The last feature the Fleischer Studio completed at their Miami studio ... where the Fleischers moved after their New York studio was unionized.
Professor (and animation veteran) Tom Sito writes:
May 6th, 1937- THE FLEISCHER STRIKE - Cartoonists vote to strike Max Fleischers Studio after Max fires 13 animators for union activity and complaining about their 6 day work week.
The strike was settled several weeks later when parent company Paramount forced Max to concede. Strikers sang "We're Popeye the Union Man! We're Popeye the Union Man! We'll Fight to the Finish, Cause We Can't Live on Spinach! We're Popeye...etc." The Strike began with fistfights on Broadway in front of the studio, but it didn't get that much press because of the Hindenberg Disaster happening at the same time.
Animation Checker Ellen Jensen told me she was arrested for biting a cop. " One officer pinned my arms back, and another knocked my hat off when he hit me with his billy club, so I sank my teeth into his arm."
Ultimately, the cartoonists secured a contract with the Fleischer brothers, but it was a short-lived victory. The Fleischers relocated to Miami, Florida and set up a non-union studio. There they produced the features Gulliver's Travels, Mr. Bug Goes to Town and a sloew of iconic Superman shorts before being shut down by their owner Paramount Pictures and shoved into retirement.
The Fleischers deserved better. One of the ironies of the failure of their Miami studio was, when they moved South, they had to offer artists larger salaries to lure them to the smallish city on the Florida coast.
Disney survived World War II, aided by government contracts for hundreds of training films. A decade later, Max Fleischer's son Richard directed 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, one of Walt Disney Production's biggest live-action hits. Unfortunately for the Fleischer brothers themselves there were no third acts. The flight from the union that struck the Fleischers' Manhattan studio on a May morning in 1937 turned out to be a bad move, and the cartoon studio that had started during the teenaged years of the 20th century ceased to exist.
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