INT: My name is Larry Mirisch, today is December 13th, 2003. I'm here doing an interview with Richard Fleischer who has been a member of the Directors Guild for 53 years. And this is for the Visual History Program. We're here at Richard's home in Brentwood, California.

INT: For the record, your name is?

RF: Richard Fleischer is my name. [INT: And Dick, as you're commonly referred to, when were you born?] I was born in 1916. December 8th, 1916. The day after Pearl Harbor [Day]. [INT: And where?] Where? In a little village called Brooklyn, New York. [INT: I've heard of that. I've heard of that.]

INT: What began to attract you to, to come into the movie business?

RF: That's a long story. It goes back to my real childhood days, when I was in the school play, public school. I was only about eight or nine years old. And the teacher had a play being started and I was in it. And I noticed she was having trouble in staging the play, as to how to get the people to leave the scene without turning their back on the king. And I knew how to do that right away, to have them go out backwards, and so that they don't turn their back. It had never occurred to the teacher, who said, "Oh, you have an answer for everything." And, and from then on I decided, well that's directing really and that's what I want to do.

INT: Well, tell me a little bit about your folks, your parents and your growing up life.

RF: Well, of course, my father was a world famous man. And he was one of the leading animators in the business, if not the leading animator in the business at that time. And he and my mother lived in Brooklyn, New York, at the beginning. And they, his life is quite a fascinating one and a great symbol for me to try to achieve something that remotely would resemble what he was. And he was a world famous person; he was recognized down the street by people. If we went to Europe, we knew, they knew us at customs, who he was, right away, though he wasn't there, but my mother's name and my name tipped them off, Fleischer, they knew his animated cartoons. [INT: What were some of his cartoons that he was known for?] Well, at the beginning he developed a character called Koko the Clown, which became an immediate success because of an invention that he made specifically for that picture. And the invention was called the rotoscope, which is still in use in animation studios. So it gave animation, which up to that time was like stick figures and very erratic and jerky and very stiff. And what the rotoscope did was endow a human movement to these characters, and particularly to Koko. And he changed the look of animation forever. And it was, he patented that and opened a studio called Out of the Inkwell, and called it, the series that he commenced with was OUT OF THE INKWELL WITH KOKO THE CLOWN [OUT OF THE INKWELL]. And it was a great, great success. They were wonderful; I think some of the best cartoons ever made. [INT: And were there any other characters at that period?] And at the, after Koko, he brought in a little dog called Bimbo, which became popular. Everything he touched became popular. But he did that, and then of course in 1930, he created Betty Boop, which is still very, very popular, particularly the merchandising of Betty Boop, I'm happy to say and... But the Betty Boop series was a great success. And then after that, and during that, he took on Popeye the Sailor [Popeye the Sailor Man], and he produced the Popeye the Sailor series. And then after that, he incorporated into the business another character called Superman. So all of these very successful characters made him very successful.

INT: Dick, what were some of the notable projects your father worked on during that period?

RF: After the successes that he made with the animation business, his interests always were very, very widespread and he decided to make a feature length picture of DARWIN'S THEORY OF EVOLUTION, which was a great success. Caused a lot of controversy as it still does. And then he went into EINSTEIN'S THEORY OF RELATIVITY [THE EINSTEIN THEORY OF RELATIVITY]. And those are pretty heavy subjects for a virtually uneducated man. He never got really into high school; he had different kind of training. But those are heavy subjects and they were all very, very successful. So he was quite a character. [INT: Did you have any other, were there any other relatives working in the Fleischer Studios at that time?] Well, since he made EINSTEIN'S THEORY OF RELATIVITY we had several relatives working for the company. However, it wasn't the usual kind of thing that you do with relatives. There were five Fleischer brothers, each one tremendously talented in his field and their fields were widely separated. There's my father, to begin with, Max Fleischer, who was an artist and a cartoonist. And his brother, younger brother Dave, who appears in many of the cartoons, and he directed every cartoon that was made by Fleischer Studios. And then there was Joe Fleischer, who was, he was a mechanic and kind of a genius mechanic. He helped build all the machinery that was needed for my father's inventions. Joe. Then there was Charley, who also was involved with the mechanics. And who else? There was... And Louis Fleischer, who was a musician, and he was wonderful at scoring the pictures. Well not really scoring, but working on the music of the pictures, the cartoons, which were all pretty much wall-to-wall music. So there are the five brothers. There was a sister, Ethel, who was a pianist but she did not take part in the company. But all of the brothers worked together, and it was quite remarkable. Five brothers, each one enormously talented, in a different field, it didn't overlap them, but worked great for my father's needs.

