InkwellPart3

Part Three 1924 - 1926

In this installment we’ll explore Out of the Inkwell's tumultuous middle years;
from innovation and expansion... to the edge of utter collapse

(photos courtesy of J.J. Sedelmaier Collection)

An ad for the Studebaker Company featuring The Mecca Building at 1600 Broadway (early 1900s).

It was just a short walk from Out of the Inkwell's original East 48th Street address to its new home at 1600 Broadway, between 48th and 49th Street in the heart of New York City; but what a difference a few blocks makes! The move to the heart of Times Square established Out of the Inkwell as a major player in animation. The Mecca Building (known as the Studebaker Building for the famed Studebaker Showroom on the side of the building facing 7th Avenue), housed a number of film and film-related companies, as well as the Cinderella Ballroom, where jazz legends like Leon “Bix” Beiderbecke made their New York City debut.

Shortly after moving into their new space, Max and Dave partnered with film distributor Edwin Miles Fadiman and theater manager Hugo Riesenfeld to form their own film distribution company: The Red Seal Pictures Corporation. Red Seal enabled Max and Dave to serve as both producers and distributors of their work. Moving into distribution offered the brothers more control over the promotion, release, and sale of their films as well as the opportunity to expand their efforts to include live-action featurettes.

While it's important to remember that Out of the Inkwell and Red Seal were two distinct companies, the relationship between the two - both in terms of leadership and contractual obligation - created quite a bit of overlap. Looking at the films produced during this period, it can be difficult to determine where one company began and the other ended.

Phonofilm Sound

It was Red Seal’s Hugo Riesenfeld who introduced Max to fellow inventor Lee De Forest, whose Phonofilm enabled sound to be recorded directly on film. This ensured that the sound and the moving image stayed in-sync regardless of the speed at which the projectionist ran the film, which had to be cranked by hand. It would even stay in-sync if, as often happened, the projectionist had to cut out damaged frames or make emergency repairs to fragile, well-worn film.

Phonofilm was a revolutionary development, but many in the industry still viewed sound film as a gimmick or a passing fad. Not Riesenfeld. He was eager for a technical solution to the challenges of sound. He is said to have once arranged for a horse to run on a treadmill in one of his theaters to create the sound of a horse on the run. The effect was spectacular until the treadmill jammed, throwing the rider (who survived), and killing the horse.

Max partnered with De Forest and, in 1924, Out of the Inkwell produced (and Red Seal released), the first animated cartoons with synchronized sound. While there is some disagreement about the first film to utilize the Phonofilm process, an article in the New York Daily News published in February 1924, reports that the first three Phonofilms debuted together at the Rialto Theater: Mother, Mother, Mother, Pin a Rose on Me, Come Take a Trip in My Airship and Goodbye My Lady Love. All three films were part of the studio’s Song Car-Tune series and featured music, but no spoken dialogue.

Two years later they released My Old Kentucky Home which is often cited as the first sound cartoon because it included spoken words that had to be synchronized with the precise movements of an animated character’s mouth. Disney’s Steamboat Willie, which is sometimes credited as the first animated film with synchronized sound, wouldn’t be released for another two years.

HAS ANYBODY HERE SEEN KELLY? was one of 19 Song Car-Tunes to use Lee De Forest's Phonofilm recording system (1926).

The Bouncing Ball

A review of Tramp, Tramp, Tramp as it appeared in Motion Picture World (June 1926).

Out of the Inkwell produced 36 Song Car-Tunes between 1924 and 1927, but only 19 of them were sound films. Most movie houses across the country were not equipped to show films using De Forest’s Phonofilm process. In fact, most of the movie houses that could show them were in the New York area and were owned by Hugo Riesenfeld himself.

Despite all this, the Song Car-Tune series was tremendously popular thanks to one of the most beloved and well-known of Max Fleischer's many inventions: the Bouncing Ball. Sing-a-longs were not new to movie audiences. The pianists who provided live accompaniment for films often used sing-alongs to keep audiences occupied during occasional breaks in the on-screen entertainment so projectionists could change reels or deal with technical difficulties. But audiences often didn't know, couldn't remember, or couldn't agree on song lyrics and weren't particularly good at finding or maintaining a cohesive beat. In other words, sometimes sing-a-longs were just a mess. The Bouncing Ball provided lyrics and tempo, improving the quality of the sing-along and the spirit of the audience.

