Famous Studios, renamed
Paramount Cartoon
Studios in 1956, was the
animation division of the film studio
Paramount Pictures from 1942 to 1967.
Famous was founded as a successor company to
Fleischer Studios, after Paramount
acquired Fleischer Studios and ousted its founders,
Max and
Dave
Fleischer, in 1941. The studio's productions included three
series started by the Fleischers -
Popeye the Sailor,
Superman, and
Screen Songs - as well as
Little Lulu,
Casper the Friendly Ghost,
Herman and Katnip,
Baby Huey,
Little Audrey, and the anthology
Noveltoons series.
The
Famous name was previously used as
Famous Players Film Company, one
of several companies which in 1912 became
Famous Players-Lasky
Corporation, the company which founded Paramount Pictures.
Paramount's music publishing branch, which held the rights to all
of the original music in the Fleischer/Famous cartoons, was named
Famous Music.
History
Fleischer Studios dissolution
Fleischer Studios was a successful
animation studio responsible for producing successful cartoon
shorts starring characters such as
Betty
Boop and
Popeye the Sailor.
The studio
moved its operations from New York City
to Miami
Beach
in 1938, following union
problems and the start of production on its first feature film,
Gulliver's
Travels (1939). While
Gulliver was a
success, the expense of the move and the expanded staff required to
produce the feature created finance problems for the Fleischer
Studios. The studio depended upon advances and loans from its
distributor,
Paramount Pictures,
in order to continue production on its short subjects and to begin
work on a second feature,
Mister Bug Goes to Town.
Compounding the problems the studio was facing was the fact that
the studio's co-founders, brothers
Max
Fleischer and
Dave Fleischer,
were becoming increasingly estranged, and by this time, they were
no longer speaking to each other due to personal and professional
disputes. On
May 25,
1941, Paramount assumed full ownership of Fleischer
Studios, and had the Fleischer brothers submit signed letters of
resignation, to be used at Paramount's discretion. Following the
unsuccessful release of
Mister Bug in December 1941, Max
Fleischer, no longer able to cooperate with Dave, sent Paramount a
telegram expressing such. Paramount responded by producing the
letters of resignation, severing the Fleischer brothers from
control of their studio.
Paramount renamed the studio
Famous Studios, and although
they had ownership of the company, it remained a separate entity.
Four top Fleischer employees were promoted to run the animation
studio: business manager
Sam Buchwald,
storyboard artist
Isadore Sparber,
animator
Dan Gordon, and Max
Fleischer's son-in-law, head animator
Seymour Kneitel. Buchwald assumed Max
Fleischer's place as
executive
producer, while Sparber, Kneitel, and Gordon shared Dave
Fleischer's former responsibilities as supervising producers and
credited directors. Gordon remained only briefly before departing
after 1943. Although the Fleischers left the studio at the end of
1941, Famous Studios was not officially incorporated until May 25,
1942, after Paramount's contract with Fleischer Studios had
formally run its course.
Early years
Shortly after the takeover, Paramount began plans to move a
significantly downsized Famous Studios back to New York, a move
completed early in 1943. Virtually all of the Famous staff, from
voice artist/storyman
Jack Mercer and
storyman
Carl Meyer to animators such as
Myron Waldman,
David Tendlar,
Tom
Johnson,
Nicholas Tafuri, and
Al Eugster, were holdovers from the
Fleischer era. These artists remained with Famous/Paramount for
much of the studio's existence. As at Fleischer's, the head
animators carried out the tasks that were assigned to
animation directors at other studios,
while the credited directors—Kneitel, Sparber, Gordon, and
Disney/Terrytoons veteran
Bill
Tytla—acted more as supervisors.
Winston Sharples, formerly of the
Van Beuren Studios, served as musical
director.
