Here’s issue number 9 of Fleischer’s Animated News, published in August 1935, with cover art by animator Nick Tafuri.
Among its highlights:
– Lou Fleischer writes about the Music Department.
– Gag cartoons by Hal Seeger, Joe Oriolo, and Harry Lampert. (Lampert was the assistant manager of Fleischer’s inking department; he later moved into comic books, where he co-created The Flash for DC.)
– Tintype bios on Nelly Sanborn (Dave’s secretary/head of the Timing Department), Joe Fleischer, and Johnny Burks, who constructed the “setbacks” in the cartoons that involved the Fleischers’ stereoptical process.
– Full story and animation credits for Dave Tendlar’s Betty Boop and Grampy (1935)
– What “screwy jobs” did many of the Fleischer artists have before animation?
• Thanks to Jerry Beck and Bob Jaques for sharing these rare materials
DEVON BAXTER is a film restoration artist, video editor, and animation researcher/writer currently residing in Pennsylvania. He also hosts a 
I was very interested to read about setback designer John Burks, whose surname was misspelled “Burke” in the previous newsletter. I would have liked to learn more about how these setbacks were planned, designed and constructed, and whether Burks built them singlehandedly or had a crew assisting him. Nevertheless, the information in the article allowed me to uncover a few additional details about his life. For one thing, Roberta was wrong: his five-letter middle name starting with E was not Elmer, but Early. I doubt that anyone at the studio managed to guess that correctly.
John Early Burks, Jr., was born in 1900 in Cave City, Kentucky. His wife Margaret was a native of Chicago. They married in Manhattan in 1931, and their only child John III (“Jocko”) was born there in 1934. The 1940 census lists them as living in Miami, so I presume Burks was still working for Fleischer at that time, even though the studio was no longer using 3D setbacks in its cartoons. The 1950 census shows them living in Los Angeles; I don’t know if Burks was still in the cartoon business then. Margaret Burks passed away in Tarzana in 1963, John Burks in Reno, Nevada, in 1972. Their son Jocko became a career Navy officer and died in 2024 at the age of ninety.
The surname Burks appears to be a very common one in Barren County, Kentucky. There was a John Burks who was murdered there in a feud in 1890. For many years the region was represented in the Kentucky General Assembly by a legislator named John Burks Depp; the actor Johnny Depp is his great-great-grandson.
Famous Fleischerites! “You can see more at night!” “But remember, gentlemen never tell!” See — more — night — tell…. Seymour Kneitel! Where’s my prize?