Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution

26. The whole thing was incomprehensible to me

Richard Fleischer 155 26 The whole thing was incomprehensible to me. My folks broke? How was that possible? Money was never an issue in our family. Anything I wanted I got, without question or hesitation. When I graduated from public school and wanted to go to an expensive prep school, Peekskill Military Academy, because a friend of mine went there—and, besides, I liked the uniform—I went to Peekskill. In fact, when the academy got hard up for cash, my father bailed it out of the hole. When I wanted to go to Brown University and then to the Yale School of Drama, both pricey universities, I went. When I said I needed a car, my parents got me a Packard convertible. And what about my folks, with their chauffeur-driven, twelve-cylinder Packard limousine? What about the estate in Miami Beach? Weren’t they still residing in apartment 11J at the elegant Windermere Hotel? There were no indications I could see that things had gotten this bad—or even bad at all. 156 Out of the Inkwell It had been at least twenty years since my father had lost the original Fleischer Studios. During that time, his income from the Jam Handy Organization and from J. R. Bray was modest. The Miami Beach estate was long gone, sold well below its market value. The limo and its driver bit the dust as well. Surely, one would think, Max would have accumulated a very sizable retirement fund from royalties generated by the tremendously successful Screen Songs, Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, and Superman cartoons. It’s true that lawsuits suck up money with the same zest that anteaters suck up ants, and the Paramount case had been no exception. It certainly did its job. It took five years of litigation to reduce whatever funds Max had to almost nothing. His faithful and devoted secretary, Vera Coleman, survived on a minuscule salary and social security while she typed the voluminous memos and legal documents. Stanley Handman, as Max’s representative, had done his best to keep expenses down. In fact, he went well beyond the call of duty. He trimmed his fees as things got tighter until he was working pro bono. He stayed with the case to the very end, even beyond the end. As soon as I learned of the financial situation, I insisted that I help my parents and Vera. I certainly wasn’t one of Hollywood’s highest-paid directors, but I knew I had to do something. Ruth and Seymour had done all that they could afford, but it wasn’t easy for them to do much since their lives had been disrupted by a terrible tragedy: their two young sons had contracted polio simultaneously (these were the pre–Salk vaccine days) and were hospitalized for more than a year. The emotional and financial distress was almost beyond belief. In any event, in spite of strong protests from my father, I Richard Fleischer 157 worked out a monthly budget for my parents and Vera. They could now stop worrying about the rent, food, utilities, and other expenses. It wasn’t lavish, but it was enough. My father smiled for the first time since we arrived in New York. For me, it was emotionally devastating. It was simply unthinkable that he should be in such financial straits. How could such a thing happen? It wasn’t until I started to write this book and began going through my father’s papers and documents that I began to get some idea. The first cartoons that Max produced for Paramount, in 1929, were the sing-along bouncing ball Screen Songs.They were quick, easy, and very inexpensive to make. And they were hugely successful. Paramount was taken completely by surprise. How much of a surprise, and how much of an embarrassment to some executives, is apparent from the following letter, dated July 9, 1957, that Max sent to Stanley Handman: Dear Stanley, To the best of my recollections, I attended a Paramount convention in California about 1932 or 1933. At that time, Emanuel Cohen was vice-president of Paramount (or Famous Artists Lasky). He called me aside in one of the meeting rooms at the Convention hotel (The Ambassador, I believe) and told me that he and the high-ups in Paramount were very much surprised at the way the “Screen Songs” were selling. He said...