INT: In your years growing up, did you ever work in the studio?

RF: One summer I worked in the library. I relieved their librarian who went on vacation for a few weeks. And at that time I was attending the Yale drama school [Yale School of Drama], and for the summer holiday I went to Florida. My father had built, in fact, a state-of-the-art cartoon factory, really. And it was the first all air-conditioned building in the state of Florida. So I took a summer job 'cause I knew everybody at the studio, since I was born, literally. And it was a wonderful summer of reading books, looking for material for future cartoons. [INT: Did you ever have any interest in the animation world?] I have tremendous interest in it, but I have no talent in it whatsoever. I can't make a stick figure. I have no drawing ability. I've tried, I've taken lessons, but it doesn't work. [INT: Skipped a generation.] So I keep doing what I do best, directing films.

INT: So tell us about Yale [Yale School of Drama]. What was that like?

RF: Well, my experience at Yale, of course, was priceless. And I learned an enormous lot about films by learning about the theater. And I went there three years, at the Yale drama school. And at the, my last year there, 1942, I met a very beautiful, charming, young lady from Montreal, Canada, named Mary Dickson. And a year or two later, we were married. And we still are, and it's now 60 years and we're still going strong. Anyhow, I learned a tremendous amount of stagecraft for the three years that I was there. And I've used a lot of it in my direction of motion pictures. [INT: During that period, did you learn much about how to use the camera, and did you start thinking about that?] I did. And again, it was, it was a very, very lucky break for me, because how I got into films was really kind of a ALICE IN WONDERLAND dream. I organized a group of players from the Yale School of Drama to do plays in the summer time, in the mountain hotels where people went for holidays. And we did a play a week. I would bring to this, these various hotels and I got interested in doing theater-in-the-round. Nobody except one theater in the United States was doing theater-in-the-round. And I read about it, they were in Seattle, Washington and we were in Providence, Rhode Island. So I experimented at the drama school, and it looked very feasible to me. It seemed to work, and I did a summer of theater-in-the-round in New England. And during one of the performances of that, after the show was over, this gentleman came up to me and said, "I'm a talent scout from RKO Radio Pictures. How would you like to go to Hollywood and direct movies?" Well that was a shot out of the dark, I mean my god, that's a thing that you try for your whole lifetimes and don't make. And here it is dropped right in my lap. It turned out, it turned out wonderfully well. It was good luck on top of good luck because the... I was ready to leave for Hollywood, just to commence my career as a movie Director, feeling a bit unprepared for it, I must say. But he phoned me and said, and I was leaving that day for California, he called me and said, "Don't get on the train. Stay in New York, I want you here. There's a big change at the studio, and send you out there now, you'll just get lost in the shuffle, and six months from now you'll be back in New York looking for a job. So don't go and wait for me to tell you when the situation is calm at the studio, so you won't get overlooked." And he said, "I'm going to try to arrange a job for you in New York City, at Pathé News," which was a big newsreel production company and they made all sorts of short subjects. And I said, "That'd be wonderful." Well, that's where I went for another three years because there was, there were no, no theaters, film schools. There were no film schools at that time, anywhere in the world, I guess. And here I was going to a private film school, nobody else was there like myself. I was the young kid that did everything. So I learned motion pictures and how to use the camera and how to make montage, particularly. And I was very, very lucky in getting that job. I kept my eyes and ears open, and when the time was right, I went to Hollywood and took up my position as a Hollywood Director. [INT: Was... Now, you were married at this time?] By that time we, I was married and I was pregnant. That's the neat trick of the week. [INT: There you go.] But anyhow, then my wife Mickey [Mary Dickson], originally Mickey Dickson, but still Mickey Fleischer, we drove to California in my car, and while I was at RKO... I don't know whether you want me to go into this now...

