori­da, but away from the vibran­cy of New York, the unin­spired ani­ma­tors lost their edge.

To add salt to the wound, Para­mount refused to invest in a three-colour Tech­ni­col­or process­es, allow­ing Walt to steam ahead with beau­ti­ful­ly colour­ful cre­ations, includ­ing the fea­ture-length Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, which went on to win an hon­orary Oscar for Best Musi­cal Score at the 11^th Acad­e­my Awards. The world of ani­ma­tion had changed for­ev­er, and the Fleis­ch­ers were now trail­ing behind.

Max had been peti­tion­ing Para­mount about cre­at­ing a fea­ture-length ani­ma­tion for years, but it wasn’t until the suc­cess of Snow White that execs final­ly realised its val­ue. So in 1938, when the Fleis­ch­ers were in the mid­dle of build­ing their Mia­mi stu­dio, they made Gulliver’s Trav­els, fol­lowed by Mr Bug Goes to Town – both of which were com­mer­cial flops. Max and Dave resigned and Para­mount removed the Fleis­ch­er name. Max even­tu­al­ly won a law­suit to rein­state it in 1955, but by then, his career was over. Dis­ney came out on top and the Fleis­ch­er name slid into obscurity.

Max Fleischer’s sto­ry is one of an artist strug­gling to keep up with a chang­ing world, but also one of fear­less cre­ativ­i­ty – his inven­tions and tri­umphs shaped ani­ma­tion as we know it today. And despite being eclipsed by Dis­ney, Max held no hard feel­ings. When Walt asked Max’s son Richard to direct 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Max hap­pi­ly gave him his bless­ings. Although rumour has it, every time Richard men­tioned Walt’s name, his father would reply ​“that son of a bitch.”