R.I.P. Lou Scheimer

1928-2013"Emmy-winning animation giant Lou Scheimer, founder of Filmation Studios, which produced toon series including "Fat Albertespecially 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 favouritesbut the company's biggies were The Archies and Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids.
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