SPEAKER_00 0:07

Time, space, reality. It's not a linear path. It's a prism of endless possibility where a single choice can branch out into infinite realities, creating alternate worlds from the ones you know. From a low down to a plus up. Follow me and ponder the question. What the heck?

Kelly 0:52

Hello and welcome to The Lowdown on the Plus Up, a podcast where we look at everyone's favorite theme park attractions, lands, textures, and novelties. We talk in, over, about, and through our week's topic, and then, with literally no concern for practicality, safety, or economic viability, we come up with ways to make them better. My name is Kelly McCubbin, columnist for the theme park website Boardwalk Times, and with me as always is Peter Overstreet, University Professor of Animation and Film History in Northern California. So Pete, what are we talking about today?

Pete 1:35

Well, today we're gonna kinda uh do a nice little retrospective of a park that I've always had a soft spot for this place. Uh, because I remember growing up as a kid watching these cartoons, uh just falling in love with these these wild and crazy situations and being blown away by it. Um and not everybody, it wasn't everybody's cup of tea, but actually a lot more people are into this than you might think. Yeah um and sadly the park no longer exists. Right. I we're gonna talk about Fleischerland.

Kelly 2:10

Fleischer Land, yeah. Down down in Florida. Yep. You know, Fleischerland closed in 1983. Yeah. So it's faded a little from popular culture now. Yeah. Uh, but it is hard to overstate how popular those cartoons were.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Oh, yeah.

Kelly 2:26

And and how big a deal it was.

Pete 2:29

Oh, in the park. I mean, I remember being absolutely brokenhearted. They did a they did a special. I think they actually had Danny Kay, um oh, Stephen E.D. Alan were on there. Like it was crazy. And I remember just being brokenhearted where they did this whole thing where Heather O'Rourke, you remember the kid from Poltergeist? Oh, gosh, yeah, yeah. She she's like gonna go wandering up to the gates of the park, and they do this really like nasty thing where they close the gates on her, and I was just like, that's what are you doing? So those the like closing ceremonies? Kind of. It was like it was it was like a sneak preview of what was to come of like you only have one more year, so you better go to the park and get it out of your system because we're shutting down. And I remember just being brokenhearted. I mean, I went the last year. Did you? I did. My I I begged my parents.

Kelly 3:18

How how was it then? Was it was it was a little more Ramcheck, a little more run down, or was it going strong to the end? Because I know the reason that Fleischerland kind of broke down eventually was the the Fleischer Brothers, and you know, uh for those who aren't uh aware, the Fleischer Brothers are they're Betty Boop, they're Coco the Clown, they're Popeye, they're the original Superman cartoons, they're they're all of that stuff. And um, but they the brothers always warred. They were always at each other's throats, and by the time the last of the brothers, uh Dave Fleischer passed away in 79, the estates just couldn't settle anything and it tore the park.

Pete 4:00

Yeah, I think I think was it Max's son? Um Richard. Richard. Richard. I mean, he was he was more of a film uh a film director. Yeah. He had made the Vikings with Kirk Douglas and Ernest Borgnine. Um and the same year that the park closed, outcomes, you know, I think he was in production on a Conan the Barbarian movie or something. That's right. Was it the sequel? Yeah, the destroyer which was in itself is like a Betty Boop cartoon. Um only with muscles and Grace Jones.

Kelly 4:32

And Grace Jones, which is like wow.

Pete 4:34

Yeah, so but uh he wasn't really up for running the park. I think he was just more of a filmmaker and just didn't really want anything to do with it. And I think the writing was on the wall. I remember being a kid and just loving it because I that was my one and only trip. Now my parents had gone and I had heard tons of stories about the place because we had grown up with this type of entertainment, right? But I only got to go this one time and we stayed we stayed at uh the Inkwell Hotel, which is right around the corner. Uh you have to take a tram to it because that place was huge.

Kelly 5:07

It was huge.

Pete 5:08

It was huge, a lot of square footage out there in Orlando. Yeah. I do remember walking through. I always wondered if it was just Florida. Florida was just Inkwell land. Yeah, it wasn't it wasn't awful. It was, but you could definitely tell that there was there was some stuff that was just kind of like, yeah, we're just not gonna bother painting this anymore. Yeah, we're just not gonna but it wasn't awful, but it was enough where even a nine-year-old who was totally enamored with all the characters and the fun of the place was like, they should paint that. But you can kind of tell that like that costs money, you know, or we're kind of done. It was being like just buy your bimbo hat and just move on. I still have my bimbo hat. That thing is Oh, with the big ears? The big ears, you know, the big ears.

Kelly 5:51

And and I always wondered, like, how how how do you know with the the hats? Because I've seen them and they're a little bit generic. It's like, how do you know if it's bimbo or fitz or pudgy?

Pete 6:02

Well, with pudgy, it was white. With one with one little black ear. Yes. And they and and that's right. And the little emblem in the front squeaked that actually had like his little little picture of Pudgy in the front. You could push it and it went, because it was like it was meant for little kids, right? The pudgy hat. And pudgy hats are really hard to find because the squeakers have broken over time. Yeah. The material was kind of that woven. You know, the the actual hat itself was actually like a woven mesh because kids, you know, running around, they didn't want it to breathe. Yeah. But like the front squeaked and it was really cute. And I uh there's a I really wanted, I really wanted a pudgy hat because I love pudgy. But I I I gave in and I had a bimbo hat with my name embroidered on the side. Oh, that's all that's pretty great.

Kelly 6:43

Yeah. Do you still have it?

Pete 6:45

I do have it. I you know, it got flattened after all my moves, you know, but it's still there. You know, the the little felt, you know, the the heavy felt ears are kind of bent and kind of flattened. But it's still, I still have it. All the elastics all worn away.

Kelly 7:00

Well, you know, so we we've we've jumped kind of to to the sad end of the park. Let's back up a little bit and talk about how how the Fleischers kind of got to the point where they had enough influence and enough money to actually build this thing that that no one no one had ever seen anything like it before. Um Yeah.

Pete 7:19

So long before the park opened in 1955, the Fleischers were one of several animation houses that were growing all over America in the 1920s. Uh where you have cartoons like uh Felix the Cat. Yeah. And you obviously have uh cartoons like Bimbo the Dog and Coco the Clown with the Fleischers. Uh and you also have Harvey tunes also kind of playing around a little bit here with their expert I mean, it's more experimental at this time, they're not really taking off. But the big one, the the Fleischers had a competitor that not a lot of people know about. Yeah. Um, I mean they know about him, but he's kind of like this they they go, oh yeah, it's culty now. It's culty, it's very niche. Like you can still find memorabilia in like antique stores, but it's mostly on like really bad, you know, clocks and and antique uh cookie tins and stuff. Right. But it was a cartoonist named uh Walt Disney. Right. Yeah. And Walt and his brother Roy Disney, these two guys, uh, started off doing these things that they called laphograms, which are these really just they're terrible. The lapograms were basically almost like uh advertisements for local businesses. Right. Um and they started off in the Midwest. These two enterprising kids, they were kind of hucksters, and they were kind of you know, their dad was a contractor, their mom was very, very devoted to them. But Walt especially was kind of a con man. He could really walk his way, talk his way into just about anything. Yeah. And uh he managed to make these laphagrams and get enough money, and then I guess the business failed or something, I don't know. Yeah, and they moved on to do cartoons. They decided to try their hand and move the entire business to Los Angeles, which is insane.

Kelly 9:14

Well, and the the interesting thing that you run into with the Disney character and and then the Fleischers, and then to an extent, like Otto Mesmer and Felix the Cat, yeah, uh, is that they were pretty fierce competitors. Oh, big time. Felix died out pretty quickly because the guy that owned the company, uh Pat Pat O'Sullivan, I believe, was an abusive alcoholic guy. Oh, yeah, just ran it into the ground. And and and Otto Mesmer was kind of the only person who could pull it off. Um and so that that character, even though he stayed around in some way or another for a long time, he wasn't nearly as big a deal. Yeah. But Walt Disney's mouse characters, he had kind of a whole barnyard crew.

Pete 9:58

You know, I gotta say, before you go into that, I have to say, like, the people who are really into Disney cartoons, they're charming, but the ones that really stand out to me, like he was just starting to come up with this one character, and I love this character because he's so quirky and so different from the rest of the Disney oeuvre was Donald Duck. This this kind of and when you really think about it, he's this jerk. Like he's constantly causing problems, and yet there's something about him that has more appeal than anything else that these Disney animators were doing at the time. That by the time he finally got to color, it was like, oh my goodness, here's this opportunity for the superstar, and then the whole thing falls apart. And it's like this promise of possibility with Donald Duck as a potential character.

Kelly 10:45

I should see if I can go. Oh my god, you should totally see some of these.

Pete 10:48

That's the one concession I do have to Disney collecting. I have a tiny little couple of things of Donald Duck. Yeah. Because I guess Disney actually tried his own hand at marketing, kind of following in Max Fleischer's footsteps of actually trying to put Donald Duck on various products, and I guess he had orange juice put out. It's like, why would a duck sell orange juice? That's so I have a I have this like this the oldest thing I've got is this Donald Duck orange juice tin for concentrate from the depression. It's like the stupidest thing. It's like, why would you have but as an animation professor, I just have it as like this quirky, like, guess what? This is this is a failed attempt at marketing. You know, like there's no way that you know Disney could build a brand. There was just no way it could happen for that.

Kelly 11:34

Well, and it was interesting too, because you know, I've I've looked into this a bit, and and there was a point where it seemed like Disney might be the animation studio that was going to take off. Yeah. Like they they were really making some moves. And the Fleischers were very popular because they'd started off with their very famous uh out-of-the-nk well cartoons with Coco the Clown and Bimbo, and then uh had it come up with Betty Boop, who obviously is Betty Boop, the biggest cartoon star of all time. Absolutely. And um so they were they were kind of clashing, and a couple of things happened that I I learned about that were this sort of linchpin where the Fleischers sort of leapfrogged over. They were two things. What one of them had to do with uh with the Hollywood code, the Will Hayes, the Hayes Code. Of course it did. Yeah, and one of them had to do with the introduction of color. Yeah. I'll do I'll do the the code first. Okay, please. So the the Hayes Code was instituted supposedly to kind of clean up movies, which were starting to get a little racy come 1929, 1930. Oh, yeah. And and that that's that's what they were supposed to do. Sure. Really, there was some racism and there's some anti-Semitism in in the Hayes Code. Oh, yeah. And and W Will Hayes was a uh a difficult character. To say the least. But the the Fleischer studios, the Fleischer family, they they were Jewish. You know, they they immigrated from Krakow. They the two eldest brothers, Max and Charles Fleischer, yeah, um, literally were born in Krakow. Wow. And the Hayes Code really started to come down on them, and it seemed like Disney was about to go by them because of this really horrible racist reason. And then Hollywood turned around. Something happened, like a spark of intelligence happened, and people began to see through this thing. And they denounced Will Hayes, and the code was wiped out. And that that moment right there maybe saved the Fleischer studios.

