Out of the Inkwell Films

“Tramp, Tramp, Tramp the Boys Are Marching” features a song that dates back to the Civil War, one which was still familiar to audiences of the 1920s. The cartoon begins as Koko the Clown emerges from an inkwell-- an iconic image for animation buffs --and then steps over to a chalkboard to draw an orchestra. The band, “Koko's Glee Club,” marches to a nearby cinema (accompanied by a dog who beats cymbals with his tail) where they lead the audience in the title song.

Max and Koko The Clown bet who can blow the biggest soap bubble.

Max and Koko get mixed up with a live action gypsy fortune teller and then caught up with ghosts and monsters in this, as usual, delightful OUT OF THE INKWELL offering.

Ko-Ko and Fitz find that everything in their cartoon world is moving backwards. After entering the real world, they go inside a clock and move the hands backward, causing life all around the city to run in reverse.

Max and Dave Fliescher are eating hot dogs in their animation studio and begin drawing. The hot dog becomes a "real" dog, and it and Ko-Ko the Clown alarmingly end up inside a Gas Chamber.

The Clown causes trouble for the Cartoonist, and a sculptor using the studio, when he escapes from his backdrop and hides in the wet clay of a bust.

This fascinating series features Max himself, filmed in live action, sitting at a drawing board and concocting adventures for his star performer Ko-Ko the Clown. Max is supposedly the guy in charge, and he takes sadistic glee in putting Ko-Ko through various forms of hell, but the clown usually fights back and sometimes gets the best of his Uncle Max. FADEAWAY elevates this charged relationship to new heights (or depths?) of nightmarish surrealism; it's also one of the most enjoyable Inkwell cartoons I've seen to date, packing lots of imaginative, unpredictable twists and turns into an eight minute running time.

Ko-Ko the Clown is brought to life with a needle and thread.

Koko The Clown continually interrupts an animator, who turns his attention to trapping the clown.

Max has a toothache, and it's up to The Clown and a bespectacled rabbit to pull out the aching tooth.

A Dave Fleischer Cartoon

"The Einstein Theory of Relativity" is the short version (587 m) of the lost American long version (1219 m) of Hanns Walter Kornblum's original German feature "Die Grundlagen der Einsteinschen Relativitäts-Theorie" from 1922 that is also lost.

In this one, Max has run low on ink, so Ko-Ko finishes drawing himself and then heads over to the camera room, where he creates his own characters, a mechanical dancing Dresden doll with whom he falls in love and a couple of automaton musicians. He gets rid of the musicians, but, alas, the projectionist gets oil onto Ko-Ko's soon-to-be bride, melting her.

Ko-Ko is chased by a cartoony spider while Max deals with a mouse in his office.

Max is moving out of his studio, so Ko-Ko the Inkwell Clown packs up everything in sight (even using a super-charged vacuum cleaner that sucks up the furniture and the moving men).

Max is taking a railroad trip and pulls out his pen to draw Koko, Fitz and a railroad. Maybe the trip is too bumpy, because nothing works as it is supposed to.

Koko the clown is sent to the nut house by Max.

When a Native American artist sells a selection of his background drawings and original characters to Fleischer, Koko gives the new arrivals a cold reception.

Max sends Ko-Ko on a rocket toward the moon, but Ko-Ko crash lands on Mars, where he encounters bizarre creatures and contraptions. Meanwhile, Max himself is blasted into outer space.

Neighborhood cats come to the tiny Ko-Ko Theatre to watch Ko-Ko and Fitz stage a variety of entertaining acts, from acrobatics to high-diving to statuelike tableaux vivants.