Celebrating Superman's Leap to the Silver Screen!

On this day in 1941, Fleischer Studios released what would be the first of nine Superman cartoons (another eight were made by the Studio's successor, Famous Studios). Considered by many to be some of the finest animated short films from the Golden Age of Animation, the first film in this series, "Superman" (a.k.a "The Mad Scientist") took the 33rd spot in Jerry Beck's 1994 book "The 50 Greatest Cartoons: As Selected by 1,000 Animation Professionals." 

In celebration of this very special day we're sharing a few fascinating facts about these captivating and lavishly animated cartoons, and the impact they - and the Fleischers themselves - had on the American myth that is Superman.

Like Popeye before him, Superman was one of the few characters that the Fleischers did not create, but rather brought to animated life from comics. And just like Popeye before him (to whom the Fleischers gave a predilection for - and super strength from - spinach), Superman found some of most of his identifiable traits at the hands of Fleischer animators. 

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​In the original comic books Superman could leap, but did you know that he couldn't fly? It was his ability to jump about 1/8 of a mile, that enabled him "to leap tall buildings in a single bound." But the Fleischers found all that, when animated, all that leaping was kind of... silly looking. So it was the Fleischers that granted Superman with the super power of flight. And the rest, as they say, is history. 

Another one of the Fleischer's contributions to Superman: the phone booth. 

In the comic books, Clark Kent had to make his quick changes in a variety of places (including dark alleys, store rooms and perhaps the occasional phone booth), but it was the Fleischers who ensured that there was always a phone booth handy and it wasn't long before the image of Clark Kent dashing into a phone booth and emerging heroically and dramatically transformed into a superhero became an iconic and lasting part of the Superman myth.

We hope you'll join us in celebrating this landmark day in the history of a Great American Superhero by watching that first "Superman" film on our YouTube Channel, where you can now find all the Fleischer's Superman films.