Pete 13:53

I'd say so. I mean, uh the Fleischers had kind of an odd ally uh through a distributor who they were trying to work with at the time. Yeah. And it's weird because they never actually wound up working with him, but along comes this one ally from out of the side. So they were networking like crazy to the Fleischers.

Kelly 14:10

Yeah.

Pete 14:10

Um, especially with the New York scene. Because at the time, you had two schools of filmmaking. You had the New York set and you had the California set.

Kelly 14:18

Yeah.

Pete 14:18

And the New Yorkers were really bunching together, they were really, you know, really pulling together to go against Will Hayes. And um one of the big proponents who actually had a lot of clout, uh, was working on a film that he desperately wanted to have some imagery in it that was very questionable. And even though later on his film would be, this film that he was working on would also be accused of some racist tones and some uh symbolism.

Kelly 14:50

Yeah.

Pete 14:52

If he hadn't done so, if he hadn't stood up, I I really think that this guy came in heavy-handed because this guy was a powerhouse. This guy was like a war hero. He had piloted a plane, uh, he had been shot down a couple of times and then survived, and then killed like his German guards and escaped by hand, you know, and then he made these action, you know, these adventure movies. And the one that he made that he wanted like he actually wanted some nudity in. I mean, tasteful, but still, you know, you've got jungle nudity was King Kong. And the guy was Marion C. Cooper, who was on the executive board of uh Archae Pictures. Yeah. And at the time, you also had people like Howard Hughes, uh-huh, who was also uh getting railed against by the big Hollywood engine for making movies like The Outlaw. Right. And so he also was like, I don't I don't want to deal with the Hayes Code. So these guys really banded together. I mean, they could have splintered off and they could have gotten to this infighting, which I think the Hayes, the people behind the Hayes Code were actually trying to bet on.

Kelly 15:56

I think so too. Yeah. And I I think they were looking at people like like Howard Hughes is a great example. They were looking at people like Hughes and saying, well, he's going to let us persecute this group of people because it will get rid of some competitors.

Pete 16:10

But that's not what happened. No. No, there was some really odd solidarity, and I think a lot of it had to do with almost all these people were outsiders. In some way or another. The Fleischers being immigrants, Howard Hughes having his own kind of neurospiciness, uh, and also being an outsider, even in Hollywood, and even as a oil drill bit maker, where he made his millions initially and then eventually would start making, you know, uh movies like Hell's Angels. Right. Um, you really see that the people that fought against the Haze Code were like these Hollywood outsiders that just came out of the blue and fought back against the bully.

Kelly 16:51

Yeah.

Pete 16:52

And that's what's weird.

Kelly 16:53

It it it's yeah, I mean Marion C. Cooper is a perfect example too. Like absolutely fiercely independent character.

Pete 17:00

Oh, big time. Big time. He was a little man with a huge chip on his shoulder. So, you know, just don't tell him that he doesn't get to do anything. Yeah. Which is interesting because Marion C. Cooper actually led to be another pro a proponent of another factor that Kelly and I actually think was a contribution to uh the rise of the Fleischer Studios, which was the advent of uh three-strip technicolor.

Kelly 17:28

That's right, yeah. Yeah, because there there was an earlier two-strip version that you saw in I think I think King of Jazz is maybe the most famous example of it. It it doesn't look good.

Pete 17:39

No, the first two-strip technicolor was an anime wong film. Oh and which was supposed to be a big vehicle for it. It was an independent film because like again, the it was an experiment. So I think I think the thinking was is that I think it was because it was a film that they felt like no one was gonna pay attention to. So they did this two strip and for those who don't know what two strip technicolor is.

Kelly 18:00

Oh, I've seen this film. It's a silent film. Yeah. I wish I could remember what it's called. Like she falls in love with a soldier.

Pete 18:10

It's kind of a retelling of um Madame Butterfly.

Kelly 18:14

Yeah. Yeah. And then and then he leaves and and she ends up having children. It's it's very it's surprisingly racy.

Pete 18:20

So the two chip color process works like this. They're basically two images are taken simultaneously by being split through a prism, making it printing it from a gri a green and a red, and that's it. There's no yellow, and so and they're they're filmed head to head. They're flipped, so one is flipped over the other. And that's when it's in its negative form.

Kelly 18:44

Yeah.

Pete 18:44

When it is processed, they are glued together, kind of like a zigzag, yeah, literally glued together with a solvent between the two strips. And so we that's why it's called two-strip technicolor, because these strips are then taken apart, spliced together, and turned into this combination of additive color of red and green. And so a lot of these films of two-strip technicolor, you can see them, the surviving ones, they look a little off. And it's because there's no yellow into the mix. There's no, there's like it's not cyan and magenta. There's just no yellow.

Kelly 19:22

But I I think I think the interesting thing that then happens is uh Technicolor comes up with this three-step strip process, which is much, much better. And and they're trying to get some people to test it out. Yeah. And so, and they decide that it's not quite ready for live action movies, but they they're gonna talk to the animation studios. They end up talking to uh Walt Disney.

Pete 19:48

Well, talking to is a weird thing. He somehow conned his way in to talk to them. Let's be honest here. But anyway, go ahead. Right.

Kelly 19:58

And and he wanted to take the process and and make it exclusive, yeah. So that he had full rights and his biggest competitor, the Fleischers, uh, didn't. And um Technicolor just refused. They said, no, we're not gonna do that. So uh ultimately both studios got the three-strip Technicolor at the same time, which again didn't give the advantage to the other studio.

Pete 20:28

Yep. There's another thing that happened. There's a there's another thing that happened here, which is Walt Disney had an animator that would eventually go working for the Fleischers. This guy was very akin to the to the Fleischers. I mean, I think I think he resonated with the Fleischers more than Walt. Okay. And the reason is is because he was an inventor. He was he was, you know, uh the Fleischers were inventors, the whole family were always tinkering with something. Yeah, it's fascinating. And we'll get into that in a minute. Yeah. But this guy had worked for Walt for a short period of time and then had butted heads with him so much that he just packed his bags and left and literally like went across country straight over to Miami to work for the Fleischers.

Kelly 21:11

Yeah.

Pete 21:11

And his name was Oob IWorks. And Oob like taking off kind of like I think it kind of threw Disney because I think he was like, Oh, well, I've got this ace in the hole, I've got this fabulous animator. Whereas like Oob's like, I'm going where I'm gonna be best treated, man. Yeah. So off he went. And so there was this big push to combine music and the visual medium. Yeah. Using animation, kind of like a music video. And um Disney was trying to go the more classical route. But I don't think that the world I I don't think America was really up for that. I think they were right in the middle of the depression. People were really starting to resonate with this new music form called jazz. Yeah.

Kelly 21:58

Let's face it, uh America at that point they wanted jazz more than they wanted classical music. Yes. And they wanted Cab Callaway.

Pete 22:07

Mm-hmm. And uh boy, did they get it. Yeah. Through an invention, by the way, it was very early, I think it was 1917 or something like that. He had a patent on a machine and a process that he referred to as rotoscoping. Uh-huh. And so he utilized this process very heavily. He actually filmed Cab Callaway and rotoscoped Cab's movements as he's doing his kind of cool jazzy dance. Yeah.

Kelly 22:33

Which which Pete is doing live.

Pete 22:35

I'm doing this like wiggle in my chair, you know. Oh, you know, and and uh folks, here's a story about Minnie the Mooch. And apparently Cab Callaway was just blown away.

Kelly 22:48

He thought this was the best ever.net, you'll find some of the most well-considered and insightful writing about the Walt Disney Company, Disney history, and the universe of theme parks available anywhere. Come join us at BoardwalkTimes.net. Um massively successful feature films. Most of the animation talent had moved over to them. Uh so there was this incredible sophistication in the work that they were doing. And um come you know, the early to mid-50s, the Fleischer Studios were the place to be.

Pete 23:54

Absolutely. I mean, let's talk really briefly about one of the things, because like Fleischer today, it's not a theme park. It still exists. The company still does exist. Yeah, yeah. But it's not a theme park company, it's a movie production company, and they do a lot of television and streaming and that kind of stuff. So it is still entertainment, but they mostly they're mostly there to acquire you know properties and distribute. That's that's all they really do. They're not really the production house that they once were. Right. That doesn't mean that they're not powerful and they still don't hold sway. Yeah. The Fleischer entertainment medium, we're not talking about that. We're talking about this earlier era. So when we talk about Fleischer, for those who are thinking of fondly, yeah. Well, we're gonna talk about the nostalgic Fleischers. Yeah, right. You had mentioned where the Fleischers grew up in Brooklyn, New York. Yeah, Brownsville. Brownsville. Yeah. Oh, yeah. There was another group of uh brothers that grew up in Brownsville. Yep. And tell us who they were, Kelly.

Kelly 24:53

Why they were uh the uh Howards and the Fines as as we know them, the three stooges. Oh man, those two at the same time grew up in Brownsville as as uh the same time as the Fleischer brothers did. Wow. Well, I guess we can go ahead and jump into the park a little bit. Oh, yeah. We can. Um because uh, you know, the the Fleischers they decided they were going to branch out a little bit. They decided they were going to try and do something with the amusement park idea that was just a little bit hipper. It was just a little bit more of the times, it wasn't like old Carney Hucksters, it was gonna have some jazz and it was gonna have um some kind of weird anthropomorphized nonsense going on everywhere. And so they they put together Fleischer Land. And, you know, it took a couple of years, it opened in 1955. Oh, you know how he started it, right? You've heard the story.

