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Lou Scheimer: Creating The Filmation Generation
Hailed as one of the fathers of Saturday morning television, Lou Scheimer was the co-founder of Filmation Studios, which for over 25 years provided animated excitement for TV and film. Always at the forefront, Scheimer's company created the first DC cartoons with Superman, Batman, and Aquaman, ruled the song charts with The Archies, kept Trekkie hope alive with the Emmy-winning Star Trek: The Animated Series, taught morals with Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids, and swung into high adventure with Tarzan, The Lone Ranger, and Zorro. Forays into live-action included Shazam! and The Secrets of Isis, plus groundbreaking special effects work on Jason of Star Command and others. And in the 1980s, Filmation single-handedly caused the syndication explosion with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and its successors. Profusely illustrated with photos, model sheets, storyboards, presentation art, looks at rare and unproduced series, and more - plus stories from top animation insiders about Scheimer and Filmation's past - this book will show the Filmation Generation the story behind the stories!
- GenresBiography
293 pages, Paperback
First published May 21, 2008
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
March 26, 2013
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 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.
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.
November 27, 2013
For those of us who came of age during the reign of Saturday Morning Cartoons, this book is a must read. The origins, the behind the scenes deals, and what was and what might have been are all exhaustively discussed ... at times, exhaustively so. When I purchased my copy this summer from the publisher at the Heroes Convention in Charlotte, NC, he said the book was delayed due to the massive length, and had to be edited more than once. In other words, this is a LONG book, and not nearly as photo and art heavy as one might expect in a history of an animation company. As biography, it fails, but I think that was on purpose with Scheimer and his co-writer, Andy Mangels, putting the focus on Filmation first and foremost. With Lou's recent passing, all the better we have this collection of stories, memories and history from the man who was there for all of it as he brought the good (Fat Albert, Star Trek The Animated Series, Flash Gordon), the average (Tarzan, He-Man, the DC Superheroes) and the out and out strange (Daffy Duck and Porky Pig Meet the Groovie Goolies) to a generation of cereal eating kids who were up early on Saturday and glued to the television.
February 14, 2014
Forgive me if I gush a little here. I'm a child of the '80s and a huge animation fan. Some of my best friends as the weird kid that I was (am) were cartoons. And Filmation's cartoons were part of the pantheon.
This book is a treasure trove of information about the studio and the people who poured their hearts into the shows that I loved so much. Sure, as some other reviewers here have noted, there are some gaps and some things that aren't elaborated upon very much. But Mr. Scheimer accounts for that in his introduction, admitting that at his age his memory isn't at its best. Even with that, there is a wealth of interesting stories here, not only about the studio and the shows, but about Lou Scheimer and people close to him.
I already loved Lou Scheimer before I read this. After reading it, I felt like I had gotten to know an old friend even better.
This book is a treasure trove of information about the studio and the people who poured their hearts into the shows that I loved so much. Sure, as some other reviewers here have noted, there are some gaps and some things that aren't elaborated upon very much. But Mr. Scheimer accounts for that in his introduction, admitting that at his age his memory isn't at its best. Even with that, there is a wealth of interesting stories here, not only about the studio and the shows, but about Lou Scheimer and people close to him.
I already loved Lou Scheimer before I read this. After reading it, I felt like I had gotten to know an old friend even better.
August 16, 2019
La vida del productor estadounidense Louis Scheimer se ligó estrechamente al estudio de animación que ayudó a fundar. Por eso, la extensa autobiografía escrita junto al veterano Andy Mangels es pródiga en datos e historias sobre los numerosos dibujos animados que produjo su estudio entre 1963 y 1989, con varios de ellos atados a la memoria generacional; sin ser un compendio de datos duros, su lectura despierta nostalgia y apunta inevitablemente a quienes crecieron con su propuesta de programas infantiles que aportasen algo más que evasión frente a la pantalla.
February 15, 2014
I discovered "Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation" on an Ain't It Cool News list of Christmas gift recommendations. He, with his two partners, was responsible for creating the Archie, Sabrina, Groovy Ghoulies, Star Trek, Shazam, Isis, Fat Albert, He-Man and She-Ra cartoons. He worked on the creative end, and his two partners eventually left the company, so I think he can rightfully claim to be the creator of these iconic Saturday morning cartoons.
