December 8 - Richard Fleischer

On this day, in 1916, Richard Fleischer was born in New York, New York. Students of early animation should immediately recognize Richard's last name. His father, Max, was a pioneer in animation, inventing things like rotoscoping, follow-the-bouncing-ball sing alongs and characters like Koko the Clown, Betty Boop and Popeye. That made the Fleischer family direct (and often times bitter) rivals to the Disney family. And yet Richard is also an official Disney Legend. How is this possible? He made one contribution to the Disney legacy. One colossal contribution. But his story doesn't start (or end) there.

Image copyright RKO

Richard graduated from Brown University and decided to roll on into the Yale School of Drama. It turned out to be a good decision: one of his fellow students, Mary Dickson, became his wife. In 1937, he was so bold as to start his own theatrical group at Yale. Five years later, he was in Hollywood starting a career in the movies at RKO. Unlike his father, Richard stayed away from animation. His first films were documentaries and compilations of silent pictures he dubbed "Flicker Flashbacks." In 1947, he won his first (and surprisingly, only) Academy Award as the producer of a documentary, Design for Death. It was about Japanese imperialism and what led to World War II. It was also co-written by Theodore Geisel (better known as Dr. Seuss).

The year before Design, Richard had directed his first feature film. A vehicle for a former child star, Sharyn Moffett, Child of Divorce was a success. He was given the helm of Sharyn's next film, Banjo, but that one flopped. He continued making B movies at RKO, mostly film noir thrillers. As he constantly got great reviews for his work, Richard was just as constantly trying to graduate to making A films. RKO's owner, Howard Hughes, was impressed enough with Richard's abilities that he was allowed to shoot some of the footage for 1952's His Kind of Woman, a film noir starring Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. On the basis of that movie, Richard was lent out to another studio, the Kramer Company, to direct a comedy, The Happy Time, starring Charles Boyer and a young teen named Bobby Driscoll. Bobby had been in several Disney movies, so Walt naturally saw Time and liked the look of the picture well enough that he contacted Richard about doing a project together.

Image copyright Disney

Filming began in 1954, on location in Jamaica and the Bahamas, for one of Disney's greatest films: The studio's fifth live action movie, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Originally budgeted at $5 million, the lavishness of the production (and the fact that the climatic squid fight scene had to be completely reshot) eventually pushed that to $9 million. 20K was the most expensive movie made in Hollywood up to that point. The initial reviews were somewhat mixed but audiences loved it. It's box office of over $28 million firmly established Disney as a major motion studio. And that is why Richard was made a Disney Legend in 2003. The film is widely considered to be a gem of the science fiction genre, a precursor to steampunk and has effects that still mostly hold up today. The film's sets were made into an walk-through attraction in Disneyland and it also inspired an E-ticket ride in Walt Disney World. 20K put Richard smack dab in the middle of the A list.

Image copyright Fox

Following his success with 20K, Richard signed a contract with Fox and would spend the next fifteen years making pictures for them. His first Fox film was The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing with Joan Collins and Ray Milland. He went on to work with Orson Welles in Compulsion, Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage, and Tony Curtis in The Boston Strangler. Richard directed Doctor Dolittle which was popular but failed to recoup its budget. His last two films with Fox, Che! with Omar Sharif and Tora! Tora! Tora!, were both expensive flops and ended his association with the studio (they also ended his association with exclamation points as he never used them in movie titles again).

Image copyright MGM

Throughout the Seventies, Richard free lanced, making movies with the likes of Richard Attenborough, George C. Scott, Mia Farrow, Anthony Quinn and Michael Caine. His most famous movie from this period was the Charlton Heston science fiction vehicle, Soylent Green. As the world entered the Eighties, Richard's output slowed down. He made only five films during that decade, including two starring the future governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Conan the Destroyer and Red Sonja. His final directing gig was Million Dollar Mystery, basically an hour and a half commercial for Glad-Lock trash bags and a contest that eventually awarded someone a million dollars. Needless to say it was not a big hit, critically or financially.

For the remainder of his life, Richard mainly put together two biographies. The first was his own story, Just Tell Me When to Cry, released in 1993, and chronicled trials with all the actors, writers and producers he'd worked with over the years. In 2005, he released his love letter to his father, Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution, all about the elder filmmaker's career. Less than a year later, Richard died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Woodland Hills, California. He was 89 years old.