Richard Fleischer

Film director, born in Brooklyn, New York, USA. The son of film cartoon animator Max Fleischer, he studied psychiatry at Brown University, RI, where he became interested in directing musical comedy productions and subsequently moved to Yale Drama School. He later joined a touring theatre group and was spotted by a talent scout from RKO-Pathé and employed in their New York office making Pathé newsreels. His post-World War 2 documentary Design for Death won an Oscar, and he went on to launch his feature-film career with Child of Divorce (1946). Notable among his many later films are The Narrow Margin (1952), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), The Vikings (1958), Fantastic Voyage (1966), Doctor Dolittle (1967), The Boston Strangler (1968), 10 Rillington Place (1970), Soylent Green (1973), and Conan the Destroyer (1984). His autobiography, Just Tell Me When to Cry, appeared in 1994.

Richard O.

He was born in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, the son and biographer (2005) of animator Max Fleischer. His film career began in 1942 at the RKO studio, directing shorts, documentaries, and compilations of forgotten silent features, which he called Flicker Flashbacks.

Fleischer directed his first feature in 1946. His early films were taut film noir thrillers such as The Clay Pigeon (1949), Follow Me Quietly (1949), Armored Car Robbery (1950), and The Narrow Margin (1952).

He was extraordinarily versatile for a major director, and some admirers have said that his reluctance to concentrate on a single genre limited his fame with the moviegoing public. His experience with science fiction films served well in directing the futuristic Soylent Green (1973), a cautionary tale of overpopulation and environmental pollution. Some of his entertainments are regarded as controversial and provocative, such as Che! (a biopic of Che Guevara) (1969) and the interracial melodrama of the Deep South in Mandingo (1975).

Fleischer was chairman of Fleischer Studios, which today handles the licensing of Betty Boop and Koko the Clown. In June 2005 he released his telling of his father's career in Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution.

He died in his sleep at age 89, after having been in failing health for the better part of a year.

Fleischer's 1993 autobiography, "Just Tell Me When to Cry," described his many difficulties with actors, writers and producers.