Like many other celebrities, he came to the United States as a child, very poor and unable to speak a word of English. The first portion of the book is full of short, amusing anecdotes. Every paragraph has at least one exclamation mark in it, which is very annoying, but at least this section is short and his early life was interesting.
And the man knows how to write a cliffhanger. He starts off the book by mentioning that his father punched out Hitler and doesn't explain it until later.
The rest of the book is broken down year by year, listing the new shows and the repeats that were sold to each television network. Scheimer must have kept excellent records. It is rather monotonous and boring, but it was interesting to read about how the new shows were created and the voice talent cast. I didn't know that Ted Knight and Larry Storch did a huge amount of work for him.
He also points out why all of the shows sprang from existing literary or comic book characters. It was impossible to sell original ideas to the networks. They wanted a product that they knew would sell advertising.
I, along with most everybody else, always considered Filmation one of the cheapest animation studios. Even as a child, it bothered me that they repeated so many shots within each show. Scheimer explains that he did that to reduce costs instead of having animation jobs sent overseas, which all of the other animation studios did. He even walked in a union picket line with his artists in front of his studio.
I admired that. I also admired that he always strove to include as many ethnicities as possible in his shows. He was also careful to create stories that were appropriate for his young viewers, and he tried to have each story teach an important life lesson. At the end of many of his shows, he had a character explain the moral of the story the children had just watched.
He-Man and She-Ra were Filmation's biggest hits. I was a little too old to watch those, but I remember seeing most of Scheimer's other shows.
During that time, Filmation was bought by Westinghouse, which backed him solidly until the CEO changed. Then Scheimer begged for them to sell Filmation. Unfortunately, the company was bought by L'Oreal, which only wanted the company's library of past shows. They immediately shut down the studio in 1988.
Scheimer kept coming up with more and more original ideas and tried to market them to no success. He died last year.
This wasn't the most fun book I've read. I skimmed through a lot of it. But I did enjoy learning about this noble man's life, the animation business in general and remembering all of those shows that I enjoyed as a kid.
Like many other celebrities, he came to the United States as a child, very poor and unable to speak a word of English. The first portion of the book is full of short, amusing anecdotes. Every paragraph has at least one exclamation mark in it, which is very annoying, but at least this section is short and his early life was interesting.
And the man knows how to write a cliffhanger. He starts off the book by mentioning that his father punched out Hitler and doesn't explain it until later.
The rest of the book is broken down year by year, listing the new shows and the repeats that were sold to each television network. Scheimer must have kept excellent records. It is rather monotonous and boring, but it was interesting to read about how the new shows were created and the voice talent cast. I didn't know that Ted Knight and Larry Storch did a huge amount of work for him.
He also points out why all of the shows sprang from existing literary or comic book characters. It was impossible to sell original ideas to the networks. They wanted a product that they knew would sell advertising.
I, along with most everybody else, always considered Filmation one of the cheapest animation studios. Even as a child, it bothered me that they repeated so many shots within each show. Scheimer explains that he did that to reduce costs instead of having animation jobs sent overseas, which all of the other animation studios did. He even walked in a union picket line with his artists in front of his studio.
I admired that. I also admired that he always strove to include as many ethnicities as possible in his shows. He was also careful to create stories that were appropriate for his young viewers, and he tried to have each story teach an important life lesson. At the end of many of his shows, he had a character explain the moral of the story the children had just watched.
He-Man and She-Ra were Filmation's biggest hits. I was a little too old to watch those, but I remember seeing most of Scheimer's other shows.
During that time, Filmation was bought by Westinghouse, which backed him solidly until the CEO changed. Then Scheimer begged for them to sell Filmation. Unfortunately, the company was bought by L'Oreal, which only wanted the company's library of past shows. They immediately shut down the studio in 1988.
Scheimer kept coming up with more and more original ideas and tried to market them to no success. He died last year.
This wasn't the most fun book I've read. I skimmed through a lot of it. But I did enjoy learning about this noble man's life, the animation business in general and remembering all of those shows that I enjoyed as a kid.
July 23, 2020
I enjoyed the somewhat naive way Mr. Scheimer comes off in this book. Sometimes even childlike. Even when he throws in the occasional insult he seems to at least want to appear innocent.
The history of Filmation was fascinating. They had some great shows and this book covers all my old favorites and introduced me to some I had never heard of.
The history of Filmation was fascinating. They had some great shows and this book covers all my old favorites and introduced me to some I had never heard of.
