Sunday, 22 April 2012

Buried Treasure - Max Fleischer's Superman


Take one of the greatest heroes of all time who was co created by Canadian Joe Schuster.
Add the involvement of an up & coming animation studio owned by animation pioneer
Max Fleischer plus a HUGE development budget offered by Paramount and you've got
Superman. Now from what I have read Max and Dave Fleischer did not originally want to do
these cartoons due to the severe budget and technical constraints involved, so Dave Fleischer
tossed out a random number that he figured Paramount would never pay and the rest as they say is History. These cartoons were developed in the early 1940's the first one simply called "Superman" but attributed by fans as The Mad Scientist due to it's storyline cost $50,000 to make. two of the original stars of the Superman Radio show reprise their roles in this series Bud Collyer voices Clark Kent/Superman and Joan Crawford voices Lois Lane. One of the unsung heroes of this series has GOT to be Sammy Timberg. The talented composer served as musical director of Fleischer Studios and composed all the music including the famous theme song:
These were a product of the golden age of animation but like many kids of the 1980's I was reintroduced to them years later due to home video releases. The cartoons have since lapsed into the public domain and are now available to buy on DVD from Warner Bros. (Owner Of the Superman Character) or download on the Internet Archive.

Here in it's entirety is the first entry of the series "Superman" aka The Mad Scientist



Related Links:

Max Fleischer - Wikipedia

The Superman Cartoons - Wikipedia

Sammy Timberg - Wikipedia

Max Fleischer Cartoons - The Internet Archive

Buy The DVD - Chapters/Indigo

Timberg Alley - The Official Web Site of The Timberg Family

No comments:

Post a Comment