Pete 25:53

Well, I'm sure I'm sure all you Fleischer heads out there will probably know this one, but I'm gonna repeat it anyway for those who don't know. The whole idea apparently came out of when Max was actually taking um his son, Richard. Yeah, the who's now the who was at the at the time the theme park, it was a filmmaker. The filmmaker was a little boy, was taking him to Nathan's hot dogs off of Coney Island, and they're standing out there and they're sitting there eating their hot dogs, they're eating their Nathan's hot dogs, having a great time out there in Coney Island, and they're watching the cyclone going like crazy. Yeah. Um, but the problem is there's all of these, it was it at this point, it was kind of seedy. Yeah, it was really starting to show its age, it was no longer the glory of Luna Park that it once was. Yeah. And Max was like, there's gotta be a place where we can still have the flavor of New York without it having the filth of New York. Right, yes. You know, he wanted to be safer son, but growing up in Brownsville, it's like it was a melting pot of personalities, cultures, and people. I mean, there's some wonderful communities there. Oh, you had the Jewish population, you had the Italian population, you have African-American population, is all in there, and it literally is this kind of American, like veritable melting pot. I know that's kind of a weird controversial phrase to use these days, but it kind of was, and that's how Max felt about it. But you you couldn't deny that it was a rough place to grow up in.

Kelly 27:28

Oh, yeah.

Pete 27:28

You you just can't you couldn't do that. So, you know, I mean, eventually he would no longer live in New York. Yeah. Because I mean, they would wind up with the whole situation where the cartoonist unionized because I think Max was getting a little too wealthy and a little too hoity-toity, and the brothers were like, Yeah, I don't know what to do. So even though they did unionize, yeah, they kind of found a way how to get around some of the more strident laws by moving the production down to Florida. To Florida. That's where on a on a trip through the Everglades, they were just like going around on a fanboat, and Max got this idea, like, oh man, this is the place to be. I and it's kind of appropriate, you know. It's like the guy behind Popeye the Sailor and all these other kind of trippy cartoons goes, like, let's take this swamp and turn it into something amazing. Okay. But so that's why he did it, is because he was he had moved the entire staff down to Miami and he was like, I'm gonna go on a trip with my kid. We're gonna out to Orlando just to kind of go fishing and have a good time out in the Everglades. And he went, let's do it. And so he came up with it, like, I want to do a Coney Island in Florida, is basically all he boiled it down to. But boy, did it get bigger. Oh well, his brother hated it. His brother hated this idea so much. Dave? Dave, yeah, Dave, yeah, the one of the other one because he had two brothers, right?

Kelly 28:54

He had oh, he had um five or he had four brothers. Wow. Uh Charles is the oldest, Max is the second oldest.

Pete 29:04

Wow. That's so cool. I mean, no one I think what the nice thing about Fleischer Land is that it was kind of an ideal situation for him. Yeah.

Kelly 29:13

Yeah.

Pete 29:13

He had actually sold the rights um off uh uh so we'll we'll get into this in a minute, but he basically sold off the rights to some properties that he was working on and he just didn't want to deal with anymore. Yeah. And it was like all these obscure characters, and he handed it off. Nobody did anything with him, but he took that money and used that to buy real estate. He was like, I'm just gonna get rid of the trash. Somebody else, like, this is how rich this guy is, yeah, and how powerful he is as an artist. Like, here, take my garbage, and now I'm gonna use that to buy real estate. Right. Right. So he buys all this this real estate in the Everglades and he builds it up, yeah. And he starts designing the park in 1953.

Kelly 29:51

Yeah.

Pete 29:52

Um, one of the designers was UbiWorks, um, because he was like getting tired of being an animator. I mean, he's already in his late 50s at this point. He's kind of starting to slow down. He's raising his own family of of iWorks's.

Kelly 30:06

Well, and and let's face it, um, he fits in beautifully here because he also is a bit of an inventor. Yes, he is. Um he you know, UbiWorks is a guy who i is putting together new kinds of cameras, he's uh he's inventing new kinds of film technologies. And this, of course, is this is Max's strength. This is what Max sees. You know, Max in invents rotoscope or co-invents rotoscope. He invents the idea of like three-dimensional animation with his giant turntables.

Pete 30:39

He also invented the follow the bouncing ball as you sing. That's right. Which I think he I think he saw a kinship to Oob because Oob's main contribution, besides being a genius animator, yeah, was the one the one time that Walt actually built Max to the punch.

Kelly 30:54

Yeah.

Pete 30:55

Which was this cartoon called Steamboat Willie, in which it was the first time you had um, I forget what it was called, Vitascope or something.

Kelly 31:04

Yeah.

Pete 31:04

And um, it was the one time where you actually had sound. So it was the first sound cartoon. Yeah. That didn't work, you know, that that was simultaneous, but it was actually built off of a bouncing ball principle. So I think Max and Oob kind of went, Oh yeah, I had that same idea at the same time. Yeah. I mean, even though Max was kind of like, okay, well, I'll give you that one. You got col you got sound on me. Now I'm gonna go nuts with this. I got color, you know.

Kelly 31:28

Well well, and you know, so you've got those two inventors, plus you've got uh the eldest brother Charles Fleischer, who was not that involved in the movies, but was an inventor, and by the time they started on this theme park idea, also was kind of the level-headed guy. Yeah. Um, do you know the interesting thing? And this will come into play a little bit later. Yeah. The interesting thing that Charles Fleischer invented that we still see everywhere today. No. He invented the claw machine. The that that amusement park staple where you put put a quarter in or whatever, and turn the knobs and you try and get the claw to pull out your uh your stuffy or whatever.

Pete 32:05

It's in every Denny's lobby everywhere.

Kelly 32:08

Yeah, and Charles Fleischer actually invented that. And interestingly enough, he nearly lost his shirt over it because um it was extremely popular. They're making a fortune off of them, but uh after he'd invented it in the twenties, uh New York State decided they were gonna have a serious crackdown during prohibition on gambling. Right. And they considered those claw machines gambling devices.

Pete 32:34

Oh, because it is a chance.

Kelly 32:35

It's a game of chance, right? And so there was a uh story that I read where the police were actually coming to the warehouse where they were making these things. Oh my god. And someone gave Charles Fleischer a little heads up, and so he had a bunch of boys come in, bunch of his Brownsville boys come in and smash every single machine to pieces so that they couldn't produce a full one to use in evidence against him. Wow. Isn't that interesting? And of course, now we we think nothing of those things.

Pete 33:08

Well, you know, you know, the same year, Alcom's, you know, of all things, Popeye versus Sinbad the Sailor, which just kills.

Kelly 33:19

Right.

Pete 33:20

And they they actually made like a special Oscar for it.

Kelly 33:23

Yeah, because it wasn't actually a full feature.

Pete 33:26

Yeah, it wasn't a full feature, but they did make a special Oscar for it. Like Shirley Temple came out and presented this special Oscar, and it was three Oscars, one in a row, and one was shaped like Popeye, yeah, and like the big bulky arms, and one was like shaped like Pluto, and one was this tall, skinny one like olive oil. It was hilarious. These solid gold statues, and he thought it was hilarious because it caught on so much. I mean, spinach sales went through the roof that year, and spinach was hard to come by because this is the depression, right? We're just kind of coming out of it, but like spinach farm farming suddenly became like very on vogue, and and that's when I think Fleischer just really cemented itself as the big powerhouse. That is what leads to his fortune. He's building up his fortune with all of these different media formats, but for him be being the inventor, he's constantly coming up with new things, yeah. And he started tinkering with um automatons, yeah, yeah, like weird, weird robots. Weird robots, and he actually came up with a new phrase which wasn't all that original. Uh-huh. He called them rotomatons at first. Uh-huh. That didn't stick. That didn't stick too well. It's kind of like, okay, Max, uh, yeah, okay. Not that stretching it, yeah. You're stretching it. But um, his designers, you know, at at uh at the theme park, basically that was kind of the beginnings of what we now call rotomatronics. And Rhodomatronics was like his playing around with like little wooden, you know, because he was always fascinated by the fortune-telling machines at Coney Island and that kind of stuff. It becomes this pursuit of creation, imagination, and invention, which is really fascinating about Fleischerland.

Kelly 35:03

To to kind of get us back, because I think the the place that we start at with Fleischerland, the the two main areas there are both rotamatronic attractions.

SPEAKER_00 35:14

Yeah.

Kelly 35:14

You know, used to when before the park closed down. Uh when you entered Fleischer Land, you entered Brownsville Boulevard. Oh, yeah. Which was a a recreation of the childhood neighborhood that the Fleischers and the Three Stooges grew up on. Just slightly cleaner. More than slightly, probably.

Pete 35:35

Yeah, more than slightly. But still, it was Brownsville. It had all the great landmarks. It had the open market grocery stores. That's right.

Kelly 35:42

And it was like clotheslines hanging overhead, and uh you could hear cantors singing off in the distance.

Pete 35:49

The food was delis and uh a lot of delightful multicultural foods to pick from. Yeah. Like it was it wasn't just mom and apple pie americana. I think Americans were kind of like done with that. It was like, no, you get to have borscht. Oh. You know, like the really like what? Like you're you get it with like with a raw egg in it and oh yeah, hardcore, like borscht, and you're like, in a theme park? Like, ugh. You know, I can understand, you know, kieshkas, you know, like kids, they would actually have like kishka. So you actually have like a big sausage. It's like that that was their thing. Yeah. I'm gonna get a giant Kishka. You know, like that's so great. A pickle and a Kishka. That's so great.

Kelly 36:32

So yeah, and they're and they're two uh big attractions. Uh you know, when when Brownsville uh boulevard first opened up, yeah, uh there wasn't a lot. It was mostly the the shopping, the delis, the sound effects and stuff. After a while, after Max started to develop the Rhodomatronics, they started being able to put some interesting shows in. And there's there's two shows that really held sway on Brownsville Boulevard. Uh one of them was a show that uh featured this interesting combination of animation and rotomatronics and live actors, and uh it was called uh Apple for the Teacher. And the it was such a great show. Like the entire theater was designed like a giant class, not a giant class, like a classroom, like an old 1920s classroom. And and the audience sat at desks, and the teacher turned out to be an animated in the front of the theater Betty Boop. Oh wow. And then you s began to discover that some of your classmates were the three Stooges. Okay, and so you know, the whole the whole gimmick of it is that the Stooges are trying to flirt with their teacher and end up doing the Stooge thing together. Wonderful little show. Is that where the song comes, you know, the B A Bay? B A B It is That's exactly where that came from. Yeah. Oh my god. It ended up being so popular for them later.