May 19, 2013
A detailed assessment of my favorite animation company from my youth!
August 10, 2019
I knew Filmation was responsible for the He-Man and She-Ra series, but I didn't realize just how much else they'd done. Fat Albert was one of their biggest hits, which is kind of embarrassing knowing what we now know about Bill Cosby, but it's obvious that they did put a lot of work into it. Filmation developed both original shows and ones based on existing properties, like DC superheroes, Archie, Tarzan, and Star Trek. They did live action programming as well, including that Shazam! show where Captain Marvel rode around in a motor home with an old guy. I was aware as a kid of the Ghostbusters cartoon with the gorilla, although I don't think I ever saw a full episode of it. What I didn't know was that it was originally a live-action series with a guy in a gorilla suit. It was the first use of that title, and I'm not sure why Harold Ramis and company decided to reuse it instead of calling their film something else, but it's the reason why the cartoon based on the movie was titled The Real Ghostbusters (and I did watch that fairly regularly). I guess it was because busting made them feel good enough to negotiate to use someone else's title. Another show that ran from 1978 to 1981 that I don't think I'd previously heard of, Jason of Star Command, is interesting to me in that Rob Zombie apparently chose Sid Haig to star in House of 1000 Corpses based on his performance as a villain on the show. Scheimer tells his life story as well as that of the company, often highlighting their push for character diversity, including messages for kids (I'm not sure, but I think they might have been the first to include the public service segments at the end where the cartoon characters talk directly to the audience, although certainly not the last), and keeping their animation jobs in the United States. There's a general feel of their being a scrappy little company that managed to achieve some success, but always had to fight for it. Scheimer mentions how Filmation saved money by using stock animation, and how Scheimer and his kids did a fair number of the voices. One bit of trivia that stuck with me was how Orko's name was originally Gorpo, but because the S on Superman's chest in an older series meant they couldn't just flip the stock flying scenes, they instead decided to have his name start with an O. It's a good read for anyone interested in animation history.
October 31, 2025
Filmation co-founder Lou Scheimer gives us a memoir of his life focusing on the work of Filmation Associates. Filmation was best known for their Saturday Morning output and were, for most of the 70s, only rivaled by Hanna-Barbera as the Kings of Saturday Morning. From the studio came Saturday morning staples such as Fat Albert and licensed properties such as The Archies, Shazam, Superman, Batman, Star Trek, Tarzan, etc. and culminating in the syndicated behemoth of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe in 1983. This is very much a memoir not a biography or a historical look at the company. Scheimer was in his 80s as he was writing this with Mangels and it reads a lot like your Grandpa telling work stories. Which isn't to say it's not interesting, but you have to be prepared for that.
I did find from this that I really wasn't a Filmation kid, as they have come to be known. Not that I didn't watch a number of second-wave Filmation shows (I missed a lot of the early stuff) but I was probably more likely to be watching something from one of their rival studios. Sure I watched Fat Albert...I mean looking at the ratings, damn near everyone was watching Fat Albert...but there were a lot of these shows that I honestly had no memory of. And that was in the sweet spot of my Saturday morning watching (probably 1972-79). Probably the last show that I watched as a kid though was Tarzan/Lone Ranger in 1980, and I'll happily say that that was one of the best on-screen iterations of Tarzan ever. I've also since watched their Star Trek cartoon and it's pretty excellent...far too good to be on Saturday Mornings.
I'm an animation fan, though my interests lean more heavily to theatrical animation than television (though I'm a NUT for Jay Ward's work). I found myself skimming this one after we got past the area for which I had some amount of nostalgia. I just have zero interest in He-Man She-Ra, etc. And this didn't generate any.
This is fine for what it is, but I probably can't recommend it to anyone who isn't just a complete nut for the Filmation library. It's also a tad shy on artwork for a book that deals with a visual medium.
July 2, 2024
An excellent overview of Filmation Studios and the man behind it all. There was a lot of nostalgia and happy memories to be relived while reading this, and a certain amount of frustration that their entire catalogue isn't available to stream! It lost one star for editing errors, the format (which made it somewhat difficult to read) and the many tiny photos that were too small to be seen clearly, especially the ones of the projects that never came to pass.
November 15, 2012
This is a complete, detailed history of the company and all of its animated and live action shows and feature films that reads like the transcripts of a series of unedited inteviews with Scheimer.
