Dave Fleischer

Brother Dave’s on-camera performance in a clown suit was rotoscoped into the character Ko-Ko the Clown, who starred in the Out of the Inkwell series (1919–29), produced and distributed by the Bray Studio in New York City. The basic premise for the series is a live-action…

…to 1942 brothers Max and Dave Fleischer produced numerous cartoon short subjects in which an animated Popeye was voiced by Jack Mercer and other actors. In the 1960s and ’70s Popeye cartoons were made for American television, where the old cartoons also found a wide audience. Popeye comic books were…

… and directed by his brother Dave. Modeled on the sexy, coy flapper of the 1920s, in particular the singer Helen Kane, Betty Boop has huge eyes, long eyelashes, which she bats frequently, and a distinctive high-pitched voice, provided by various actresses, notably Mae Questel. Betty frequently punctuates her sentences with…

Max and Dave Fleischer had become successful New York animators while Disney was still living in Kansas City, Missouri. The Fleischers invented the rotoscoping process, still in use today, in which a strip of live-action footage can be traced and redrawn as a cartoon. The Fleischers exploited…