Dave Fleischer

Early life and career

Fleischer was the youngest of five brothers and grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, New York City, a poor Jewish neighbourhood. By the time he was born, his father had lost his means of livelihood due to the mass production of garments.

Fleischer worked as an usher at the Palace Theater on Broadway, where he was exposed to vaudeville. This experience contributed to the development of his sense for gags and comic timing, which came into play when he joined forces with his older brother, Max in the production of animated cartoons. At one point, the family lived in Coney Island, and he became interested in being a clown for one of the sideshow amusements. This clown character would be recalled a few years later in connection with Max's early experiments with his first major invention, "The Rotoscope", and was the source of their first character who evolved into Koko the Clown in the pioneering series, Out of the Inkwell.

Around 1913–14, he began working as a film cutter for Pathé Exchange the American branch of Pathé, the French company that was the world's largest film production and distribution company, and the largest manufacturer of film equipment in the first decades of the 20th century.

Post-Fleischer career

Dave Fleischer resigned from Fleischer Studios in late November 1941, following the recording of the score for Mr. Bug Goes to Town. His official resignation was announced on December 31, 1941. He would then eventually become a producer for Screen Gems at Columbia Pictures in April 1942, where he produced Song of Victory (1942) and Imagination (1943), the latter of which was nominated for an Academy Award. Fleischer would later take over for Frank Tashlin and Ben Schwalb as head producer, where he produced The Fox and the Crow and Li'l Abner series, as well as the omnibus Phantasies series. In spite of the Oscar nominations, Fleischer was noted for being very detached from his staff according to director John Hubley, as well as editing completed cartoons in a way that broke continuity. Harry Cohn fired Fleischer in 1944, replacing him with Paul Worth.

After getting kicked out of Columbia, he approached Republic Pictures with an elf-like version of Koko the Clown, a character named "Snippy", who was tried out as a live action–animation combo novelty at the end of the low-budget nightclub musical, Trocadero. A "Snippy" cartoon series never materialized. Fleischer continued at Republic as associate producer of the minute-long animation sequence for another "B" movie, That's My Baby! (1944).

For a short period, he had a comic strip for The Hollywood Citizen News. In the early 1950s, Dave animated a series of Technicolor theatrical snipes for the Filmack Trailer Company of Chicago, Illinois. Filmack at the time was America's largest producer of both theatrical and commercial advertising for decades. It was at the same Filmack headquarters in Chicago that he famously animated the Let's All Go to the Lobby snipe in 1957.

Following a series of oddball assignments, Dave landed a permanent position as a "technical specialist" at Universal through animation producer, Walter Lantz. At Universal, Dave was a Special Effects Technical and general problem-solver, working on films such as Francis, The Birds, and Thoroughly Modern Millie. He was credited as "Technical Advisor" on Universal's American release of the Russian animated feature, The Snow Queen (1957), supervising the English language dubbing.

Following his assignment on Thoroughly Modern Millie, Fleischer retired and continued to live at the Peyton Hall apartment complex on Hollywood Boulevard until his death. Fleischer died of a stroke on June 25, 1979, at age 84. His wife died in 1991.