Fleischer Studios' Myron Waldman dead at 97

Posted:
Feb 6, 2006

Animator and illustrator Myron Waldman, a mainstay of Fleischer and Famous Studios who helped develop such characters as Betty Boop, died Saturday at 97.

The last surviving head animator of Fleischer Studios, Waldman also drew such famous characters as Popeye, Superman and Casper the Friendly Ghost. A resident of Wantagh on New York's Long Island, he died at New Island Hospital in Bethpage.

According to the family, the cause was congestive heart failure.

He created Betty Boop's ever-popular and lovable little dog Pudgy, and mother and son donkeys Hunky and Spunky. Hunky And Spunky (1938), along with 1937's Educated Fish(another film that Waldman animated), were two of the four Fleischer cartoons nominated for Academy Awards.

"He was a true pioneer, both as an animator and as one who greatly affected the animation industry," said Jerry Gladstone, president of American Royal Arts of Boca Raton, Florida, which represented Waldman's work.

Born in Brooklyn on April 23, 1908, Waldman remembered drawing at age 4. He attended the Pratt Institute. In 1930, Fleischer Studios hired him as an inker and fill-in artist.

His first screen credit came when he was promoted to animator on By the Light of the Silvery Moon, a 1931 "Song Car-Tune"; the follow-the-bouncing-ball series would later be known as "Screen Songs."

His second job as an animator was Wait Till The Sun Shines, Nellie(1932), part of the "Screen Songs" series. It was there that he met Betty Boop, created in 1930 and still displaying doglike features. Waldman, Seymour Kneitel, Willard Bowsky and Dave Tendlar turned the character into a fully human female sex symbol who was challenged by the Hollywood Production Code.

Waldman has been identified with the whimsical style that started appearing in Color Classics, the Fleischer Studios series started in 1934 to compete with Disney's Silly Symphonies.

Waldman stayed with the Fleischer brothers in 1938 when they moved their studio to Miami in a bid to imitate Disney more closely, starting with the feature Gulliver's Travels. After the small success of the film, the studio began two-reel color specials, based on the Superman stories licensed from DC Comics, and Popeye stories based on Elzie Segar's comic-strip character (already a veteran of black-and-white shorts).

Waldman had major responsibilities in several of the two-reelers. He was the principal animator -- the director, some sources say -- of Raggedy Ann And Raggedy Andy, a 17-minute two-reel special based on Johnny Gruelle's children's stories.

After Paramount foreclosed on the Fleischers following the failure of their second feature, Mr. Bug Goes to Town(1941), the studio returned to New York. It was reorganized as Famous Studios under Paramount's control.

Waldman stayed with Famous Studios as the head animator. Famous concentrated on shorts featuring such minor characters as Baby Huey, Herman and Katnip, and Little Lulu. Waldman was especially fond of the Casper, The Friendly Ghost series and helped redesign Seymour Reit's original drawing of Casper to the image widely known today.

Although he left Famous Studios in 1957, Waldman kept working, mainly for TV, where he animated cartoons and commercials. He was an animator for Batfink and other shows from Hal Seeger Productions, where he was a director from 1958 to 1968. His work included the syndicate TV revival of Fleischer's Out of the Inkwell series starring Koko the Clown, and the 1965-67 ABC Saturday morning series Milton the Monster.

In addition to his career in animation, Waldman drew the 1940s syndicated comic strip Happy the Humbug, and authored Eve: A Pictorial Love Story, a cartoon novel published in 1943.

Later in life, Waldman traveled and lectured on animation at Columbia University and the New School. He made paintings for galleries, especially the Barker Animation Art Gallery. He wrote and co-directed the 1984 musical short The Adventures of a Man in Search of a Heart: A Joleron Production Starring the Tin Woodman from the Land of Oz.

As well, he worked on a musical feature that was never completed.

He was honored in the 1990s with retrospectives at the American Museum of the Moving Image, the Museum of Modern Art and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

Waldman won the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Award in 1986. In 1997, he won the Winsor McCay Award for his life's work in animation.

Myron Waldman is survived by his wife of 57 years, Rosalie, a cooking instructor whom he met in the 1940s when she was an animation checker at Fleischer Studios; sons Robert, a TV writer and producer in New York, and Steve, a sales executive in Hollywood, Florida; and three grandchildren.