Rotoscoped sequence of Koko the Clown from the 1919 film The Tantalizing Fly: length 45 seconds, 410 kbit/s overall. Link to full size 480×320 pixels. Link to complete film.Still from an Inkwell Imps cartoon featuring Koko the Clown and Fitz the Dog.The National Film Registry-preserved short Koko's Earth Control, featuring Koko the Clown and Fitz the Dog.
Out of the Inkwell is an American animated film series of the silent era created by Max Fleischer, which pioneered the use of several animation techniques during its run. The shorts were a mix between live-action and animation, with cartoon character Koko the Clown (initially known as "The Inkwell Clown" or simply "The Clown") interacting with live-action people, most notably Fleischer himself (referred to as "The Boss"). [1]
The series was first produced at Bray Pictures between 1918 and 1921, when Max and Dave Fleischer founded Inkwell Studios, releasing the series through various state-rights companies (including what would become Warner Bros. Pictures) until 1924 when the Fleischers joined Red Seal Pictures. After Red Seal folded in 1927, Paramount Pictures picked up the series and renamed it The Inkwell Imps, which ran until 1929.
History
The series was the result of three short experimental films that Max Fleischer independently produced from 1914 to 1916 to demonstrate his invention, the rotoscope, a device consisting of a film projector and easel used to achieve realistic movement for animated cartoons. The rotoscope projected motion picture film through an opening in the easel, covered by a glass pane serving as a drawing surface. The image on the projected film was traced onto paper, advancing the film one frame at a time as each drawing was made. Fleischer's younger brother Dave Fleischer, who was working as a clown at Coney Island, served as the model for their first famous character, eventually known as Koko the Clown.
Koko the Clown in KoKo's Showtime (1924)
Out of the Inkwell began at the Bray Studio as a monthly entry in The Bray Pictograph Screen Magazine produced for Paramount from 1918, and later for Goldwyn Pictures from 1919 to 1921. In that same year, the Fleischer brothers started their own studio, and in 1923, the clown who previously had no name came to be known as Koko when animation veteran Dick Huemer became the new director of animation.
Huemer, who began his animation career with the Mutt and Jeff cartoons in 1916, brought the influence of the short and tall companions to Out of the Inkwell with the creation of a small canine companion named Fitz, who later evolved into Bimbo in the sound era. Huemer redesigned the clown for animation, which reduced Fleischer's dependency on the Rotoscope for fluid animation. He also defined the drawing style with his distinctive inking quality that the series was famous for, but it was the interaction of the live-action sequences with the artist/creator, Max Fleischer, and his pen and ink creations that were the foundation of the series. Typically, the cartoons start with live-action showing Max drawing the characters on paper, or opening the inkwell to release the characters into "reality".
Advertisement to theater owners in The Film Daily, 1926.
The Out of the Inkwell series ran from 1919 to mid 1927,[2] and was renamed The Inkwell Imps for Paramount, continuing until 1929.[3] In all, 77 Out of the Inkwell and 57 Inkwell Imps films were produced in eleven years.
In late 1928, the Fleischers fell out with business partner Alfred Weiss and left Inkwell Pictures to establish a new studio. As a result, Weiss retained the Ko-Ko character, while the Inkwell Imps series continued under another staff until July 1929, when Paramount replaced it with Fleischer's Talkartoons. Weiss would re-issue a handful of 1921–26 Out of the Inkwell shorts with sound beginning in the fall of 1929.
Fleischer regained rights to Koko the Clown in 1931, adding him to the Talkartoons series as a supporting character to Bimbo and Betty Boop. Koko's last Fleischer theatrical appearance was in the Betty Boop cartoon Ha-Ha-Ha (1934), a remake of the silent Out of the Inkwell film The Cure (1924). Years later, Koko had a brief cameo in the Famous Studio-produced Screen Song entry Toys will be Toys (1949), his only theatrical appearance in color.
In 1950, Stuart Productions released a number of the Inkwell Studios Out of the Inkwell cartoons, and a selection of the Paramount Inkwell Imps cartoons to television.[4] In 1955, the Inkwell Imps, along with 2,500 pre-October 1950 Paramount shorts and cartoons were sold to television packagers, the majority acquired by U.M. & M. TV Corporation.
In 1958, Max Fleischer revived his studio in a partnership with Hal Seeger, and in 1960 produced a series of one hundred Out Of The Inkwell five-minute cartoons. In the new color series, Koko had a clown girlfriend named Kokette, a pal named Kokonut, and a villain named Mean Moe. Larry Storch provided the voice for Koko and all of the supporting characters.
Many of the shorts in the original series are now in the public domain. One short in the series, 1922's The Hypnotist, was preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.[5] In 2024, the short Koko's Earth Control was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".[6]
Filmography
The following is an attempt to list the complete filmography of the Out of the Inkwell/Inkwell Imps shorts, assembled from the best surviving documentation.[7][8][9]
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