Pete 38:07

Yeah. Uh yeah. I mean, people whistle that song, they don't even realize what it's from. I had no idea. Yeah, and there's some very pictures of it, but like, but I never got to see that because I think it had been transformed to something else. But it sounds amazing.

Kelly 38:20

Oh, so so much fun. And the live actors uh there there was some very, very rudimentary rotomatronics. So most of most of the work was done by actual actors. Right. But but interacting with animation on the walls around you. Um so much fun. There's a story, and I don't know if this is true, but maybe. Uh, there's a story that occasionally the Stooges would come perform as the actors.

Pete 38:48

I heard this. Um, apparently one of the actors who would do this actually became a staple at Fleischerland. Like he got his own show. Yeah, yeah. Because um, and the the the rumor is is that this came out of one of the Rotomatronics breaking down pretty irrevocably. Uh, and that was of uh Curly Howard. Curly Howard had broken down, and this guy was originally supposed to just be there as like a guest star. And he just filled in because he had a love for the show. Yeah. He he uh totally filled in and it just worked. And then Max actually saw him performing this and thought, okay, you need your own show. And so they gave him you know, they gave him a show elsewhere. Um, and this was Joe Besser, who used to be on the Abbon Costello show is stinky. This is little you know, oh no, get out of the way, hard, I'll harm you. And he was not curly, but it was just something that just clicked. Yeah. And um and I always found it ironic that most of the time he used to complain, like, I'll do the show as long as I don't have to get hit.

Kelly 40:02

You know, it's his three stooges show missing the point, right?

Pete 40:05

Yeah, what's the point? You know, you're supposed to get hit. It's the three stooges. Like that's that's stupid. So yeah, that's uh that was Joe Besser. And Joe, I guess the show that he wound up in, he performed like 24,000 times or something like that. Oh, geez, like a ridiculous amount of of things until he died. Like he he lived in the park for like three days out of the week. And then and then he would, you know, uh go back to his little home right over there in Orlando. He lived in Florida. He he hadn moved out there. Yeah, he's like, I've got a good gig, why give it up? You know, so he j he was he was synonymous with the park until when he finally passed away. Oh, that's so great. It was crazy. It's like wow, Joe Besser, you know.

Kelly 40:49

Well, and and you know, then a little bit later there's the the other big show, which was really the the point at which the Rodomatronics took off. Yeah. And it was a salute to the the president that meant the most to Max Fleischer. This was, of course, the great president Martin Van Buren. Yeah, for the Martin Van Buren. Yeah, the great moments. Great moments. Van Buren show.

Pete 41:13

Great moments with Martin Van Buren. That was still around when I saw that. So that was still there. And there is something delightfully patriotic in going in to this hallowed hall. Yeah. Um, it looks, you know, it was built to actually look, you know, it doesn't quite fit in with Brownsville, but it it it it sort of resembles the Capitol building in Philadelphia for some reason. Yeah.

Kelly 41:38

But it's weird, but I think I think some of that has to do, and I think this is why Van Buren meant so much to the Fleischers, was that Van Buren himself was an immigrant.

Pete 41:48

Yeah, his his original language was Dutch, and he spoke Dutch very fluently and he had a hard time with English.

Kelly 41:54

Yeah.

Pete 41:54

Um, but it's it's so bizarre that that was so well known. I mean, he was no I mean Van Buren. Yes. He's he's known for this, but I guess um when they made the attraction, they needed a voice actor. They tried some actor who had played a lot of heavies in the 40s, and he played a lot of Nazis and stuff like that and a lot of Republic serials and stuff. Paramount. He was a survivor of Auschwitz. Jeez. Uh he had played chess with Einstein. Uh-huh. He had this very extreme look, and he could he could modify his voice in such an extraordinary way, and even though he spoke very fluently, he had a very dark sense of humor, and his name was Theodore Gottlieb. And uh otherwise known for those who are from New York as Brother Theodore. Oh. And Brother Theodore originally, so Theodore Gottlieb, apparently, there's some audio in which you know he's doing speeches of Van Buren, but he's speaking with such a strong Hungarian accent that is nowhere near Dutch. Yeah, I was gonna say that's the wrong country. That's the wrong country entirely. But you know, Brother Theodore is doing Martin Van Buren is not good at all. So they get this guy to play Van Buren, and even though like he spoke fluent Dutch, Van Buren did, yeah, this actor is synonymous with the voice of Van Buren. It's Royal Dano. What? Royal Dano, who's who had been in like a lot of westerns, and he Is that who that was? That's the voice of Martin Van Buren in Great Moments with Van Buren. So he's you know he's supposed to like that speech he gives is a part of um a speech uh where he was talking about the cost of two wars, where he's talking about the revolution, the war of eighteen twelve. Because Van Buren lived for a long time. Yeah. He actually supported President Abraham Lincoln and spoke uh very heavily about the abolition of slavery with President Lincoln. Uh but Van Buren Buren really uh because of being outspoken and being very much a proponent of equality for all men, is I think why f the Fleischer brothers really resonated with him so strongly. Yeah. And I love Royal Dano, like he's got the it does not sound anything like what you imagine Royal, you know, Buren to sound like.

SPEAKER_02 44:19

So you know, certain danger was foretold from the extension of our territory, the multiplication of states, and the increase of population. Our system was supposed to be adapted only to boundaries comparatively narrow. These have been widened beyond conjecture. The members of our Confederacy are already doubled. And the numbers of our people are incredibly augmented.

Pete 44:45

I mean, it's like he doesn't it still stirs the heart, doesn't it? It does, though. It's such a great patriotic piece. Yeah. But it really got the Rotomatronic started. It really did. And it just took off from there. I mean, they had they had some, you know, basic dark ride approach. I mean, they're basing a lot of the rides heavily off of Coney Island dark rides uh when they were first starting, but the Martin Van Buren Rotomatronic was like really instrumental in getting that part going.

Kelly 45:14

Yeah, and there's there's you know, spe speaking of basing basing the uh rides off of Coney Island rides, yeah, uh that kind of leads me to the the next section. Because right off of Brownsville Boulevard, it it goes even farther back into Fleischer history, which is so you you know, you're on Brownsville Boulevard. If you're looking straight ahead, you're seeing that giant ink bottle. Yeah. And you know, right at the hub. The ink well itself. The ink well itself, yeah. It was so huge that they they would sometimes, for a little while, they would put an actor playing Grampy up on the top of it. And he would just like throw what they thought were like blobs of ink, but people misinterpreted that, so they stopped. But if you if you kind of jut off to the side of Brownsville Avenue, you end up in the section of the park called Old Krakow. Oh man. And um, you know, Max Fleischer and Charles Fleischer, the two oldest brothers, were literally born in Krakow, Poland. Wow. They they themselves were immigrants, and um it was designed, it's one of the most ancient cities in Poland, if not the most ancient city in Poland. So it's beautifully designed. Yeah. And one of the earliest rides they put in there was a roller coaster, much like on Koney Island, but with some dark ride elements. Oh wow. And it was called The Return of the Wobble Dragon. Oh wow, what do you know the story of the Wobble Dragon? No, tell me the story here. So it's there's a whole bunch of variants, but it's an ancient story from from Krakow. Wow. Um, about a dragon that was demanding sacrifices from the town. And there's different variants. Like some are like, well, it was demanding uh cows. And so people would have to bring the dragon cows from time to time, and and uh eventually someone got fed up and said, I can't give away my last cow. Um there are there are other variants that get even heavier where they're giving away daughters. Okay. So that's a little uglier. Yeah. But the end of the story is always pretty much the same, which is someone gets real fed up and says, We need to do something about this dragon. And so they offer him a uh sheep or a cow that has been stuffed with sulfur. Oh my god. And the dragon eats the sheep or the cow stuffed with sulfur, and it kills them, and that's how they get rid of the wawle dragon. Oh my god. So this is a roller coaster based on that legend.

Pete 47:48

Oh my god.

Kelly 47:49

Where you're you're flying through kind of dark ride scenes and you're see, you know, you're you're banging by like people with with offering up the the Fleischers knowing that offering daughters was probably a bad idea, they stuck with cows. Yeah, you don't want their theme park though. So you see, you see people like offering up their cows and crying and the you know, they're they're you know, it's those old kind of painted luminous flat dark right things.

Pete 48:15

Fabulous, yeah.

Kelly 48:16

You know, with with lights and stuff. Oh, yeah. Every once in a while you hear a voice saying, I can't give up my last cow.

Pete 48:23

That's so great. That's my Poland. Uh you know who did that voice? The great Paul Freeze. Was that Paul Fries? That was Paul Freeze, you know, who would eventually use that exact same voice for Rankin and Bass as uh the Burgermeister Burger Master or whatever that character is. I gotta give up my last cow. Such a great it's classic. It's a c I mean that's on t-shirts still. Oh, yeah. I can't give up my last cow.

Kelly 48:51

And then you know the roller coaster ends with a big swooping dive, and you're suddenly in a in a room that just reeks of sulfur, and there's a dead dragon lying there. It was an early ride. There was no no rotomatronics in it, but but what how charming.

Pete 49:07

Well, they did revitalize that. Oh, did they later? Oh, they did. They they I mean, when I went when I went there, they actually did have some rotamatronics where they actually had like the dragon sticking out. What I loved is it was it was all done in that classic Fleischer style, yeah. Which had gone out of fashion and they kind of went there was like this big push in the late 70s of kind of bringing back the old style. Yeah. And I think this is like one of the last big refurbishments that they did as kind of a way to kind of mark the anniversary of the park and and and build it. But when you walk in, when you when you get into the old Krakow, you're actually uh looking at the uh the peaks of the Tatra Mountains from Krakow. So yeah, and the roller the roller coaster would go in and out of that mountain peak. Yeah. And so you've got the sounds of Polish, you know, traditional Polish singing going on, and every once in a while you could hear the dragon going off.

Kelly 49:58

So cool.

Pete 49:59

Yeah, it's really, really interesting. And you have like Polish uh farmers and sheep herders back in the you know, they they kind of discourage it because of the mess that the sheep would make after a while. So they they eventually just had like little rotomatronic, you know, sheep out there, but still it's it's this great little corner, this little pocket of of the Fleischer's past that's still there. But the dragon was done up and it was very, very cool because it would like swing around and it would blow this yellow-colored smoke at you. It was not sulfur, yeah, but it was just like a light behind some steam, but it still was like, oh, they're actually blowing sulfur on us. Oh my god. But it was kind of funny. It wasn't him like blowing fire at you, it was him like holding his throat like he was choking, going just like firing at you. So bizarre, but it worked. You know, it was funny. It was a roller coaster that made you laugh. That's what I thought.

