Lou Scheimer (1928–2013)

As someone who didn't really grow up with these shows - I'm slightly too young, and the only one I've really sat through is Star Trek, just because of my own interest - this book is overwhelming. I know about half of the shows by reputation, and happily, YouTube is around so I can look up clips, so it's not too bad. But the structure of the book is highly conversational - it reads as if Scheimer cleared out his old files, extemporizing on them to Mangels as he went, and for all I know, show more that's an absolutely accurate description of how it was written! That allows Scheimer to deviate on to a lot of tangents (which is fine) and bring different individuals in and out of the narrative (which is harder to keep track of).

Is it worth the read? Yes - slowly. What's interesting is that if you read it from cover to cover, as I did, the details of the various deals and sales and participants blur together. However, you really build up a picture of Scheimer's outlook on the world: on business, on salesmanship, on animation, on people. It's not the perspective of a brooding genius, an egotistical maniac, or any of the other stereotypes we've been trained to expect from people who are successful in the media. Scheimer seems to have been a guy who liked people, who wanted to work with good people to make a good product, and who was well-liked in return. That's...kind of cool, actually? His story may not be riveting page by page, but it's hard not to be impressed by the way he chose to live his life, and there are plenty of fun anecdotes along the way.

I started the book looking for some specific information about a couple of projects. I finished with a lot of respect for Lou Scheimer and significantly more interest in his body of work. It's easy to criticize the limitations of Filmation and its animation, but like most internet criticism, it's often made without understanding context. Now that I know more about Filmation and Scheimer's strategies to keep his animation made in the United States, all I have now is admiration. Well, that and a surprising new affinity for He-Man (which was forbidden in my house when I was little! ;) ). show less

A thoroughly intoxicating book for my generation which grew up with these children's shows. Basically I'm in the middle age group here, being too young for the '60s shows, though I did see some of them in reruns. The seventies were definitely my hey-day of Saturday TV-morning cartoons and when it comes to the 80s shows I'm not quite as familiar with them but had my exposure due to babysitting; especially with one little "He-Man" freak-a-zoid boy.. I learned to play He Man action figures show more while we watched the videos!

Lots of memories came back reading this book and Lou comes across as a super-nice person. Someone with traditional moral values, who took his work seriously in an age that wanted children's programming to be meaningful not just entertaining. Lou is a character, he has some behind the scene tales to tell and asks you to make sure the children leave the room first, he uses * for vowels when he must use swear words when repeating conversations. He has plenty of nice things to say about those he worked with even when the relationship ended badly. Of course, he's not an angel and he didn't get along with everybody, used the word "jerk' a few times but otherwise refuses to talk about the negativity of these people. They existed in such n such a role in his life, he was a jerk, let's move forward. Lou is an old-time classy guy so you won't find any dirt-dishing here.

But what you will find is a treasure trove of detailed information on how Filmation started and what went on behind the scenes at the studios and on the sets of the live action shows. Not only is it a history of Filmation , the company, but also a broader history of the Saturday morning cartoon industry itself.I learned so much information about some of my favourite childhood shows but I also learned tremendous amounts of what went into the animation process before the computer took over. How many shows were developed compared to the ones that got approved and made. I would have really liked to have seen their version of Buck Rogers come to fruition. Lou was a family man, married for almost 60 years before widowed, with two children who joined him in the studio and a daughter who literally followed in his shoe steps career-wise. Amazingly, the book took me a long time to read; it seems deceptively short at only 288 pages, but this is a large coffee table size book and while it has a nice collection of photos and pictures to look at the text is dense, informative, fascinating and I often went back to re-read sections. Lou has a simple down to earth writing style that is very entertaining to read and he seems just like one of the guys rather than a big wig studio executive.

For those of you who can't place what Filmation created let me list some of my favourites: Star Trek: The Animated Series; He Man, Shazam!, Isis, Flash Gordon and Fantastic Voyage; and not my favourites but the company's biggies were The Archies and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids. show less