Richard Fleischer, a longtime respected film director who began his career doing stylish, low-budget noir thrillers (Armored Car Robbery, The Narrow Margin); moved onto swift-moving fantasies (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Fantastic Voyage); before rounding out his career in '80s cult films (Conan the Destroyer, Red Sonja) died of natural causes on March 25 at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Los Angeles. He was 89.

Born on December 8, 1916 in Brooklyn, New York, Fleischer came from a background that was already steeped in the film business. His father, Max Fleischer, was a pioneer in film animation. His creations included Betty Boop, Popeye and Koko the Clown; and both his father and uncle Dave, co-founded Fleischer Studios. Despite the auspicious upbringing, young Fleischer originally intended to be a psychiatrist. He took pre-med courses at Brown University, but he soon caught the acting bug when he began performing musical theater on campus. When he transferred from Brown to Yale University in 1936, Richard was a drama major.

He joined RKO in the early '40s writing scripts, and after his brief stint in the Army Air Force during World War II, he began producing several shorts for the Studio. The most notable being the post-World War II documentary Design for Death (1947) for which he won an Oscar®. Eventually, he began directing taut, suspenseful crime thrillers such as Bodyguard (1948), Follow Me Quietly (1949), Armored Car Robbery (1950), and possibly his best film from this period, The Narrow Margin (1952), a tense, low-budget suspenser shot in just 13 days with a hand held camera. Full of surprising twists, solid acting (especially by the underrated Charles McGraw), and streamlined pacing, The Narrow Margin is the epitome of a cultish, low-fi noir. Interestingly, it was a film away from the noir genre that moved him into the big time. Tapped by Walt Disney to direct their first live-action project, an adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), this big-budget adventure with James Mason and Kirk Douglas was a huge box-office smash for its time. From this point on, Fleischer was no longer in the second-tier level of film directors.

Fleischer's quality of work would vary over the years. He made some fine films in a variety of molds: stark courtroom drama Compulsion (1959); pop sci-fi fantasy Fantastic Voyage (1966); the neo-documentary feel of The Boston Strangler (1968); the exciting war epic Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970); a brilliant character study of homicidal madness in 10 Rillington Place (1971); and the futuristic shocker Soylent Green (1973). Yet there were also some clunkers that most film critics have a hard time forgetting: the strident "family" musical Dr. Doolittle (1967); a regrettable bio of guerrilla fighter Che Guevera - Che! (1969); the ludicrous Southern plantation melodrama Mandingo (1975); and the woefully ill-conceived star vehicle for Neil Diamond - The Jazz Singer (1980).

All that aside, Fleischer rebounded in the '80s with a line of campy pictures such as Amityville 3-D (1983), Conan the Destroyer (1984), Red Sonja (1985). Cinematic masterpieces these were not, but trashy fun on late night cable it most certainly still is. His tales of filmmaking were captured in a flavorful, self-deprecating memoir Just Tell Me When to Cry published in 1993. He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Mary; sons Mark and Bruce; daughter, Jane; and five grandchildren.

by Michael T. Toole