Kelly 50:51

Yeah. And the like what a crazy innovation that is.

Pete 50:54

It's so weird. Well, we would be remiss to talk about some of the other lands.

Kelly 50:58

Yeah, I was gonna say, why don't why don't we give him kind of an overview of some of the lands?

Pete 51:02

Yeah. So after well, I mean so the main hub of the entire park, you know, when you walk down Brown. Yeah, you have the giant ink bottle uh with the ink well in front of it. Yep. What's interesting about the tour of the ink bottle is that it's kind of this it's a it's a history of the Fleischers, of of the early days of Coco the Clown shorts of the out-of-the-well comedies and that kind of stuff. One of the attractions that that leads to is one of Kelly's favorites.

Kelly 51:32

Uh-huh.

Pete 51:33

You know, I and I I like this one. It's it's really, really fun. But Kelly's obsessed with this one. Uh, you have no idea how many lectures he's had to give me about this. I I love it. So it doesn't really bother me, but it's like I'm obsessed about some of these other things too, which we'll talk about in a minute. But Kelly's obsessed with Coco's pants. Yes.

Kelly 51:52

I love Coco's pants. Talk to me about Coco's pants. Oh God, it's one of my favorites. So, yeah, it's it's in the um the actual out-of-the-inkwell land, which is the land that you get to if you go straight through the giant inkwell. Yeah. It's a little hard to describe. It involves uh a number of different technologies. Yeah. But what basically happens, and it it wraps around that story we were talking about earlier with Charles Fleischer inventing the claw machine. Oh, really? Yeah. So what you do is you step into a giant fabricated version of Cocoa the Clown's pants. And you know, they're they're kind of split in a V, and you step in and turn around, and they zip them up, and these two like big pieces of fiberglass go around you. And so you're standing in the pants, and they're going along a track, and they can rotate some in a sort of chaotic way, and they're they're moving along this track, and you run into uh a bunch of rototronics. This is this is such a great use of them. So you're running into Betty Boop, and you're running into Bimbo, and you're running into the ghost version of Cab Callaway, and you're running into Louis Armstrong. Just Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong. Yeah, in no particular uh Oh my, there's no those pants. Well, because you know they they had a hit with the uh short he was in, uh You Rascal You. Oh, that's right. I'll be glad when you're dead, you rascal you. That's right. That's right. And you keep running into them and they warn you, they're like, don't go this way, Coco, because there's gonna be like a giant Edgar Allen Poe style pendulum going across the tracks. Oh, jeez. But because you are now Coco, because you're in his pants, you go straight towards it. And what happens is you're actually in an inner car inside the pants. Right. And there's a little hook on the back. And so right before you hit the pendulum, one of those claws comes and grabs that hook and lifts you out of Coco's pants, swings you around the track, and drops you in another set of Coco the Clown's pants.

Pete 54:18

I was too young to understand what was going on. It was like, why am I being lifted?

Kelly 54:22

It's madness. And it's terrifying too. It is because you're about to be killed by, you know, there's at one point there's a buzzsaw, at one point there's a train coming, uh, you're about to die, and suddenly you get lifted into the air unexpectedly, and you're sort of swinging wildly and then dropped into another pair of clown pants. Jeez.

Pete 54:42

I remember being terrified by the actor, you know, the cast member that was dressed up as Coco the Clown. Oh, God. Because I mean, I th and it wasn't him that scared me, it was the giant um ink pen that he had within because I thought he was gonna stab me with it. Right. It was because he was pretending to draw me. Right. Like that he would walk around pretend to be drawing kids. Yeah. And they had this it was like this little cheap little thing where they used um photosensitive paper, and I guess they lined the walls and they had a strobe light that would go off, and Coco would, you know, follow you in there. And you basically stood up against the wall in whatever pose you wanted, and Coco would like draw an outline, and then the flash would go off. Yeah, and you were supposed to step away from the wall, and you'd see your shadow up on the wall.

Kelly 55:29

Oh, yeah.

Pete 55:29

Which was this great, you know, and it's just glow-in-the-dark paper, but it was a great attraction. But when you're like nine and this you know, six-foot clown in black and white is you know aiming this pointy pen at you, it's kind of scary.

Kelly 55:44

You know who the original model for Coco was? He was he was rotoscoped. Oh, and he was it was Dave Flescher. Oh wow. Uh Dave Fleischer would dress up in the clown outfit, and that was the rotoscope of Coco.

Pete 55:57

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. That's awesome. I always wondered why they sold uh these giant flies. Giant flies? They they sold giant flies for some reason in the out-of-the-kwell. Like they were like little plush flies. Oh, yeah. And I don't know why they did that, but for some reason, in the out-of-the-well area in Fleischerland, you could buy like anatomically correct plushy flies. I had no idea what that was about. And I guess there's a I guess there's one of the out-of-the-well comedies where Coco fights off a fly that's on the paper that he's being animated on. And I only found that out about a couple of weeks ago while we were researching this episode. It's like, oh, that's why my dad had a fly. Okay. I thought it was a reference to Coco's pants, but no, it was a real actually it wasn't allegory, it was a fly.

Kelly 56:51

So so bizarre. And I I love that they didn't use any more clever of a name for the ride than Coco's pants with a big exclamation point.

SPEAKER_02 57:02

Coco's pants.

Kelly 57:04

Mom on Tom, we're gonna ride Coco's pants.

Pete 57:08

The music was insane, too. So good. God, it was like it was this weird mixture of like Dixie and Calliope music. It was so strange.

Kelly 57:17

I just oh god. One one of those truly unique could only be at Fleischer Land attractions.

Pete 57:23

Oh yeah. Only, I mean, they I think they actually um expanded upon Coco's pants with another attraction, which um if you kind of take a left turn, it's a tra it's it's one of those transitional areas between lands. Yeah. Uh so if you take a left turn from Coco's pants, you kind of go through some areas where they have some other smaller rides and you've got some games, you know, um, and you wind up in this one section. It looks a little bit like Brownsville, but it's a little bit more like um a brownstone suburb. Yeah. Uh and this is where this is where I just totally fell in love uh with Bimbo the Dog. Yeah. Uh because they had they had a cast member, there's Bimbo, and I got a big hug, and it was very sweet. It was like aw. And my dad bought me a pair of bimbo ears, which are the ones we talked about earlier. Yeah. But uh this was this is like one of the classics. This is this like anybody who's into Fisher Land will go, I remember this. You know, this is the big one. Yeah. Um, which is um Bimbo's initiation. And it's based off of the cartoon. Um, and Bimbo's initiation, for those who don't know, it Bimbo the dog is literally just walking down the street and gets pulled down a manhole by all these crazy, like uh, they're almost like Freemasons. They're making fun of the Freemasons or at least the odd fellows.

Kelly 58:49

Yeah.

Pete 58:49

You know, you wanna be a member, wanna be a member, wanna be a member. No, and all of a sudden he goes through this initiation of uh this series of tortures. And the ride is uh not really a ride, it's a walkthrough exhibit where you actually encounter this fun house of going from room to room with you know uh slides that go on forever. Uh you had doors that you would have to open up seven versions that get smaller and smaller and you squeeze through them. Uh, and it was very, very faithful to the cartoon. And it was I love that one because that was the place where mom and dad would drop kids off to like, we're gonna go get a hot dog, you go into bimbo initiate, go play. And it's the only place in the park where you get to see Betty Boop with long doggy ears.

Kelly 59:37

Right, because that's she originally was a dog.

Pete 59:40

Right, she was originally a dog as a girlfriend for bimbo, and it's the only place where you can see, and she's still like there's a there's a picture up on the wall, and and it comes to life. They they yeah, they they they did this kind of rear projection thing with like an old film camera.

Kelly 59:53

I love how they do that. They did that in a bunch of attractions. It was kind of one of their their sticks, and and it's so great.

Pete 59:59

It's cute. Yeah, you just kind of like you just go, ah, it's a signature illusion for this part. Yeah. Uh but yeah, she's got the long ears, and you know, you wanna be a member, wanna be a member? It's so great. You know, and everybody's and everybody had like the shirts, wanna be a member, wanna be a member. Oh, I know. And my favorite, they actually made hats with the candle on the top. Oh, wow. The stupid little candle on it with like a little flame, and it's made out of felt, and you'd wiggle it and stuff like that. Oh, that's so great. You could buy the plunger with the little string coming out the top. It was so great. But strangely enough, as madcap as Bimbo's initiation attraction was, it was a um it was a nice way for parents to kind of calm down before you get to it's arguably one of the most popular because it lasted from the beginning all the way to the very end, uh, which is Sweet Haven. Yeah, yeah. And so this is where Popeye and olive oil, yeah, they kind of set it, they kind of made it look like 1850s New England, right? The port town. Right. And uh yeah, you had the fish and you, you know, just big things of fish hanging everywhere. Yeah, you had an actor dressed up as Wimpy, yeah, you know, oh glad you play you Tuesday. They had Wimpy's Wimpy burgers, yeah. Oh my god. Well, actually, it wasn't Wimpy burgers. The wimpy burger was one of the burgers you get there. It was actually Rough House's hamburgers. Oh, right, right, right. And you and you'd go in and there'd be Rough House. Yeah, the the chef would be dressed up as Rough House, making hamburgers for you. Yeah. And then okay, if if if Wimpy came in, I remember the guy came in with Wimpy, he tried to take my burger. I got so mad. You give me that back, you know, and it was so great. But yeah, you you get lunch at uh so I always made sure that we go to Wimpy Burgers, you know, the uh Roughhouse Burgers.

Kelly 1:01:40

Well, and the the neat thing about Sweethaven is it's it served as a sort of secondary hub for the whole park. Kind of, yeah. Because you know, you could you could go down Brownsville and and get to the main hub and sort of splitting her off in a bunch of different directions, but you could also go to Sweethaven and get on a boat. Right.

