DBWI: Fleischer Flops, Disney Dominates

[Whitewings]

Most people have seen a few of the old Disney shorts, and everybody knows about Fleischer Studios. It's pretty much impossible not to. But back in the early 40s, both studios were in serious trouble. After Disney's Snow White, the Fleischers needed to produce a feature of their own. Several were considered, including several fairy tales and other literary classics, before they went with a Superman feature. It was a huge hit, but also horribly expensive. The studio did get through, and buoyed by the success of Superman, produced Batman and Wonder Woman features. Again, big hits, horribly expensive, but very profitable. In the meantime, Disney's Fantasia, with its need for sound upgrades, and the costly, technically complex Pinocchio, with no access to the overseas markets, both lost heavily, and at the end of World War II the studio folded amidst extensive labour disputes of every sort. So, what if Disney had squeaked by, just barely, and the Fleischers had failed, perhaps due to a poor choice of initial or follow-up feature? How would the animation landscape differ?

 

[Whitewings]

Nothing? No thoughts at all?

 

[Miss Teri]

Disney definitely would've continued as an independent entity, rather than get absorbed by Paramount. Of course, this would mean that Disney's famed tenure as Paramount President never happens. Although, Fleischer did go down the drain in the 60's, which ultimately led to its purchase by Warner Brothers.

 

[Whitewings]

That's true. The Fleischers' successors were brilliant artists, but business savvy... not so much. Though the Warner Brothers purchase was quite surprising, given that the studio had usually worked with Paramount. Still, it did give us the Fantastic Four and Spider-Man animated features, and the various Marvel TV series. Not up to the movies in terms of animation quality, but that's not really a fair comparison.

 

[Alexander the Average]

Also Howard the Duck versus Daffy Duck. Pure comedy gold.

 

[SactoMan101]

Interestingly, Fleischer Studios got bought by Warner Brothers in 1964, mostly because 1) Fleischer did the DC Comics animated work in the 1940's and 1950's and 2) Warner Brothers by 1964 fully owned DC Comics as a subsidiary. By 1987, Warner Brothers Animation--created out of Fleischer Studios and Warner's own animation studio--were pioneering the use of computers to create animation that "looked" like 2-D animation, avoiding the "computer generated look" of earlier computer animation work. The result was especially spectacular with the three Wonder Woman movies (1990, 1993, 1996), The Iron Giant (1998) and the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy (2000, 2002, 2004--they are easily the longest animated features ever made, with each movie around three hours long).

But getting back on topic, one reason why Disney collapsed as its own entity was due to the labor problems arising out of the costly Fantasia and Pinocchio, they couldn't produce short animated films for the US military during World War II like what Fleischer Studios and Warner Brothers Animation could do. Indeed, just about all of those animated short subject films done for the US military at that time are now available on home video, many introduced by Michael Fleischer, the current head of Warner Brothers Animation and a direct descendant of David "Dave" Fleischer, one of two brothers that founded Fleischer Studios in the middle 1920's.