The Fleischer Takeover: How Betty Boop's Studio Was Taken (The Mafia in Animation, Part 2)
The Mafia in Animation, Part 2
In the 1930s, one studio could stand toe to toe with Disney. It gave us Betty Boop, Popeye and the most beautiful Superman cartoons ever made.
Then it was gone. No gangsters, no getaway car. Just a strike, a move to Miami, a big loan and a boardroom. Was it a mob hit? Let's check the evidence. Same stamps as always: REAL, RUMOR and ANARCHY.
Who were the Fleischers?
REAL: Max and Dave Fleischer were brothers from New York. Max invented the rotoscope, a device for tracing live-action film to make animation move realistically. He patented it in 1917.
REAL: their studio created Koko the Clown, Betty Boop and the bouncing-ball sing-along cartoons, and brought Popeye to the screen in 1933.
Where Disney was sweet and polished, Fleischer was jazzy, weird and very New York.
The first big strike in animation
REAL: in 1937, Fleischer artists went on strike for better pay and conditions. It lasted about five months and is considered the first major strike in American animation, four years before the Disney strike we covered in Part 1.
REAL: soon after, in 1938, the Fleischers moved their whole studio from New York to Miami, Florida. Florida offered tax breaks, and RUMOR: many people believe the brothers also hoped to get away from the union.
The loan
REAL: Paramount Pictures, which released Fleischer cartoons, lent the brothers money to build the Miami studio and make feature films, starting with Gulliver's Travels (1939).
REAL: Gulliver's Travels did fairly well. The next feature, Mr. Bug Goes to Town, opened in December 1941, just days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Audiences had other things on their minds, and it flopped.
The takeover
REAL: the studio owed Paramount a lot of money, and the brothers weren't getting along. They reportedly stopped speaking to each other. In 1941, Paramount took control of the studio, and in early 1942, Max and Dave were out.
REAL: Paramount renamed it Famous Studios and moved it back to New York. The Popeye cartoons continued. The Superman series ended in 1943.
Wait, what about Betty Boop?
REAL: Betty was made more modest in 1934, years before the takeover. That was because of the Hays Code, Hollywood's new rules about what movies could show. (More on the Hays Code in our Insane History of Animation series.)
So… was it the mob?
ANARCHY: a guy in a trench coat leaning over Max's desk and saying, "This ain't your studio no more, pal." No evidence. But you can picture it.
REAL: what actually happened is a business story. A studio borrowed money, a movie flopped, two brothers stopped working together, and the company holding the loan took over. No mob needed.
The lesson
The Fleischers were brilliant artists who lost control of their own studio. Great art isn't enough. Artists need to understand the business side too, or someone else will run it for them.
Up next
Part 3: The Most Mob-Inspired Cartoons Ever. From Shark Tale to Zootopia, why do cartoons love gangsters?
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