Pete 1:01:58

It was Popeye's uh Popeye's Coast Guard tugboat, yeah. Which was kind of a transformer. It would be suddenly become an airplane in the cartoons, right? Right, right. It had like a little references to that. Um and the reason they expanded upon it, uh, because Max Fleischer was always about innovation, but he actually was being asked by kids like, well, okay, this is you know, they they had originally just made it as a lake. Yeah. And there would be all these trees around. They didn't know what to do with the the rest of the outskirts of the lake. And then fans of the park would come up to you know to Max very early on and say, Where does Popeye go in his tugboat? Yeah, and so they said, Well, let's expand upon that. So they made Popeye's Seven Seas, in which you would hop in the tugboat and it would take you to these uh different rides and attraction areas based off of the different locations from the Popeye cartoon. So you go to the Middle East or you go to China or you go to the South Seas and you know, all these different places. Yeah and like there was a luau area that was kind of like it was like a barbecue pit, but was all Hawaiian food.

Kelly 1:03:00

Yeah.

Pete 1:03:01

And uh they had a you know, the Betty Boop there is actually in a hula skirt, you know, creating you, um, which is where Popeye first premiered, you know, in his Betty Boop museum. Then you could actually go on the uh Alibaba and his 40 Thieves ride, yeah, which was like a minecart ride, which I just so good. And they colored everything like the movies. Yeah. The only way to get in it is everybody in the car had to say open sesame to get into the ride. Oh, that's so neat. So good. I mean, I love the fact also, like right next to it, they actually had a game where you were like the bowl you were bowling. It was like nine pins, yeah, but it was Popeye bowling bad guys, but like the ball was painted like Popeye. It was so bizarre. And you and and you could get spinach salads, yeah. You know, like that kind of it was just so great. Cream spinach, right? All that kind of stuff. For some, like I don't know who did it, I don't know who sourced this, but somebody cornered the market on corncob pipes to sell Fleischerland because they sold so many sailor hats and corncob pipes were so big every kid wanted them. Yeah, every kid wanted one, they were everywhere. I mean, they actually tried uh because they were trying their hand at television, they actually tried a very brief and kind of a failed attempt at doing a live-action Popeye with Buddy Epson as Popeye. And that was kind of like some people think that like that was the whole impetus for the hat and the corncob pipe. Right. And there was a rendition done by Bobby V of uh the Popeye the Sailor Man theme that was released. Yeah, but it just didn't really click. It was Buddy Epson was kind of like this kind of down homey Popeye, just didn't quite work for people. Yeah, I mean some people have a soft spot for it.

Kelly 1:04:47

The dancing style's right, like that's oh yeah. Buddy Epson's dancing style is perfect for that.

Pete 1:04:52

Yeah, but it just didn't wasn't quite right. Like I actually believe Royal Dano before I believe Buddy Epson.

Kelly 1:04:58

I just I I remember like Sweethaven, it was just such a beautiful environmental piece. Like you were just walking through it, you felt like you were in a cartoon, like the there was a real richness and depth to the land. There was stuff going on in all the windows. Every once in a while you'd see someone walking around with like a sweep pea in their arms. Yeah.

Pete 1:05:19

You know all the stuffed sweeppeas were there. They used to make wind-up sweet peas, which were really, really fun.

Kelly 1:05:24

Yeah, and I love that thing that they used to do with kids where um like they they would go up and test their strength against Pluto. Oh and then yeah, you know, they'd they'd go up and like Bluto would bend an iron bar and then the kid would would bend the iron bar and just rubber hose, you know.

Pete 1:05:42

Yeah, just a rubber hose. Who cares? Drive Pluto crazy. You know, all the yeah, it was so good. Well the the Pluto's bumper bumper boats. Yeah. Yeah. That's it's a little, you know, it's it's this was like you you obviously don't want people actually beating each other up. Because I mean that was kind of like the staple of the Three Stooges, you know, movies, but also the Popeye cartoons was um this kind of violent resolution of stuff, like this catharsis, like Fleischer, even though he was trying very hard to make entertainment for families, I mean, very much, I mean, especially when you go to like the kitty area, which was uh Lilliput. Yep, yeah, you know, the call Gulliver's Travels. Yeah. Um it's fine, but it's a lot of kitty rides, and you're kind of like, okay, it's cute.

Kelly 1:06:29

Yeah.

Pete 1:06:30

And I mean, it was a gorgeous film. I mean, Gulliver's Travels is a monumental film, yeah. But it it just didn't quite, you know, get it. But for some reason, people it really resonated to the catharsis. People were okay with catharsis as long as it was the safety of the park. Yeah. And Pluto's bumper boats were great. Yeah. Because you know, you were in this giant, I think it was only like two or three feet deep.

Kelly 1:06:52

Yeah.

Pete 1:06:53

So like if there was a mishap, you could stand up. Right. But they were like these boats that look like these rundown tugboats, these big rope bumpers on the sides, and you just and they had like a little smokestack sticking out the back, and you're like steering these things with this little ship's wheel, and you're trundling around, bumping into each other, and then that one little area, the one little area where you could steer into it. It was like a little cave, it was like a big U-turn, and everybody would get caught up. So they eventually blocked that off and they put pirate treasure in there instead because kids would actually get jammed in there, and then like never no one could ever get in there because everybody was like cramming up, because everyone wanted to go in the pirate cave. Yeah, but yeah, Pluto's bumper boats was just like that's awesome. Oh, yeah. That was so good. Yeah. Um, and then there was the play area, which was Goon Island. Yes, yeah. Talk to me about Goon Island.

Kelly 1:07:43

So weird. It really was. Because the the goons were so strange, and and I think they were really smart not to have uh people dressed as the goons, like directly interacting with young kids, because I think it would have been too terrifying.

Pete 1:07:58

Well, they caught it by having the Jeep everywhere.

Kelly 1:08:00

Yeah.

Pete 1:08:01

I mean, the Jeep, the Jeep was was very definitely, you know, a character. It was a it was kind of you know, it's Popeye's pet, basically. The Jeep. Yeah, so you could definitely have, you know, Jeep stuffies and Jeep and people love the Jeep. It was really, really sweet. Yeah. But yeah, having the goon, the goons were always like hinted that they were there. Pictures of like Alice and stuff, but you never actually had them there. Like a ro like there was a legend that one time there was a rotomatronic of Alice the Goon.

unknown 1:08:32

Oh.

Pete 1:08:32

And I think it was only there for like a couple of weeks. And I remember seeing this thing on YouTube which they actually showed this footage. Somebody had snuck in a camera right in opening, it was there for opening day, but then it was suddenly gone, and for some reason the effect didn't work. Yeah. So there are like whole fan clubs about Alice the Goon, of how cool that was. They make Alice the Goon, you know, and supposedly it was just too scary. It is having this, you know, set this all goon.

Kelly 1:09:00

Yeah, even though Alice is the sweet one, but this month at Boardwalk Times, we're looking at the idea of Disney using itself as an IP. We're exploring what the new adventures attraction means for California Adventure. I took a deep dive beyond the hype into what Disneyland Forward is really about, and also what it isn't. And we spend some time discussing tips for accessible travel and theme parks. Come check it all out at boardwalktimes.net. Well, you know, so you were you were talking about Catharsis a little earlier, and and I I wanted to talk about the one kind of spooky ride at uh at Fleischerland, which was in the uh Harlem Corners area of the park, and that would be the Sink of Payton Shades Club. I love, I love the Harlem area. I loved it so much. It's so great. And and that just I love that they had actual jazz clubs there. Yeah. You know, that you know Louis Armstrong himself used to perform there. That's right. And and I love that you know, you get on that ride and Cab Callaway is the voice in your ears. Yep. And he's guiding you through spooky optical illusions and anthropomorphized objects that are kind of trying to scare you.

Pete 1:10:35

There's all these references to a lot of some of Oob Eyework's like spookier cartoons that he made for Fleischer. That's right. Yeah. You know, um the mummy dance and all these other ones. But yeah, it's it's this great pastiche of all the creepy stuff that Fleischer did in their cartoon.

Kelly 1:10:49

Yeah, and there seems to be a through line, though, it's never super straightforward, but there seems to be a through line that you're trying to find Minnie. You're trying to find Minnie the Moocher. Right. In in it. And and I love that towards the end of the ride you realize that Minnie is just Betty Boop again. Actually, there's there's that great thing where you get towards the end of the ride and you see Betty literally like tied up to a giant gong. Oh, yeah. And it's like, oh my god, we got a free Betty, and and you kind of bumps the gong and it spins, then the next thing you see, Betty's free, and that's sort of the end of the ride.

Pete 1:11:26

But to get there, you've seen all of these ghosts, you've gone through graveyards, and it's a long ride, it's like 11 minutes, and you're floating in the water the whole time. One of my favorite effects is this is the one that always people always talk about, you know, it's I it blew me away. There's a section which you kind of reach these ice caves. Yeah. And like the voice, like the ghost transforms into this walrus. And as it's as you're floating through, there's this moment where the ice cakes are starting to swim around you as the music is building up, and this giant ice skull face just like lifts up. It's like a big cup. Yeah. It would come out of the water and swallow the bolt.

Kelly 1:12:04

Yeah.

Pete 1:12:05

So it's perfectly timed. So the boat comes through as this cup comes around, and then it would just cycle through. Yeah. But it was this great moment where you really felt like this dripping water on you. You're like, whoa, we're getting swallowed. And then it becomes this drop down. It was just, it's this lovely little moment. It's just, yeah, it's such a staple. Yeah. You know, it's it's you know, uh, they once tried adding live actors to it for that extra thrill, but it didn't quite work out because people would be hitting the actors and stuff. Nobody nobody really wanted that.

Kelly 1:12:35

It's not cool. Like, like you you you want to go through there and you just want you and your pal cab. Yeah, yeah.

Pete 1:12:41

The uh what uh Harlem Corners is is it's another transition because it's like this beautiful, like the way that the park was laid out was almost like this big circle of taking you through. I mean, you could go to like there were spokes that you could go out to, but it was a big circle.

Kelly 1:12:56

Yeah.

Pete 1:12:57

And this takes us to the much more fast-paced and a lot more one would say there's there's hope involved, uh, but it's a very big departure from all of the funny cartoon stuff that a lot of the fleisch, like Popeye and Betty Booth, which was Metropolis.