Continuing series from the Fleischer period included
Popeye the
Sailor and
Superman, both licensed from
popular
comics characters. The expensive
Superman cartoons, having lost their novelty value with
exhibitors, ended production in 1943, a year after Famous'
inception. They were replaced by a series starring
Saturday Evening Post comic strip
character
Little Lulu. Also in
1943, Famous began producing the formerly black-and-white
Popeye cartoons in
Technicolor,
and began a new series of one-shot cartoons under the umbrella
title
Noveltoons (similar in
respects to the
Color
Classics series from Fleischer Studios, and also the
Looney Tunes and
Merrie Melodies series from
Warner Bros.).
The
Noveltoons series introduced several popular
characters such as
Herman and
Katnip and
Baby Huey,
and
Casper the Friendly
Ghost, created by writer
Seymour
Reit and Famous animator
Joe Oriolo
during
World War II as a children's
book manuscript, was sold to Famous in 1945 and became the studio's
most successful wholly owned property. In 1947, Paramount decided
to stop paying
Little Lulu creator
Marge licensing royalties, and created a
Lulu clone,
Little Audrey, as
a replacement. That same year Famous resurrected an old Fleischer
series,
Screen Songs,
introducing a new series of musical cartoons featuring a "bouncing
ball" sing-along.
Although the studio still carried much of the staff from the
previous regime,
animation fans and
historians note that its films soon diverged from the previous
style. Many of them deride the company style for being highly
formulaic and largely oriented towards a children's audience, with
none of the artistic ambition or sophistication that the previous
management strove for.
Later period and sales of cartoon libraries
Sam Buchwald died in 1951. Seymour Kneitel and Isadore Sparber
became the production heads of the studio, and Dave Tendlar was
promoted to director.
The mid and late-1950s brought a number of significant changes for
Famous Studios. In 1955, Paramount sold most of their pre-October
1950 shorts and cartoons, except for the
Popeye and
Superman shorts, to
U.M.&M. T.V. Corp. for
television distribution. The
Popeye
cartoons were acquired by
Associated Artists
Productions (a.a.p.), and the
Superman library went to
Motion Pictures for
Television, producers of the
Adventures of
Superman television series. In October 1956, Famous
Studios was downsized and reorganized. Paramount assumed full
control of the studio, integrating it into the Paramount Pictures
Corporation as a division named
Paramount Cartoon Studios.
Two years after the company's reorganization, Isadore Sparber died,
leaving Seymour Kneitel alone in charge of the studio.
Paramount sold their remaining cartoon film library and the rights
to their established characters to
Harvey
Comics in 1959. Paramount's attempts at creating replacement
characters, among them
Jeepers
and Creepers and
The Cat,
proved unsuccessful. Television production outsourced from
King Features and
Harvey Films brought the company additional
income. Ironically, these arrangements had Paramount working on new
TV cartoons starring Casper, who they had created, and Popeye and
Little Lulu, characters they had previously licensed for theatrical
cartoons. In the case of King Features'
Popeye and
King Features Trilogy TV cartoons, Paramount was one of
several animation studios, among them
Jack Kinney Productions and
Rembrandt Films, to which King Features
outsourced production. Twelve of the
King Features Trilogy
cartoons, starring characters such as Little Lulu,
Beetle Bailey, and
Snuffy Smith, were released theatrically by
Paramount in 1962 under the title
Comic
Kings.
Seymour Kneitel died of a heart attack in 1964, and Paramount
brought in comic book veteran
Howard
Post to run the cartoon studio. Under Post's supervision,
Paramount began new cartoon series such as
Swifty and Shorty and
Honey Halfwitch, and allowed comic
strip artist
Jack Mendelsohn to
direct two well-received cartoons based upon children's
imaginations and drawing styles:
The Story of George
Washington and
A Leak in the Dike (both 1965).
