Max Fleischer - Fleischer Studios

Fleischer Studios

Fleischer produced his Inkwell films for the Bray Studios until 1921, when he and younger brothers Dave and Lou established Fleischer Studios (initially named "Out of the Inkwell Films") to produce animated cartoons and short subjects; Max was credited as the producer at the beginning of every cartoon as well. Koko and Fitz remained the stars of the Out of the Inkwell series, which was renamed Inkwell Imps in 1927. The Fleischer brothers also partnered with Lee DeForest, Edwin Miles Fadiman, and Hugo Riesenfeld to form Red Seal Pictures Corporation, which owned 36 theaters on the East Coast, extending as far west as Cleveland, Ohio.

Fleischer invented the "follow the bouncing ball" technique for his Song Car-Tunes series of animated singalong shorts beginning in May 1924. After a few films with unsynchronized sound (music and sound effects only), Fleischer added synchronized sound to this series, with My Old Kentucky Home (released April 13, 1926) with a dog-like character saying "Follow the ball, and join in, everybody." The sound entries in the Song Car-Tunes series — roughly 19 out of 36 short films — used the Phonofilm sound-on-film process developed by Lee DeForest. The Song Car-Tunes series would last until early 1927, just a few months before the actual start of the sound era. This was before Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie (1928), which is often mistakenly cited as the first cartoon to synchronize sound with animation. However, by late 1926, both the DeForest Phonofilm Corp. and Red Seal Pictures had filed for bankruptcy, and the Song Car-Tunes series came to an end.

In 1923, Fleischer made two 20-minute educational features explaining Albert Einstein's Theory of Relativity (The Einstein Theory of Relativity) and Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. Both features used a combination of animated special effects and live action. Fleischer also produced Finding His Voice (1929) illustrating how sound films worked.

Into the early sound era, Fleischer produced many technically advanced and sophisticated animated films. Several of his cartoons had soundtracks featuring live or rotoscoped images of the leading jazz performers of the time, most notably Cab Calloway, Louis Armstrong and Don Redman. Fleischer's use of black performers was bold at a time when depictions of blacks were often denigrating and stereotypical.