In the 1940s, two cartoonists had a fierce battle to see who would make it out on top in the animation community. Those two cartoonists were Max Fleischer and Walt Disney. In this article, I’ll tell you the histories of two amazing cartoonists and their feud against one another.

On July 17, 1883, in Vienna, Austria, Max Fleischer was born into a family of inventors. His father was a tailor, while his mother immigrated to the United States with him at the age of 4-years-old. Fleischer was then raised in the Lower East Side in New York. He didn’t finish high school, but attended numerous trade schools and art programs at a young age. Skip to 1914, when Fleischer was granted a patent for the rotoscope (a patent is a license that is for the sole right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention). The rotoscope is an invention that was used for transferring live-action film into animated cartoons through tracing. This invention is still used in modern video game production and animation. Fleischer never grew tired of experimenting with new colors, sounds, and optical tricks in his films, but because of this, Fleischer’s films lacked consistency. In 1929, in  Broadway, New York, Fleischer and his brother, Dave Fleischer, opened a studio. That studio was called Fleischer Studios, but it ceased operations on May 27, 1942 thanks to Walt Disney. His audience was always entertained, and his rivals were always scared of his next invention. Fleischer’s biggest rival was Walt Disney, who was all the way in California. While Disney was slowly building up his success, Fleischer was always moving forward and never looking back. Some of the characters that he made were Betty Boop, Bimbo, and Popeye the Sailorman. Fleischer’s cartoon topics could be dark at times, with hellish animations.

On Dec. 5, 1905, in Chicago, Illinois, Walt Disney was born. Disney lived in Marceline, Missouri for most of his childhood. Here, he began drawing, painting, and selling pictures to neighbors and family friends. In 1911, his family moved to Kansas City, where he developed a love for trains. During the summer, Disney would work at a job on the railroad. He sold snacks and newspapers to travelers. Disney also attended McKinley High School in Chicago, where he took drawing and photography classes and was a contributing cartoonist for the school paper. During the night, Disney took courses at the Art Institute of Chicago. At the age of 16, Disney dropped out of school to join the army, but was rejected, as he was underage. He instead joined the Red Cross, and was sent to France for a year to drive an ambulance. He moved back to America in 1919. In that same year, Disney then chose to pursue a career as a newspaper artist. Disney’s brother, Roy Disney, got him a job at the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio. That’s the studio where he met cartoonist Ubbe Eert Iwwerks, also known as Ub Iwerks. Disney’s first cartoon was called Laugh-o-Grams. These cartoons were so popular that Disney was able to acquire his own studio, upon which he bestowed the same name. But by 1923, the studio became bankrupt. In that same year, Disney and his brother moved to Hollywood with Ub Iwerks. There they made the Disney Brothers’ Cartoon Studio. The company then changed its name to Walt Disney Studios. The studio’s first deal was with New York distributor, Margaret Winkler, to distribute their Alice cartoons. They then made a character named Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. In the late 1920s, the studios broke from their distributors and created cartoons featuring Mickey Mouse and his friends. Disney’s first successful film starring Mickey Mouse was a sound-and-music-equipped animated short called Steamboat Willie.

Like I said in the Fleischer paragraph, Fleischer and Disney were rivals. Apparently, when Steamboat Willie came out Disney actively tried to discourage reporters from mentioning Fleischer’s cartoon called Song Car-Tune, even though Steamboat Willie came out four years after Song Car-Tune. This started an animation feud with the Disney’s on the West Coast versus Fleischer and his brother who lived in New York. This feud would last in the animation department for the next two decades. Disney’s marketing smarts and location in California among the growing movie industry drove Fleischer’s business into the ground, almost erasing his name in animation history. Because of this, Fleischer Studios became bankrupt. One good thing that came out of the feud was that two different animation styles arose. Disney’s west coast style was more family-friendly, realistic, and overall much more colorful and cheery. Fleischer’s New York-style was much more twisted, dark, and aimed at more mature audiences, with characters’ bodies bending and twisting as if they were rubber bands. In one cartoon called Bimbo’s Initiation, we see Bimbo getting locked up in the sewers by Micky Mouse, clearly showing his hate towards Disney.

As you see, Walt Disney was a person who made a whole studio bankrupt. Now, I want to ask you a question. Did Fleischer deserve this? Did he deserve to have his whole studio become bankrupt just because of one little feud between two studios? In my opinion, he didn’t.