Post left the studio amidst internal conflicts in 1965, replaced by
Shamus Culhane, a veteran of the
Fleischer studio. In 1967, Culhane directed another short based
upon children's art,
My Daddy, the Astronaut, which became
Paramount's first film to be shown at the
International Animation
Festival. In 1966, the studio subcontracted
The Mighty Thor cartoons from
Grantray-Lawrence Animation,
producers of
The Marvel
Superheroes animated TV series. However, when Paramount's
board of directors rejected a proposal to produce episodes for a
second Grantray-Lawrence series,
Spider-Man, Culhane quit
the studio, and was replaced by former Terrytoons animator
Ralph Bakshi in mid-1967. Although Bakshi
quickly put several experimental shorts into production, by the
fall of 1967, Paramount's new owners,
Gulf and Western, had begun the process of
shutting down the animation studio, a task completed in December.
The last cartoon from this studio premiered on December 31,
1967.
Coincidentally, years later,
Marvel
Comics would start an
imprint
that published comics adapted from Paramount films. Even later,
Marvel Studios would ink a deal with
Paramount for that studio to distribute a number of Marvel-produced
films - an adaptation of
The Mighty Thor among them.
Current ownership of Paramount cartoons
Today, several companies own different components of the Paramount
animated library.
Popeye and Superman
Time Warner owns all of the Paramount
Popeye cartoons via their
Turner Entertainment division,
following several company mergers and purchases involving the
a.a.p. film library. In addition, Time Warner (via its
DC Comics unit) owns the masters to the
Superman cartoons, although all seventeen of the series'
entries are in the
public
domain.
All Fleischer-produced
Popeye cartoons, as well as the
Famous-produced black-and-white cartoons, have been restored for
DVD release as part of an
ongoing line of DVD
sets from
Warner Home Video -
so far,
three volumes
have been
released.
Warner has made two official DVD releases of the
Superman
series. The first set was split over the DVD releases of the
first two Superman films using restored versions
of superior vault elements. A second set, released in 2009, was
restored from the original negatives.
Harveytoons
Classic Media now owns the Harvey
comics properties, which include the October 1950-March 1962
Paramount cartoons and the original characters created by Famous
before 1959. This explains the lack of Paramount involvement in
newer media featuring such characters as Casper and Baby
Huey.
A number of the cartoons are available on DVD from Classic Media,
albeit as new versions from 2001 which feature new opening and
closing Harveytoons logos.
NTA and post-1962
Viacom, Paramount's current parent company,
owns what was once the U.M.&M. library via their
Republic Pictures arm. This library
includes the rights to all of the Paramount cartoons - Fleischer
and Famous - released before October 1950 (with the aforementioned
exceptions). However, a significant number of these cartoons did
not have their copyrights renewed, and have fallen into the public
domain. Numerous public domain sourced
home
video collections feature Paramount cartoons which were sold to
U.M.&M. (several other Paramount cartoons sold to other
entities have gone PD as well).
Paramount itself continues to hold the theatrical rights (and the
copyrights) to the post-1962 cartoon shorts, and has held video
rights since the early days of home video (though none of the later
Paramount cartoons have ever seen video release).
As of the present, television syndication is the responsibility of
Trifecta
Entertainment & Media, which handles the theatrical side of
the Republic library for television (Trifecta's rights were assumed
from previous distributor
CBS Television Distribution, a
unit of the current incarnation of
CBS
Corporation). Republic has licensed the home video/DVD rights
to the former U.M.&M./NTA package to
Lions Gate Entertainment (successor
to
Artisan Entertainment,
previously named
LIVE
Entertainment), although official re-releases have yet to be
announced.
Filmography
Theatrical short subjects series
Television series
See also
References
- Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1987). Of Mice and Magic.
New York: Plume. Pg. 311
- Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1987). Pg. 116
- Barrier, Michael (1999). Hollywood Cartoons. New York:
Oxford University Press. Pgs. 303-305. ISBN 0-19-516729-5.
- Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1987). Pg. 312
- Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1987). Pg. 313 – 316
- Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1988). Pg. 316-319
- Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1988). Pg. 319-321
- Maltin, Leonard (1980, rev. 1988). Pg. 321-322
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