INT: Well first of all, do you remember who the talent scout was who met you?

RF: Now the talent scout that discovered me was Arthur Willi, W-I-L-L-I. And I will never ever forget that man; he made such a change in my life. He made a Director out of me. And I was very grateful, and still am. [INT: Did you ever have the opportunity to tell him?] The opportunity to what? [INT: To tell him that?] I didn't see much of Arthur Willi. Yes, of course, he knew how grateful I was, but his bailiwick was New York City and New England. So he never got out to the Coast [West Coast], and we never really kept up the friendship, but I still am in awe of what he did for me

INT: You came to Los Angeles and you present yourself at RKO [RKO Radio Pictures]. What was, how did that all start to take shape?

RF: When I got to Hollywood, one of the first things I did was to go to RKO Radio Pictures Studio and introduced myself to the head of B-pictures. And he said, you know, “This, it's very interesting,” he said, “because all, we've seen your material. All the material that is made at Pathé News in New York is shipped here and we run it the next day. Or any other material that they've made, we run the next day. And it happens that today we got material from your studio in New York, from Pathé News.” They said, "Now, I'd like you to come in and watch the Pathé News material." So I did, I went with him into the projection room. There were other people sitting there. And it happened just by sheer accident that one of the two reel pictures I made, a documentary called THIS IS AMERICA, which was THE MARCH OF TIME challenge. But it was one of the pictures that I had written and directed. And the head of the, that department, Sid Rogell, fairly tough character, very hard man to work for. I thought then, not any longer. We ran the picture together, my picture that, the picture was called DRESS PARADE. It was about the fashion industry of all things. It was a very good picture and very humorous. And when the picture was over, and Rogell [Sid Rogell] had laughed many places during the, watching the film, with the picture. He said, "Well young man," he said, "if you can make 50 setups that well, you can make 150. So why don't you come back here now and pick up your job as directing full length movies?" And it was just the luck of the moment that they were running one of my pictures instead of just the newsreel. And so I went back to New York, packed up, drove out to California, and the first thing I got into at RKO was to do... They wanted me to do a documentary feature about Germany. We were still at war with Germany at the time. So I went right back to New York with Mickey [Mary Dickson], my wife. And we went to Washington [Washington, D.C.], looked at the material, and I thought it was old hat material because I'd seen it all on the newsreel. Stuff that they hadn't seen anywhere else, but I knew it was old stuff. So I told that to the custodian, the foreign custodian at the, in Washington, and he said, "Well we just got some new material in about Japan and nobody's ever seen this before." I said, "Well, show it to me." Well it was a couple of million feet, but I started watching it and it was fascinating and nobody had ever seen this before. And this country knew virtually nothing about Japan. So I told the studio that I wanted to switch from the German old hat stuff to the new Japanese material that had just arrived. They said go ahead. I did that and it [DESIGN FOR DEATH] won the Academy Award for feature-length documentary, which is not a bad try. [INT: Not bad.]

INT: Did the picture have much of a theatrical release in those years?

RF: Yes. It was a theatrical release of RKO Radio Pictures. And but the war [WWII] ended almost immediately, once I got to Washington [Washington, D.C.]. But still we did go ahead with the Japanese section, and it was a great stroke of luck. Incidentally, that's my first year in Hollywood, was winning the Academy Award, feature length film [feature length documentary]. And my father sent me a telegram from New York that said, simply, "What took you so long?" So we all enjoyed that. [INT: Do you remember the night you won the Academy Award very well?] What's that? [INT: Do you remember the night you won the Academy Award very well?] Oh yeah. The night we won was quite a gala evening. And you know we really didn't know how to behave. It's the first one of these things we've ever been to. And here I am walking in with an Oscar in my hand and head waiters who wouldn't give me the time of day before were opening the way and getting us at the special table. It was just a great experience. [INT: How did that translate then into your career?] Well, it.... It actually didn't have... Winning the award was not as fruitful as I hoped it would be. I just, I think for one thing, I was not well known, personally, in Hollywood. So I wasn't the first person you would think of to direct a film. And besides, I was already under contract to RKO Radio Pictures. [INT: So in 1947, they did give you a movie to direct, a feature?] Yes. And it was the winning of the Academy Award in feature length documentary was influential in my standing at the studio. But I still had to prove myself with dramatic movies.

