Back to the mid-1930s. Disney’s success in the restaurant field did not go unnoticed by his many animation competitors. One of the first to take action was Max Fleischer, the mustachioed New York animation impresario who was simultaneously mulling over the prospect of joining Disney in the production of full-length animated cartoons. Fleischer’s interest in the restaurant business makes sense when one considers that his family had run a thriving weinerschnitzel stand in its native Austria. In January, 1937, Fleischer’s Famous Foods opened its doors in Times Square. One of the lesser-known Fleischer brothers, Angus, served as general manager; an even more obscure brother, Tito, was head chef.

Lavishly appointed and imaginatively decorated, Fleischer’s Famous Foods must have been a sight to see. The exterior of the building was adorned with fifty-foot mechanical neon figures of the Fleischer characters — Betty Boop, Grampy, Popeye, and Olive Oyl — who waved, danced little jigs, and shouted the daily specials, courtesy of loudspeakers implanted in their skulls. Even in bustling Times Square, it drew crowds.

Inside, the restaurant displayed a technical inventiveness that was typical of the Fleischers’ work. Customers were strapped into burlap jumpsuits and transported high over the restaurant’s floor to their seats, via an elaborate network of cables and pulleys. Max justified the expense of implementing this system by explaining that it allowed the restaurant to reduce aisle space by 60%, saving on expensive Times Square rents. Food, meanwhile, was shot directly from the kitchen via small canons, eliminating the need for waiters. When it worked, it was a most efficient way to deliver dishes, although more than one patron ended up with a face full of someone else’s rhubarb pie.

The restaurant’s reasonably-priced, well-prepared food — Austrian specialties such as Schnuckelhüben and American fare such as yard-long hot dogs — won it plaudits from Manhattan‘s legions of famously picky eaters. While not actively involved in its operation, both Max and Dave dined there frequently, and Mae Questel and Jack Mercer were paid small stipends to wait tables dressed as Betty Boop and Popeye, respectively.

And so, when the Fleischer operation relocated to Florida in 1938, it was quite natural that Fleischer Famous Studios would make the trip to the Sunshine State as well.Long-forgotten Fleischer brother Jean-Pierre cleverly devised a way to dismantle the restaurant into nearly 200 sections, and each studio employee was asked to take one piece along when making the trek to Miami. Once reassembled, the restaurant continued to be quite popular, although it was renamed Gabby’s, in an attempt to promote the Lilliputian star of the studio’s Gulliver’s Travels feature. (When the studio began producing Superman cartoons, Dave Fleischer donned a replica of the Man of Steel’s uniform and tended bar on weekends.)

Max-imizing Service As this excerpt from a 1937 Fleischer’s Famous Foods training manual amply indicates, the restaurant’s staffers were held to a standard of grooming that was second to few. Max himself never waited tables at the establishment, but posed for this illustration to avoid model fees.

Disaster, of course, hit the Fleischer studio after the failure of its second feature, Mr. Bug Goes to Town. The brothers’ distributor, Paramount, wrested control of the studio, redubbed it Famous Studios, and returned its operations to New York. The restaurant was disassembled once again and transported back to Times Square where, by happy coincidence, its former location was still available. Paramount continued to operate it, although on a tight budget and with ever-diminishing attention to detail. In 1956, it finally got around to replacing the Betty Boop and Grampy automatons on the building’s exterior — or more precisely, it made a slapdash attempt to refurbish them as Casper and Baby Huey. The restaurant’s fortunes took a modest turn for the better only when Ralph Bakshi was appointed to head Paramount’s cartoon operations in the spring of 1967. Bakshi added pizza to the menu and hired political cartoonist Jules Feiffer to write a memorable series of radio commercials, but by then it was too late. The restaurant (by then known as Honey Halfwitch’s) ceased operation late that year.

In the decades since, its location has seen countless tenants. Today it houses a Sbarro’s. Funny thing, though; while the Casper, Baby Huey, and Popeye neon signs are long gone, Olive Oyl is still there — a bit rusty and creaky, to be sure, but still waving to passers-by and alerting them to restaurant specials that date from 1949. Pay her a visit the next time you’re in New York, and tip your hat to the memory of the Fleischers.

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