Fleischer Studios
Max and Dave Fleischer ran the only American animation studio that seriously rivalled Disney in the 1930s, and they got there by being stranger. Their films are urban, jazz-scored, rubbery and frequently unsettling, built on inventions of their own: rotoscoping, which Max patented in 1915 to trace live-action movement, and a stereoptical process that put real three-dimensional model sets behind drawn characters.
About Fleischer Studios
Max and Dave Fleischer ran the only American animation studio that seriously rivalled Disney in the 1930s, and they got there by being stranger. Their films are urban, jazz-scored, rubbery and frequently unsettling, built on inventions of their own: rotoscoping, which Max patented in 1915 to trace live-action movement, and a stereoptical process that put real three-dimensional model sets behind drawn characters. They had Betty Boop, they had the Popeye shorts, and in 1941 they made a Superman series so expensive and so beautiful that it still gets studied. The studio lost control of itself in a dispute with Paramount and was taken over in 1942, which is the reason so few people can name it.
The Hays Code of 1934 substantially redesigned Betty Boop, and the studio's most distinctive character never fully recovered.
Rights holder: Fleischer Studios, Inc.. CharacterTshirts.com is an independent guide. It is not affiliated with, authorized by, endorsed by, or connected to any character rights holder, publisher, studio or network named on this site. All character names and titles are trademarks of their respective owners and are used here only to identify the products described.
Key eras
| Era | Years | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| Inventions | 1915–1929 | Rotoscoping patented, and the Out of the Inkwell series. |
| Betty Boop and Popeye | 1930–1938 | The studio's commercial peak, before and after the Hays Code. |
| Superman and the takeover | 1941–1942 | The Superman shorts, then Paramount's takeover of the studio. |