Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution

12. Although this book is primarily about Max

Richard Fleischer 77 12 Although this book is primarily about Max Fleischer, there was an Essie Fleischer too. When Max and Essie took their marriage vows in 1905, they really meant it—especially the “until death do us part” promise. Death parted them sixty-five years later. Essie was a five foot three firecracker with a constantly smoking short fuse and a slightly broken nose that was never properly set. She got that when she passed out in the bathroom of our Union Street apartment while she was pregnant with me. It was not just her fuse that kept smoking but she herself, a chainsmoker , just like Max. What makes it noteworthy is that she started smoking before it became popular for women to do so in public. Years later, when women experimented with cigars and pipes, Essie was out there puffing away with the best of them. But that was typical of Essie, always avant-garde. There is a daring photograph of her on a summer holiday in the Catskill 78 Out of the Inkwell Mountains, in the early 1920s, wearing voluminous skirts that she has pulled back between her legs so that it looks like she’s wearing men’s trousers. Bridge and mah-jongg were games that ladies played. My mother organized a poker club with her women friends. She loved gambling, any kind. She got interested in horse racing and made occasional trips out to the Narragansett racetrack, not all that far from Manhattan. Even after she found a bookie, she still went to the track. She loved watching the horses run and the excitement of rooting home the very occasional winner. She got a special kick out of the races because a relative of ours was Bobby Merit, a well-known, top professional jockey. He’d phone her with tips every once in a while. Mostly they didn’t work, but she was thrilled with feeling that she was on the inside. When Fleischer Studios eventually moved to Miami, Florida, my mother was not at all unhappy. She loved Miami Beach, and Hialeah racetrack was close by. Our family moved into an impressively large two-story house in Miami Beach. One of the first things my mother did was to get herself a bookie. On the days she couldn’t get to Hialeah, she’d keep that bookie busy. Her big problem was that she loved to be out on our rather extensive grounds among the exotic plants and not close to a phone to place bets and get results. Her solution was quite simple. She had phones installed on the trunks of several of the many palm trees. The effect on uninitiated visitors was quite startling, particularly if they were in the pergola. From their point of view, it looked like my mother was talking to a tree. My mother had a very good operatic singing voice. It was untrained, but she could really sing. Whenever there was a large, formal family event, usually a wedding or a bar mitzvah, there Richard Fleischer 79 would be, without fail, a call for Essie to sing after dinner was finished. It didn’t take much urging. Up she’d get and, without any accompaniment, belt out the same song every time, “Ah, Sweet Mystery of Life (at Last I’ve Found Thee).” I sat in dread of the last line, “For it is love alone that lives for aye!” which ended on a high C. It is an impossibly high note. I always feared she wouldn’t make it, that she’d be off-key, or that her voice would crack, that there would be a great embarrassment, a humiliation . But the only things that cracked were any nearby glasses. She hit the high C every time. It would get her a standing ovation, and she never failed to amaze me. Someone once asked Dame Sybil Thorndike if she’d ever thought of divorcing her husband: Her response: “Divorce? No! Murder? Yes!” That pretty much applies to my parents’ relationship . Theirs was a long marriage but not a particularly smooth one. In fact, it sometimes got pretty rocky. There were some good shouting matches, with my mother doing by far most of the shouting. I seem to remember a dent in a kitchen wall that was made by a coffee pot that she winged at my father. These contretemps were usually brought on by...