Nearly thirteen years have passed since the last issue of Fleischer’s Animated News, the Paramount cartoon studio’s employee newsletter, was shared on Cartoon Research (check the past posts of issues #1-7 HERE). Let’s pick up where we left off…
Charles Hastings, a former Walter Lantz animator infamous for accidentally blinding Tex Avery’s eye with a paper clip, was the cover artist of this edition (credited as “Hasty”). At the time of this issue, Hastings was an animator in the Willard Bowsky unit, but soon shifted to Dave Tendlar’s and Tom Johnson’s respective crews.
Other highlights include: gag cartoons by Sidney Pillet, Hal Seeger, and Herman Cohen; a profile on camerawoman and film editor Kitty Pfister, who was hired by the Fleischers in 1926; an article on timing by Nelly Sanborn, head of the timing department; and reviews for Myron Waldman’s latest Betty Boop, A Language All My Own (working title: A Song for Harmony), and Willard Bowsky’s latest Popeye, Dizzy Divers, that give full credit to the writers and animators.
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Thanks to Jerry Beck and Bob Jaques for these rare materials.
DEVON BAXTER is a film restoration artist, video editor, and animation researcher/writer currently residing in Pennsylvania. He also hosts a 
A most welcome return! Popeye certainly was a lot more reckless in his patriotic celebrations before having to care for his nephews. And that Betty Boop drawing by Marjorie Altura (sp?) is one of my favorites for the character.
Thanks for sharing this. I’ll have to go back and look at the earlier issues that were posted here thirteen years ago or more. I’m sure none of the Fleischer employees ever imagined that anyone would be watching their cartoons ninety years in the future, much less examining the studio’s newsletter; but while I have little interest in ancient gossip about who was dating whom or what the film editor’s favourite colour was, it’s clear that Max Fleischer tried to foster a spirit of camaraderie among his staff.
One item that caught my eye was the final sentence in the first Preview, crediting one Johnny Burke with making the setbacks for “A Language All Her Own”. I’ve long admired the three-dimensional miniature sets that enriched the backgrounds of so many Fleischer cartoons in the mid-’30s, but not until today did I learn the identity of the person responsible for creating them. He seems to have been an extraordinarily talented individual, translating French opera into English and who knows what else. He couldn’t possibly have been the lyricist Johnny Burke who, with Jimmy Van Heusen, wrote the songs for dozens of Paramount musicals in the ’30s and ’40s — or could he?
The other thing I enjoyed was Jack Rubin’s cartoon of Henry, the world’s funniest living American, with a cigarette stuck in the place on his face where a mouth would be if he had one.
Precious information, the last paragraph in “Did you know that?”…
“That Dante Quinterno, before coming to New York and becoming a backgrounder ran a strip in “La Razon” and “Mundo Argintino” (sic), a newspaper and a magazine respectively in Buenos Aires?”. So finally we know what Quinterno did in Fleischer’s.
So after all that drawing, drawing, and more drawing, the Fleischer crew relaxed by— drawing!
Great post, Mr. Baxter. Thanksya, Arf Arf Arf!
Why was the publication of this newsletter discontinued after the 1937 Fleischer Studios strike?