Kelly 1:13:16

Oh, yeah. And and speaking of transitions, yeah, uh one one of the most interesting things that I think that Spark ever did was they actually built a transition that took you in from one land and let you out in a different one. And this leads into Metropolis because of course we're talking about the Coco's earth control attraction. Right. Where it's uh like what a fascinating thing. And it's based on the the brilliant early Coco short where I think it's Coco and Fitz. Oh yeah. And um Coco discovers that there's a place where you can go where Earth is controlled from, like tides and weather and geological movements and stuff like that. And so you came in, for those who didn't get to experience this, it was wonderful. You would come and sit in this sort of round room all facing the middle, and there'd be screens above you and below you, and kind of around the periphery. It was as if you were in a flying saucer. Oh, wow. And your saucer sort of ostensibly launches, and that's what that's what the screens are for. So you can see yourself going up and you can see yourself going down. I think the chairs vibrated a little.

SPEAKER_00 1:14:28

Right.

Kelly 1:14:28

And then they go up and they dock with Coco's earth control. And it's so and so you can see Coco on the screens around you and what he's doing, and you're docked to his machine. And every time he changes something on the earth, you spin a little. So the big circular thing you're in sort of spins. Huh? And it's this really weird effect because he's doing these earth-changing things, and you're kind of moving with it. That's so cool. And uh towards the end, a big button rises up out of the middle of the floor, and it it says, Don't touch this or the world will stop working. And it's just it literally rises up in physically in the middle of the floor. It's the only thing you've seen so far, it's not animation. And then you see on the screens around it, Fitz trying to get to the button. Oh, jeez. And and then things start going crazy. Coco's trying to stop him, you're spinning, lights are going on and off, and all of a sudden the lights come on, and there's a rotatronic Fitz pressing the button. Oh, jeez. It's so wrong. It's so and it's so great. And then it's just chaos. Like you're seeing things, you're seeing earthquakes on the screens, you're spinning like crazy, lights are going on off and on, cocoa is like freaking out on the screens above and below you. And all of the sudden, you see this blue streak start circling the screens around the periphery, and you start to slow down your spinning, and things start to reverse, and you start seeing on the screens all of the earthquakes reversing so that everything's fine. Oh, and all of the giant waves are rolling back into the sea. Oh, man. And you start to realize that it's Superman turning back time. And you just hear this voice going, Oh no, you don't, little fella. Nice crossover. That's so cool. And then at the end, Superman has reversed everything that that Coco and Fitz have done. Most of the screens were in black and white because that's what the original cartoon was. Sure. But at the end they're suddenly in color, and you just hear, Welcome to Metropolis. And the door opens on the other side, and you walk out from the Inkwell area into Metropolis. I I just I just think that that's brilliant. It's chaos like early Fleischer, and it's inspiring like later Fleischer.

Pete 1:16:58

Oh, yeah. And because you could you could just choose to walk. I remember that ride. It was like and you don't get it until you ride it, and then it becomes this thing of like, I know, I know it's coming. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. When you first go through, it's like, what am I looking at here?

SPEAKER_00 1:17:13

What is going on?

Pete 1:17:13

Why did I what is this? And when it when it suddenly Superman pops up, you're like, oh, okay, this is great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So for those who don't know, Max Fleischer, you know, within a year of the publication of Superman Comics, was the brothers were approached by the owners of Superman to produce an animated feature.

Kelly 1:17:34

Yeah.

Pete 1:17:34

Uh and it was originally called the Mad Doctor. Not the Mad Doctor, it was the Mad Scientist.

Kelly 1:17:40

Mad Scientist, yeah.

Pete 1:17:41

And it's about, you know, gravity of this mad scientist has this giant magnet that shoots meteors at Metropolis. Yeah. It was beautiful, beautifully done. Of course, like the classics, like the mechanical monsters and the frozen giant, those are just amazing. Yeah. Um there was a rough period during World War II where everybody was suffering from budgetary constraints. And you can definitely see it in the animated Superman shorts. Just the quality kind of goes down a little bit. Yeah. But I mean, everybody everybody was going through that at this time. Right. Yeah, yeah. And Metropolis didn't actually open with the original park. Yeah, that's right. It came in a number of years later. A couple of years later, it was actually added in there. Uh strangely enough, one of the designers who was instrumental in designing the park uh started off as an in-betweener on Superman. Like he wasn't, he wasn't like a main animator. He would just fill in the, you know, for so you when you have animation, you have what are called key poses, which are like these main poses of animated characters. And they do these fill-ins to kind of fill in the gaps so that would smooth out the animation. Those are called in-betweens. And that's what this guy did. His name was Jacob Kurtzberg, and he was from New York. He was another Brownsville resident. And he started as an in-betweener, and then he kind of got tired of working at the Fleischer Studios for a while. He was like, I'm gonna go off and try other things. I've got other he was always ambitious.

Kelly 1:19:06

Yeah.

Pete 1:19:07

And uh he wound up working uh with another fellow named Joe Simon, and the two of them tried their hand at this new medium that had grown in the 30s called comic books. Yeah. Started off by a guy, uh uh another another Max.

SPEAKER_00 1:19:24

Yeah.

Pete 1:19:25

Uh uh, which was a guy named Max Gaines. He started up famous funnies, and it became comic books as we know it. Yeah. Uh, but he he and Simon, Kurtzberg and Simon, uh, well, I should say Kurtzman Kurtzberg changed his name to uh Jack Kirby. And Jack, these guys were really fast. They worked for anybody for hire. They be they became like their own independent comic book uh world. Yeah. And uh very bold style, very, very, very quick. And I think it was the the the need for speed in an animation house that made Kirby so fast and so accurate. Yeah. Uh and he and Fleischer were not enemies, they were they did not have a big falling out, he just wanted to try something else, right? But who he did have a falling out with was another entrepreneur and another auteur. It was a guy named Stanley Lieber. Yeah. And Stanley was working at a place called Atlas Comics, and they were doing, you know, the standard wartime comics, you know, you know, characters like Captain America and stuff like that.

Kelly 1:20:32

Yeah, yeah.

Pete 1:20:33

And then in the 50s, you know, there was the big uh horror comic craze, and they all everybody tried their hand at horror comics and romance comics. Yeah. And superheroes were very, very out of fashion, and it wasn't until Lieber and Lee started playing around with these ideas of new characters, you know. So we're talking 1962, 1963. They start playing with these ideas, yeah. And they launch uh the the Atlas comics had become Marvel comics. And uh Stan and Jack put out this comic called The Fantastic Four. Um, and it was a great comic book. It was like you know, fabulous superhero arrangement. I love the I love those old Fantastic Four comics, they really resonated, but they lose everything the minute Jack walks away because Stan was too much of a blowhard and too much of like it's all me, it's all me, baby. So he just kind of ruined the whole thing. I mean, imagine the kind of stuff we would have had if Jack had stayed with Marvel. Oh, yeah. But I mean, all we get was like the Fantastic Four, and then Marvel just kind of drops off.

Kelly 1:21:44

Yeah, they kind of disappear.

Pete 1:21:45

Yeah, it's it's like they had they had some runs of some stuff. I mean, they had they had a character called Spider-Man, it was done by a guy named Steve Ditko. Yeah, but they you didn't have many other characters, you know, it was just didn't quite wit. And getting so much in a huff, Jack Jack leaves and runs into Max Fleischer. Yeah. And like, you want a job? So he becomes a concept artist at the Fleischer theme park division, and he starts to he's like, Well, you're really your artwork's very popular at Marvel. What can you do with the stuff from DC? Because we own Superman. Yeah, and he starts designing Metropolis, but in that really like he's still paying homage to those older things that he used to work because he was there on those older Superman cartoons, but now he's got this big, bold style that's very distinctive to Jack Kirby. And he builds Metropolis, and everything's done in forced perspective with these huge buildings that totally obscure, massive. And the Superman ride has the worst line ever because it takes forever to get on this thing. Yeah, it really does. But it's amazing because it gives you the illusion of flight. It's this great suspended thing where you're all kind of standing there, but you're kind of flying with Superman through these adventures, and you're and you get attacked by a you know the giant, giant fanged dinosaur that has popped out of the ice, and you have the mechanical monsters trying to grab you. Yeah. And it's like this mix between a roller coaster and and a dark ride, and it is so much fun.

Kelly 1:23:21

Yeah, just such a clever like mesh of textures and and different speeds that you're going in, and yeah.

Pete 1:23:28

Yeah, and he became a staple for the designs all the way up to the closing of the park because he became the workhorse for the Fleischers. Yeah. Of like, oh, we're gonna we're gonna spill like I think he actually did a couple of the lands for Popeye's Seven C's, too. So he liked made these like these more elaborate and much more because his his big thing was like exploring different cultures and different religions in some very unique ways and exploring esotericism. He was he was he was an odd duck, but he was very, very prolific. Yeah, and uh there's whole people devoted to galleries of Jack Kirby work, especially from his his theme park days. Yeah, it's like you know, again, I'd love to have seen more of his work in comics, but he just kind of settled in because he could he could work fast enough. And then when I guess when the park closed, he he was one of those few people that didn't just bank on the theme park, he went back to comics. Oh, interesting. And he started drawing DC. He was drawing, you know, Batman and Superman and all this, but it's like this old workhorse. Yeah, Jack Kir Jack Kirby, I'm gonna draw comics, you know. Forget this, forget Marvel. I'm gonna go out and do this, you know, I'm gonna do some DC. And he was also instrumental uh because of his connections with um Fleischer and the comic book world, they used him very heavily to bring in the other staples of these other DC characters in the 70s.

Kelly 1:24:48

Yeah.

Pete 1:24:49

Because you had the Justice League of America, right? But it was like this bad, really bad stunt show with boats and and water skis for some reason. And it just that was that was a low point. And I think that's when they had a management transition due to budgetary constraints in the mid-70s.

Kelly 1:25:09

The thing I love about his metropolis design, uh I I think it's so great, is that as someone who's a static artist, he really had a sense of that things needed to be in motion.

SPEAKER_00 1:25:20

Oh, yeah, all the time.

Kelly 1:25:21

Yeah, and as soon as as soon as you walk into metropolis, like everything's moving. Like there's things on top of buildings that are spinning. There's modes of there's vehicles, some that you can ride on, some that are just for show.

Pete 1:25:34

I love the elevated freeway that goes over. It's just these cars that are going back and forth and they look like they're growing because they're getting closer. It's like such a great detail that they threw in there.

