Gulliver’s Travels (1939) Voices by Sam Parker, Pinto Colvig, Jack Mercer, Tedd Pierce, Jessica Dragonette, Livonia Warren, Lanny Ross, Cal Howard. Directed by Dave Fleischer. Screenplay by Dan Gordon, Cal Howard, Ted Pierce, I. Sparber, Edmond Seward. Based on the book Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World by Lemuel Gulliver by Jonathan Swift (London, 1726). Produced by Max Fleischer. Run Time: 76 minutes. USA Color Animated, Fantasy
While Walt Disney’s Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was the first animated feature, animation rival Fleischer Studios’ Gulliver’s Travels was the second. The brothers Fleischer left Bray Studios to found their own company Out of the Inkwell, Inc., in 1921, changing its name in 1929. In the beginning, the studio produced novelty films called Out of the Inkwell, which used the Rotoscope, invented by Fleischer. Rotoscoping is an animation technique used to trace over live-action motion picture footage, frame-by-frame. It produces a realistic animation. Out of the Inkwell also used live-action footage mixed with the animation in such shorts as Modeling (1921).
