Out of the Inkwell Films

Koko is trying to rescue his sweetheart, who is trapped atop a rugged mountain. However, when Max Fleischer runs out of ink, how will he draw the ladder for Koko to climb?

“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.

In this Christmas season release, Max assembles a toy train track while Ko-Ko the Clown visits a cartoon toyland, playing cops and robbers and rescuing a doll in distress.

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

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.

"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.

A man with a huge hooked nose enters the Fleischer studios to have his bust sculpted. Meanwhile, across the studio, Max is animating Koko. When he's called over to consult on the too-accurate bust, Koko gets mischievous and creates his own drawings. He then escapes and crawls inside the clay bust, eventually wriggling off like an inchworm. He gets into a fight with the man being modelled, both of them flinging wads of clay.

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.

An "Out of the Inkwell" cartoon featuring Ko-Ko the Clown.

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

An "Out of the Inkwell" short featuring Ko-Ko the Clown, this time as a fireman.

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

Koko the Clown discovers a machine that can make cartoons.

Max tricks Koko with a jumping bean. Koko finds a way to duplicate himself to get his revenge.

Follow the bouncing ball sing-along

In 'Trapped', we see the cartoonist's hands as still photograph cut-outs, manipulated in front of the camera to look like live-action movie footage. The hands sketch a small black dot and ink it in. Then the dot proceeds to bounce across the cartoonist's easel, until the hands finally catch it and unfold it into Ko-Ko the Clown. There's a mouse in Max's studio, and Ko-Ko wants to catch him.

Ko-Ko the Inkwell Clown and a baby get caught in a hurricane.

First, Max, in his pyjamas, gets back up and draws an isolated mountain area and puts Koko on top of a steep mountain. "That will keep you busy for the night," says the real-life somewhat nasty cartoonist to his subject. The cartoon really gets wild from that point with guest appearances from Mutt and Jeff, and other "stars" of the day as Koko experiences one adventure after another from the "Cave Of The Winds" to Goliath chasing him all over.

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.