The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the popularization of sound synchronized cartoons in 1928 and gradually ended in the 1960s when theatrical animated shorts started to lose popularity to the newer medium of television. Animated media from after the golden age, especially on television, were produced on cheaper budgets and with more limited techniques between the late 1950s and 1980s.
Fleischer Studios was an American animation studio founded in 1929 by brothers Max and Dave Fleischer, who ran the pioneering company from its inception until its acquisition by Paramount Pictures, the parent company and the distributor of its films. In its prime, Fleischer Studios was a premier producer of animated cartoons for theaters, with Walt Disney Productions being its chief competitor in the 1930s.
Max Fleischer was a Polish-American animator and studio owner. Born in Kraków, Poland, Fleischer immigrated to the United States where he became a pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon and served as the head of Fleischer Studios, which he co-founded with his younger brother Dave. He brought such comic characters as Koko the Clown, Betty Boop, Popeye, and Superman to the movie screen, and was responsible for several technological innovations, including the rotoscope, the "follow the bouncing ball" technique pioneered in the Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes films, and the "stereoptical process". Film director Richard Fleischer was his son.
Winfield Bennett Mercer, known professionally as Jack Mercer, was an American voice actor. He is best known as the voice of cartoon characters Popeye the Sailor Man and Felix the Cat. The son of vaudeville and Broadway performers, he also performed on the vaudeville and legitimate stages.
The Fleischer Superman cartoons are a series of seventeen animated superhero short films released in Technicolor by Paramount Pictures and based upon the comic book character Superman, making them his first animated appearance.
Famous Studios was the first animation division of the film studio Paramount Pictures from 1942 to 1967. Famous was established as a successor company to Fleischer Studios, after Paramount seized control of the aforementioned studio amid the departure of its founders, Max and Dave Fleischer, in 1942. The studio's productions included three series started by the Fleischers—Popeye the Sailor, Superman, and Screen Songs—as well as Little Audrey, Little Lulu, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Honey Halfwitch, Herman and Katnip, Baby Huey, and the Noveltoons and Modern Madcaps series.
James H. "Shamus" Culhane was an American animator, film director, and film producer. He is best known for his work in the Golden age of American animation.
Dave Fleischer was an American film director and producer who co-owned Fleischer Studios with his older brother Max Fleischer. He was a native of New York City.
U.M. & M. TV Corporation was an American media company best known as the original purchaser of the pre-October 1950 short films and cartoons produced by Paramount Pictures, excluding Popeye and Superman. The initials stand for United Film Service, MPA TV of New Orleans, and Minot T.V.
Joseph Oriolo was an American cartoon animator, writer, director and producer, known as the co-creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost and the creator of the Felix the Cat TV series. He provided the voice of the Italian barber in Gulliver's Travels.
Samuel Timberg was an American musician and composer for the stage, film studios, and television.
Gabby is a short-lived Max Fleischer animated cartoon series distributed through Paramount Pictures. Gabby debuted as the town crier in the 1939 animated feature Gulliver’s Travels produced by Fleischer. Shortly afterward, Paramount and Fleischer gave Gabby his own Technicolor spinoff cartoon series, eight entries of which were produced in 1940 and 1941. Gabby was voiced by Pinto Colvig, the voice of Walt Disney's Goofy, Pluto, and Grumpy and Sleepy from the 1937 animated film Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Gulliver's Travels is a 1939 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Max Fleischer and directed by Dave Fleischer for Fleischer Studios. Released to cinemas in the United States on December 22, 1939, by Paramount Pictures, the story is a very loose adaptation of Jonathan Swift's 1726 novel of the same name, specifically only the first part of four, which tells the story of Lilliput and Blefuscu, and centers around an explorer who helps a small kingdom who declared war after an argument over a wedding song. The film was Fleischer Studios' first feature-length animated film, as well as the second animated feature film produced by an American studio after Walt Disney Productions' Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, as Paramount had commissioned the feature in response to the success of that film. The sequences for the film were directed by Seymour Kneitel, Willard Bowsky, Tom Palmer, Grim Natwick, William Henning, Roland Crandall, Thomas Johnson, Robert Leffingwell, Frank Kelling, Winfield Hoskins, and Orestes Calpini.
Seymour Kneitel was an American animator, best known for his work with Fleischer Studios and its successor, Famous Studios.
Isadore Sparber was an American storyboard artist, writer, director and producer of animated films. He is best known for his work with Fleischer Studios and its successor, Famous Studios. When credited, his work appeared under varying versions of his name, including "Izzy Sparber," "I. Sparber," "Irving Sparber," and "Isidore Sparber" or "Isadore Sparber."
Superman (1941), also known as The Mad Scientist, is the first installment in a series of seventeen animated Technicolor short films based upon the DC Comics character Superman. It was produced by Fleischer Studios and released to theaters by Paramount Pictures on September 26, 1941. Superman ranked number 33 in a list of the fifty greatest cartoons of all time sourced from a 1994 poll of 1000 animation professionals, and was nominated for the 1942 Academy Award for Best Animated Short Subject.
Willard Gustav Bowsky was an American animator best known for his work at Fleischer Studios in New York City and Miami, Florida, where he worked on cartoons featuring Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, and Superman, in addition to two feature-length animated films. Fellow Fleischer animator Shamus Culhane described Bowsky as "what one might call a pre-McCarthy, gung ho, all-American Babbitt." He was described as being outspoken with anti-Semitic remarks, but skilled at animating complicated perspective shots and directing many of the jazz-influenced cartoons produced by the studio.
Popeye the Sailor is an American animated series of short films based on the Popeye comic strip character created by E. C. Segar. In 1933, Max and Dave Fleischer's Fleischer Studios, based in New York City, adapted Segar's characters into a series of theatrical cartoon shorts for Paramount Pictures. The plotlines in the animated cartoons tended to be simpler than those presented in the comic strips, and the characters slightly different. A villain, usually Bluto, makes a move on Popeye's "sweetie", Olive Oyl. The villain clobbers Popeye until he eats spinach, giving him superhuman strength. Thus empowered, Popeye makes short work of the villain.
Winston Singleton Sharples was an American composer known for his work with animated short subjects, especially those created by the animation department at Paramount Pictures. In his 35-year career, Sharples scored more than 700 cartoons for Paramount and Famous Studios, and composed music for two Frank Buck films, Wild Cargo (1934) and Fang and Claw (1935).