Kelly 1:25:43

Yeah, and it just it feels like that kind of optimistic progress that you want to see in a in a future land.

Pete 1:25:51

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's and it's it was all about you know progression. Like it's the world, it's kind of like this world of tomorrow, this man of tomorrow approach of Superman from Krypton giving us humans this view into what life could be, you know, through through his the lens of Superman. Like this is the world of Superman and his friends. Yeah, you've got you've got Batman, you've got Wonder Woman, you've got Hawkman, you've got Our Man.

Kelly 1:26:16

I think so much of this is an immigrant story. It totally is. So we're you know, we're talking about the Fleischers who are immigrants, and then we're talking about Superman who is created by two immigrants. Um also two Jewish immigrants, just like the Fleischers. And Superman as a character himself, who is an immigrant. Oh, yeah. And um, I think it I think it wraps together beautifully in that way. Absolutely.

Pete 1:26:45

And you know, the hard part is so by the time I got there, you know, I was there that final, that final year. Yeah. I think Metrop that's that's where I noticed a lot of the fading and the kind of the it was kind of sad like going to Metropolis as a as you know, a nine-year-old, kind of going, Oh I still loved it, you know, because I I loved, loved, loved all the DC characters. I read Justice Society so much. It was like, yeah, I love the Spectre, I love Wildcat, all these great characters. And they were all there. It was like, oh, they're totally represented. It was great. But everything was just a little faded in the in the Florida sun, and everything was definitely starting to show weathering from the water, yeah, water logging. I'm not sure when things started falling apart for the park, but the rumor is that it had something to do with the two brothers.

Kelly 1:27:40

Yeah.

Pete 1:27:41

They had some sort of rift, and to this day, no one really knows exactly what it was about.

Kelly 1:27:45

Yeah, it seems that that Max and Dave, who were the primary creators, seemed to just always be at odds for the for their whole careers. And and you know, Max Max was kind of a mastermind in in a lot of ways, and he was the inventor and he was the Producer and Dave was the funny guy. Yeah. And Dave was uh the one who was on the floor with the animators, and they just they didn't think they were doing the same job ever. Yeah. And and so they just fought and they fought, and as I understand it, by you know, Max died in the 60s, I want to say. Dave Fleischer died in 79. Yeah. And you know, the the kind of the force of will of those two men were sort of keeping things together in spite of their differences. By the time it ended up being the estates of those two men, it was all over.

Pete 1:28:39

Fleischer died in 1972. Max Fleisch and his brother 1979. So yeah, this the 70s became the real point of contention because it was like one person going before the other. Yeah. And you could definitely see where the priorities are.

Kelly 1:28:56

Yeah. You know. For sure. And and by the time they were both gone, the the families were at odds. There was no holding it together anymore. Yeah. And and the industry that they had started with was a different industry. Oh, yeah. They certainly were kind of a powerful entertainment company, but not as powerful.

Pete 1:29:17

Well, this leads to one last little Brownsville resident who was kind of sowing his oats and kind of catching up and kind of showing the world of what was possible. But you can definitely see his love for the Fleischers works. But he was definitely rebelling against like the Warner Brothers staple and all these other kind of schmaltzy cartoons that were coming out from all of his competitors. Um and his name was uh Ralph Bakshee.

Kelly 1:29:47

Yeah.

Pete 1:29:47

He grew up in Brownsville, New York, the same thing.

Kelly 1:29:50

He's really the spiritual successor of of the Fleischers animation.

Pete 1:29:55

He kind of is, and it's a real shame that um that the theme park, I think if the theme park had survived long enough, we actually would have seen Bakshee and some of his properties, maybe would have I would love to fantasize like a world in which Bakshley actually Bakshee actually starts like working with the Fleischer states and like you know, saying I could totally fix this up for you, be totally great. You know, we'll bring Frank for Zedd in here, we'll do a fire and ice ride, you know, be great. But uh, but yeah, but Bakshe, you know, had a love for Fleischer Land. Yeah. Um because I think he loved the heart that went into that place. Yeah. And it had a tremendous heart. And I think that's the thing that we can take away from Fleischer Land is that the place was built with a tremendous amount of imagination and heart behind it, yeah, that I don't think anybody else really could have managed.

Kelly 1:30:47

I really don't. I don't there there's a vision there that is unlike anybody else's vision, and that's why they were so huge. That's why people loved them so was because they uh the Fleischers never talked down to their audience. The Fleischers were willing to show them the strangest things that came out of their head.

Pete 1:31:08

Massive risk takers. Oh my god. Massive risk takers. It's one of those American staples that people always they still talk about it. I mean, it's been gone now for almost 40 years. Yeah. And yet, you know, because it closed, it closed October 15th, yeah, 1983, and it has been gone ever since. And yet, you know, poor little Heather O'Rourke, you know, being stuck at the gate. I feel that way. It's like people people have people have talked about reviving it, like fans are like, we gotta buy it, you know. But people get together for these conventions and people cosplay. It's real, and we're talking about it now, which is great.

Kelly 1:31:47

And it's it it's sweet, and it's time has passed. Yeah. Yeah.

Pete 1:31:51

And so speaking of time, yes, it's the time of our show in which we uh no longer give uh uh uh the lowdown, it's time to give the plus up.

Kelly 1:32:02

But we may have uh done things a little bit in reverse this time because in many ways the entire episode was the plus up.

Pete 1:32:09

Yes, indeed. Yeah, so we are back to the normal reality. So for those who've been listening and going, what on earth are you two talking about?

Kelly 1:32:17

Yeah, God bless you for sticking with us.

Pete 1:32:18

Yeah, but if you made it this far, you're awesome.

Kelly 1:32:22

So we want to say uh a couple of things about this. This was an idea that popped out when uh Pete and I went to Disneyland recently and just started musing on the idea of what would it be like if the Fleischers had won the animation and uh made a theme park like that. And we started looking for ways that that might happen and what that might look like.

Pete 1:32:46

Yeah, we're wandering around like adventurel going, what would be the equivalent? You know, like what would oh, this would be this, you know. We would just be on a ride and all of a sudden one of us will lean over to the other, go like, yeah, this ride is gonna be Betty Boop.

Kelly 1:32:58

And the and and what I think is kind of interesting about this is that except for the main premise, most everything we said was true. Absolutely. Um it in fact, Disney did get that deal. He didn't color, yep. Um, and he held on to it for a little over three years where nobody else could use three-strip technicolor.

Pete 1:33:23

Not even live action films.

Kelly 1:33:24

Not even live action films. And it knocked Fleischer back several steps. And the Hayes Code did come into play in the 30s, and it was unfairly targeted towards uh Jewish filmmakers. Yeah. And it hurt the Fleischers a great deal.

Pete 1:33:44

Yep. Absolutely. And Ubiworks was one of the also the victims because when he left Disney Studios, he went to work at MGM, and some of his cartoons were featuring very racy jokes.

Kelly 1:33:54

Yeah.

Pete 1:33:55

And the Hayes, the Hayes office was actually coming down on him as well. Yeah. Eventually he did actually wind up working with Walt again later on.

Kelly 1:34:02

Yeah. So yeah. Um also Charles Fleischer did, in fact, invent the uh coin operated claw machine. That's true. And that's the story about um them all being broken before he was arrested, is absolutely true. Yep. Um but you know, I kind of there's a a story I w I want to tell at the end of this that that maybe pulls this all together in a way. Um Richard Fleischer, Max's son, truly was a film director, and and the film that really made his name was a movie he made with Walt Disney called Twenty Thousand Leagues Beneath the Sea. Um it was a huge hit. Uh Walt was really taking a risk with Fleischer, who don't farm. Yeah, he only had one film to his name before that. Um he's relatively inexperienced for a film that was really, really important for Disney at that point financially. Walt gave Richard the job. Walt certainly knew who Richard's father was. Um they had been very, very tight competitors for a very long time. Um but by that point Max had retired. Yeah. And the Fleischer Studios had been bought out uh by Paramount, right? Yeah, by Paramount, yeah. And um and his career had ended r really prematurely.

Pete 1:35:23

Yeah.

Kelly 1:35:23

And Richard Fleischer came up to Walt Disney and said, Hey, uh, I think you know who my dad is. He just was wondering if he could come see the studio someday. And Walt said to Richard Fleischer, Yeah, of course. Have him come on this day and I'll show him around the studio. I'll show Mac Fleischer around. And what Walt Disney did was he in the intervening time went and found every single animator that he could find that previously had worked for the Fleischer Studios and flew them into Burbank so that when Max showed up, he had a reunion with his entire animation staff. It was it was a beautiful gesture. It really to me says, I mean, there there's there's good things about Walt, there's bad things about Walt, but he he could be very generous, and it is to my mind a very sweet way to pay homage to the person who was probably his greatest competitor.

Pete 1:36:32

Absolutely. I mean, e and Max actually acknowledged that when uh Richard asked his father, you know, like, I don't want to seem disloyal to you while I'm working on 20,000 leagues, and Max basically looked at him. This was before the union, the reunion, and he said, You must absolutely take this job. Yeah. And uh later on, you know, he called up Walt and he says, I just want to let you know you've got great taste in directors. So yeah. I mean, so yeah, Kelly and I were at Disneyland and we came up with this idea, and we've been we've been ulcerating to do this particular show. Yeah. And we want to thank you guys for coming along with us with this little imaginary ride into what if. What if Walt had not made Disneyland? And what if Max Fleischer had? Yeah.

Kelly 1:37:18

So and next episode we'll be back to something a little more real.

Pete 1:37:23

Yes, indeed. So in the meantime, I'm Peter Overstreet.

Kelly 1:37:27

And I'm Kelly McCubbin.

Pete 1:37:28

And you're listening to The Lowdown on the Plus Up.

Kelly 1:37:45

We hope you've enjoyed this episode of The Lowdown on the Plus Up. If you have, please tell your friends where you found us. And if you haven't, we can pretend this never happened and need not speak of it again. For a lot more thoughts on theme parks and related stuff, check out my writing for Boardwalk Times at Boardwalk Times.net. Feel free to reach out to Pete and I on our Lowdown on the Plus Up Facebook group or send us a message directly at comments at lowdown-plus-up.com. We really want to hear about how you'd plus these attractions up and read some of your ideas on the show. Our theme music is Goblin Tinker Soldier Spy by Kevin McLeod at Incompitech.com. We'll have a new episode out real soon. Why? Because we like you.