The first Bouncing Ball cartoons were not terribly precise. Matching the frame-by-frame bounce of an animated ball with music was a difficult and unforgiving process. The solution turned out to be elegantly simple: a live-action ball controlled by a live-action person. The lyrics were attached to a drum that was turned by one technician as a second technician (often Lou Fleischer himself), wearing black gloves and holding a black stick with a white ball on its tip, bounced the ball from word to word in time with the music. This enabled the ball to bounce gracefully from beat to beat, hanging on longer notes and allowing for subtle shifts in tempo.

Lee De Forest with his Phonofilm equipped camera.

New York Daily News, February 24, 1924

In addition to the traditional Bouncing Ball, Song Car-Tunes often featured a verse in which animated characters jumped from word to word, or interacted with the lyrics of the song.

By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1926)

Comin' Through the Rye (1926)

Darling Nellie Gray (1926)

Carrie of the Chorus

Red Seal offered Max the opportunity to move into producing live-action films, something he was particularly keen to try, and he wasted no time getting started. Max quickly inked a deal to produce a series of live-action films entitled Carrie of the Chorus. The series centered on the adventures - and misadventures - of a beautiful young chorus girl by the name of Carrie who toured the country with a traveling dance troupe. Max's daughter Ruth, a professional dancer who performed under the name Ruth Dix had recently returned home after touring the country as part of a traveling dance troupe, was tapped to play Carrie's best friend and sidekick. Ruth's beau at the time, a young Ray Bolger, also made his big screen debut in the series. Today, only one film in the series remains: Another Bottle Doctor.

WATCH ANOTHER BOTTLE DOCTOR

New Year, New Challenges

This 1926 ad in Motion Picture World celebrates the expansion of Red Seal into new markets.

Red Seal released 26 new films in 1924 nearly all of which were animated films produced by Out of the Inkwell. These films introduced the audiences to synchronized sound, the Bouncing Ball, and production on their new Carrie of the Chorus series was well underway. It was, in short, a remarkable year for Red Seal and for Out of the Inkwell. Flush with optimism, Red Seal invested in more and more movie houses. They eventually acquired more than 50 theaters stretching as far west as Ohio and began the process of equipping the theaters with the technology they needed to present Phonofilm sound films. Red Seal also committed to releasing an astounding 141 new films in 1925.

Out of the Inkwell continued producing it's popular and innovative Ko-Ko the Clown films throughout this period. Perhaps one of the most unusual of these films is the 1926 short It's The Cats, which features a comically unruly team of live kittens along with a handful of eerily realistic kitten puppets (who were clearly easier to direct than live kittens).

Film provided courtesy of MaxFleischerCartoons.com.

The team at Out of the Inkwell kicked things into high gear, but there was a problem. Thanks to increased production demands and the cost of buying and upgrading new movie houses for sound, Red Seal very quickly found itself struggling to stay afloat. Edwin Fadiman, troubled by the dramatic increase in overhead costs, resigned from Red Seal. But walking away wasn't an option for Max and Dave, or for Out of the Inkwell, which had already renewed its contract with Red Seal for another three years.

The impact that Red Seal's inability to meet its obligations had on Out of the Inkwell cannot be overstated. The studio's efforts to keep up with Red Seal's overly ambitious release schedule were being increasingly undermined by Red Seal's inability to pay its bills, including the cost of developing the very films that Red Seal so desperately needed to bring to market. Hoping to cut costs, Red Seal released several "ready-made" (and cheaper) animated shorts by smaller studios including the Animated Hair and Inklings series, none of which performed well. Based on amusing but inactive gimmicks, they lacked the imagination, humor, technical inventiveness, and sheer artistry that had already become the hallmarks of the Fleischer style. As Max’s son Richard writes in this book Out of the Inkwell, it seemed as if “the more Red Seal spent, the more it lost.”

To make things even more complicated Lee De Forest, who seemed to be a magnet for patent lawsuits, was embroiled in at least two different high-profile lawsuits at the time. In September 1926 his company, the Lee De Forest Phonofilm Corporation, filed for bankruptcy.

In October of 1926 Red Seal filed for bankruptcy. Out of the Inkwell was left stranded, saddled and crippled with debt. Even the films that the studio had already completed and sent to the lab to be developed were inaccessible: in an effort to recoup more than $200,000 in unpaid charges (or over $3,000,000 by 2021 standards!), the lab refused to release any materials back to the studio until their bill was paid in full. The situation could not have been more dire.

But that's not the end of this amazing story, and you’ll never guess what happens next!
Coming soon - Out of the Inkwell: The Final Chapter.

Go to:

Part One

Part two

Part Four

Films like Animated Hair did not perform as well as films produced in house at Out of the Inkwell.