Quote:
Originally Posted by Ccook50
I've seen both Gulliver's Travels and Hoppity Goes To Town. Both extremely nicely animated (Gulliver himself was rotoscoped); what was wrong was story development. Whoever wrote the script for Gulliver just watered down Swift's tale with some trite dialogue and no direction. Hoppity just seemed to drag. The Fleischers could do longform--the Popeye two-reelers are testiment to that. (TRIVIA: King Features Syndicate never saw a dime off the Popeye cartoons that Fleischer and Famous made as the two studios bought the rights to the characters.)
What did the Fleischers in was that Max and Dave split from each other in acrimony in 1941, leaving Max to run the studio which Paramount Pictures (distributors of their cartoons) now controlled. True, the poor timing of the release of Hoppity Goes To Town was a contributing factor in the demise of the Fleischer Studios by name; Paramount would oust Max and rename it Famous Studios (named for their music publishing arm) with Max's son-in-law, Seymour Kneitel helping to run it.
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Ah, thanks for clarifying that for me, Ccook. I'd known that Max and Dave had quite a nasty rift during the production of
Hoppity, and that this was a contributing factor toward their decline - irony is that Max did apparently become friends with his former adversary Walt Disney in the aftermath.
And I agree - the film itself was nicely animated, but could have done with a slightly more substantial storyline. I still feel quite sad for it, though, given the circumstances.