INT: A CHILD OF DIVORCE, your first picture. That was a play?

RF: Well, a sign of some respect for me came when I was given the assignment to direct a remake of a film that had been made at RKO [RKO Radio Pictures] before called CHILD OF DIVORCE, which was a, not at all a typical B-picture to make. This stared Sharyn Moffett, a young Actress who the studio was priming to make her another Shirley Temple. But she never did get prime. But she was a very, very good young Actress and she did a wonderful job in the film, some very difficult, emotional scenes to do. But the scene, the picture was not a Western, and it was not cowboys, and shoot-em-up. It was not a gangster movie. This was a dramatic theatrical film. And coming right out of Yale [Yale School of Drama], it was wonderful for me to do that. And coming right out of Pathe News, my break-in and knowledge of shooting movies was already established. [INT: How long did you have to shoot the picture?] The picture... Normally, that kind of picture is shot, was shot then in about 15 days. But because I was working with a minor, who was the lead in the picture, Sharyn Moffett, they gave me 30 days. And so I shot the picture in 30 days, because the law wouldn't allow me to go any longer than that per day. I think it was a certain number of hours the child had to be tutored. We had setup a schoolhouse on the set; we had a teacher for her. And all of that went on, I was shooting other sequences and other scenes that didn't involve her, but she was all the way through the picture. So it was slow going. But Sharyn did a wonderful job and it was a real tearjerker. But very unusual and very, a very classy picture 'cause it didn't cater to the obvious things that we had in B-pictures at the time. [INT: I had the opportunity to watch the picture the other night, and I was particularly struck how it was more hard edged in it didn't, it doesn't have a happy ending. Whereas a lot of pictures of that era tended to be wrapped up with a bow.] Yes, it was daring thing to do in those days, and the picture was made in the 30 days. And it doesn't end the way you think it's going to end; it's an unhappy ending. The parents have gotten divorced early on in the movie and each had found another mate to be with, the child was very unhappy even though they had custody, each six months; one of them had custody of the child. And the child, the first custody was with the wife, ex-wife and she, Sharyn Moffett, hated this woman and the man, the new husband. And then she couldn't wait to get with her father and did not know until she got with her father that her father was getting married. And the girl, of course, didn't like that person either. There was no happy ending. The child was sent to a school, private school and neither parent wanted to take the child, or adopt her.

INT: I was struck at the end of the picture [CHILD OF DIVORCE], that she's talking to her roommate about a similar experience of the house was, the family was broken up and they're now living there. And the, as they're talking the school bells go off. And.. [RF: The chapel chimed.] The chapel chimed, and I think it was chiming “There's No Place Like Home.”

RF: Yeah. When I ran the picture a month or two ago, just to see what it looked like after all those years, and it holds up remarkably well. But they made a change at the very end, in which I was very unhappy about. Because when we ran the picture originally, when the film was over, my wife tells me that all the usherettes and all the lady ushers were all in the bathroom, crying. And it was because the situation of the child was very pathetic, but also it was the music that made them cry because the song that was played on the chapel bells at the end of the picture when I made it was “Going Home”, a very famous piece of music. Going Home, Going Home [Sings]. And Sharyn Moffett says to her roommate, who also a child of divorce, she said, "When I grow up, I'm never going to get married." Well that was a hell of an ending for a picture at, and a B-picture, and that is not in the movie, it's not the way the picture ends now. Somehow since then, it's gone through so many hands, and so many sales that they replaced that with different music and that remark about not getting married was eliminated. So a lot of the punch of the picture is gone at the very end.