A week ago, the following converstation:
CutE: So do you know is Max Fleishcher is?
CutEst: No, warily. Have we met him?
E: Impossible in person. Have you been to the Stray Cat?
Est: Even more tentatively, Is that a place or my last animal?
E: We’re going tomorrow night. And then he explained both.
Est: Oboy. Always interesting.
Maybe you do know who Max Fleischer is – if you’re an old cartoon fan or movie history buff, you probably do. He was an animation pioneer, creating his first cartoons (and a process to do them) back in 1916 or so. In a very varied career, he produced comedy shorts with original characters Betty Boop, Popeye the Sailor, Koko the Clown, later Superman and many others.
His is rather a sad tale, but his original cartoons which we watched with about 25 others in the Stray Cat Film Center (1662 Broadway) were both informative and entertaining. Maybe not an entire hour and 52 minutes entertaining, but still . . .
The film center has theater seating (and some couches and chairs, too) just past its small lobby where you could buy very good popcorn, candy and drinks. That was interesting – pop was $2.00, beer and hard cider were free (care to leave a tip?). This is a non-profit organization, run entirely by volunteers, film and arts buffs all I assume.
The films here are wildly eclectic – from revenge dramas to musical tours to Scooby-Doo to My Dinner with André to a legendary pulp masterpiece, Charley Varrick coming this Saturday. The audience is just as varied and we once again were happy to let the young’uns see that oldsters still get out. So what if we were the only folks in the room who’d seen a Popeye cartoon in a movie theater. Or one of us thought he had.
(There's just 4 pictures in this little slide show. The last one is Rudy Vallee singing Kansas City Kitty which you definitely should look up!)
If you like old, unusual, sometimes somehow forgotten films, do check out their website, https://www.straycatfilmcenter.com/ and look at their schedule. Fear not: there's street parking around the place and it's next to Los Tules, which has been there forever. We’re thinking of joining their Cool Cat Club.
P.S. Fleischer was a really interesting inventor and cartoonist. If you’d like to hear more aout him, go to https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVQhISdcn2Zv9acVsswdAaQ or read more about his rather unfortunate life at: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0281502/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
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