Max Fleischer is best known as the co-founder of the famous Fleischer Studios, which he started together with his brothers Dave and Joe. Max Fleischer emigrated to New York City from Poland at an early age. He worked as a commercial artist and cartoonist, but an interest in mechanics led him to animation. Specifically, he was driven to find a method to produce animation more efficiently and economically, and came up with a "method of producing moving picture cartoons" in 1915, and patented it in 1917.
The Fleisher Studio turned out some of the most inventive films of the period. Fleischer made the first sound cartoons of contemporary comic heroes like Popeye. At the end of the 1920s, the studio's top artist Grim Natwick came up with a new female character: a seductive, nameless side-character who was modeled after Helen Kane, a waning Hollywood star at the time, known for her high-pitched "Boop-Oop-a-doop". This character, who was initially the nameless girlfriend of 'Bimbo the Dog', would develop into the popular and world famous character, Betty Boop.
As the fame of the cartoon character increased, the popularity of the live actress and singer Helen Kane diminished, and she threatened with lawsuits, all of which were unsuccessful.
He died from heart failure on September 11, 1972, at the age of 89, after a period of poor health. Max Fleischer was an artist, a writer, and an inventor of some 20 patents for motion picture production processes. On the day of his death Max Fleischer was cited as a great pioneer who invented an industry, and was named by Time magazine as the "Dean of Animated Cartoons."
Below, 5 Betty Boop cartoons: Betty Boop: A Song a Day (1936), Betty Boop: Is My Pam Read (1932), Betty Boop: More Pep (1936), Betty Boop's Ker-Choo (1932), Betty Boop: The Candid Candidate (1937).
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