The plus side of that is that his character really comes through...you feel if you're having coffee with the guy over the course of several days. He's got lots of great stories to tell, and fascinating information to share, and he makes for lively company.
The downside of that is that he has a tendency to ramble, digress and get easily distracted. He takes some dead-end tangents and often starts some stories that he doesn't quite finish. For instance, he goes into great detail about the making of the Ghostbusters live-action show, and shares some wonderful anecdotes. He also says it was a big hit...but then doesn't explain why, if that was the case, it only lasted one season or what led to its cancellation.
The "it reads like a transcript," first-person construction makes the book unwieldy and frustrating at times...but that's more than made up for by the sheer wealth of information, memorable anecdotes, and tantalizing tidbits that you get. Like this one: they made a pilot for an animated, Saturday morning version of Quinn Martin's series Cannon, which starred William Conrad as a tough private eye. The animated pilot was called Young Cannon and would have been all about this fat kid solving crimes. I'd love to see that!
One of my favorite stories Scheimer tells is about a writer that the network didn't like -- so Scheimer fired the guy and hired a new writer that the network loved. In reality, Scheimer kept he same writer on and just had the guy put a pseudonym on the scripts. Scheimer also has some funny memories to share about Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch, who were big drinkers and started each shooting day of Ghostbusters drunk.
All in all, this is a highly enjoyable book that you don't have to be a Filmmation fan, or very familiar with all of the studio's shows, to appreciate.
The plus side of that is that his character really comes through...you feel if you're having coffee with the guy over the course of several days. He's got lots of great stories to tell, and fascinating information to share, and he makes for lively company.
The downside of that is that he has a tendency to ramble, digress and get easily distracted. He takes some dead-end tangents and often starts some stories that he doesn't quite finish. For instance, he goes into great detail about the making of the Ghostbusters live-action show, and shares some wonderful anecdotes. He also says it was a big hit...but then doesn't explain why, if that was the case, it only lasted one season or what led to its cancellation.
The "it reads like a transcript," first-person construction makes the book unwieldy and frustrating at times...but that's more than made up for by the sheer wealth of information, memorable anecdotes, and tantalizing tidbits that you get. Like this one: they made a pilot for an animated, Saturday morning version of Quinn Martin's series Cannon, which starred William Conrad as a tough private eye. The animated pilot was called Young Cannon and would have been all about this fat kid solving crimes. I'd love to see that!
One of my favorite stories Scheimer tells is about a writer that the network didn't like -- so Scheimer fired the guy and hired a new writer that the network loved. In reality, Scheimer kept he same writer on and just had the guy put a pseudonym on the scripts. Scheimer also has some funny memories to share about Forrest Tucker and Larry Storch, who were big drinkers and started each shooting day of Ghostbusters drunk.
All in all, this is a highly enjoyable book that you don't have to be a Filmmation fan, or very familiar with all of the studio's shows, to appreciate.
April 4, 2014
This had the same fascination as "The Boy Who Loved Batman" by Michael Uslan. He-man defined my boydom. I collected the action figures. I watched the shows and movies. I even collected the stickers for the Panini sticker book...that's the correct spelling...not a sandwich:) I remember my mom buying $25 of packs for my birthday...that's what I wanted.
I recommend skimming this book and finding what's interesting to you, that's what I did.
This book traces the history that brought He-man to life and collapsed like a neutron star under its own weight. There will never be another Filmation.
I recommend skimming this book and finding what's interesting to you, that's what I did.
This book traces the history that brought He-man to life and collapsed like a neutron star under its own weight. There will never be another Filmation.
January 26, 2016
I am from the Filmation Generation and was a fan of many of their animated shows, plus a few of their live-action shows. This is a fun, fact-filled memoir by Lou Scheimer, one of the founders of Filmation. Lots of anecdotes and behind the scenes stuff. Plus, Filmation is the only American animation company that tried to keep all their work in house, while other companies were shipping their work to cheaper animators in Korea and other overseas destinations.
Highly recommended for the Filmation Generation.
Highly recommended for the Filmation Generation.
May 4, 2016
The only thing I knew previously about Filmation was that its cartoons were in memory "a bit shit" so this is an eye-opening guide to the American animation industry from the fifties to the early nineties, much of which was new to me. Its presented in a colourful, visual way with a chatty tone that is easy to enjoy. The cartoons are still a bit shit I suspect but the passion and the pleasure shown throughout this book is anything but.
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