---
name: "Richard Fleischer"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/richard-fleischer"
roles: ["Director"]
born: "8 December 1916"
died: "25 March 2006"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
average_as: "director"
average_over: 1
updated: "2026-09-20T04:52:08.765505+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Richard Fleischer

Director. Born 8 December 1916 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. Died 25 March 2006.

## Details

- **Work:** Director
- **Born:** 8 December 1916, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA
- **Died:** 25 March 2006
- **Also known as:** Richard O. Fleischer, Dick Fleischer, Richard Owen Fleischer
- **Academy Awards:** 1 Oscar (1 won)
- **Elsewhere:** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Fleischer, https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q262735, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0281507/, https://www.themoviedb.org/person/2087

## Fi1m on Richard Fleischer

> Richard Fleischer could hold a picture together in a train compartment or a bloodstream, and the studios rewarded him by asking for bigger and slower. The lean true-crime films are where his reputation rests; the roadshow musicals are where he did as he was told.

The moment in *Doctor Dolittle* (1967) that tells you most about Richard Fleischer is not one he planned. A number is running its full length, the camera has sat back to take in the whole set, and the animals, who cannot be directed, do what they like, so the scene ends in a scramble of fur and feathers with nobody in charge. Fleischer's gift was keeping order. *The Narrow Margin* (1952) does not waste a minute, and *Fantastic Voyage* (1966) keeps a whole crew inside a human body without losing track of anyone. Ask him to make things larger and slower and he did, and the order went with it.

He came up at RKO in the mid-1940s, shorts and B-pictures after newsreels and documentaries, and the early features were mostly low-budget noirs and crime dramas. *20,000 Leagues Under the Sea* (1954), for Disney, changed the scale of what he was offered, and from then on the studios handed him epics, musicals and star vehicles, Kirk Douglas twice, Charlton Heston twice. After a period away, *Fantastic Voyage* put him back in work, and the last stretch of the career was genre films for Dino De Laurentiis into the late 1980s.

Running alongside all this is the strand that interests us most: the true-crime films. *Compulsion* (1959) takes on the Leopold and Loeb case, *The Boston Strangler* (1968) tells its story in split screen, and *10 Rillington Place* (1971) is the British one. Fleischer shot them in a semi-documentary manner, and it suits him; a real murder does not need dressing up, and a director who prefers to stand back and keep things straight is what it needs. *Soylent Green* (1973) has some of the same grimness. We have not reviewed these, so we will not judge them at length here, but they are the films his admirers reach for and we understand why.

The complaint that follows him is that he had no signature, that he was a competent journeyman doing what producers wanted. We think that is half right. *Doctor Dolittle* is the case for the prosecution: handsome sets, a working menagerie, Rex Harrison at his driest, and 151 minutes on the strength of one good song. By the end we were counting them, and we resented it, because the man who made *The Narrow Margin* plainly knew better and had decided not to argue. What the complaint misses is that keeping a large production upright is a skill, and a rarer one than it looks.

Fleischer once said that you have to be egotistical to be in the business, that you cannot be shy and retiring about yourself. It is an odd thing to hear from a director whose films almost never draw attention to who made them. Start with the murders, not the musical.

## Biography

Richard Fleischer was an American film director whose career spanned more than four decades. Born in Brooklyn, New York, he was the son of animator Max Fleischer. He graduated from Brown University and attended the Yale School of Drama before beginning his film work at RKO in the early 1940s, directing shorts and documentaries. He produced the Academy Award-winning documentary *Design for Death* (1947).

Fleischer's first feature was *Child of Divorce* (1946). He directed a range of films across genres, including the science-fiction features *20,000 Leagues Under the Sea* (1954) and *Fantastic Voyage* (1966), the historical epics *The Vikings* (1958) and *Tora! Tora! Tora!* (1970), and *Doctor Dolittle* (1967). Other notable works include *Soylent Green* (1973), *The Boston Strangler* (1968) and *10 Rillington Place* (1971). He died in Woodland Hills, California, in 2006.

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, britannica.com, latimes.com, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Doctor Dolittle* (1967), Fi1m 50, Director — [page](https://film.one/film/doctor-dolittle.md)

## Complete filmography (55)

Every credit, newest first. Titles without a page can be requested for review on the HTML page.

- *Betty Boop's Hollywood Mystery* (1989), Creative Consultant
- *Call from Space* (1989), Director
- *Who Framed Roger Rabbit* (1988), Thanks — Fi1m 89, [page](https://film.one/film/who-framed-roger-rabbit.md)
- *Million Dollar Mystery* (1987), Director
- *Red Sonja* (1985), Director
- *Conan the Destroyer* (1984), Director
- *Amityville 3-D* (1983), Director
- *Tough Enough* (1983), Director
- *The Jazz Singer* (1980), Director
- *Ashanti* (1979), Director
- *The Prince and the Pauper* (1977), Director
- *The Incredible Sarah* (1976), Director
- *Mandingo* (1975), Director
- *Mr. Majestyk* (1974), Director
- *The Spikes Gang* (1974), Producer, Director
- *The Don Is Dead* (1973), Director
- *Soylent Green* (1973), Director
- *The New Centurions* (1972), Director
- *See No Evil* (1971), Director
- *The Last Run* (1971), Director
- *10 Rillington Place* (1971), Director
- *Tora! Tora! Tora!* (1970), Director, Producer
- *Che!* (1969), Director
- *The Boston Strangler* (1968), Director
- *Doctor Dolittle* (1967), Director — Fi1m 50, [page](https://film.one/film/doctor-dolittle.md)
- *Fantastic Voyage* (1966), Director
- *Barabbas* (1961), Director
- *The Big Gamble* (1961), Director
- *Crack in the Mirror* (1960), Director
- *These Thousand Hills* (1959), Director
- *Compulsion* (1959), Director
- *The Vikings* (1958), Director
- *Between Heaven and Hell* (1956), Director
- *Bandido!* (1956), Director
- *The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing* (1955), Director
- *Violent Saturday* (1955), Director
- *20,000 Leagues Under the Sea* (1954), Director
- *Arena* (1953), Director
- *The Happy Time* (1952), Director
- *The Narrow Margin* (1952), Director
- *His Kind of Woman* (1951), as Additional Writing
- *Armored Car Robbery* (1950), Director
- *Trapped* (1949), Director
- *Make Mine Laughs* (1949), Director
- *Follow Me Quietly* (1949), Director
- *The Clay Pigeon* (1949), Director
- *Bodyguard* (1948), Director
- *Design for Death* (1948), Director
- *So This Is New York* (1948), Director
- *Banjo* (1947), Director
- *Mr. Bell* (1947), Director
- *Child of Divorce* (1946), Director
- *Make Mine Memories* (1945), Director, Writer, Producer
- *Memo for Joe* (1944), Director
- *Flicker Flashbacks #2* (1943), Director, Writer

## Awards

### Academy Awards — 1 won

- 1948: Best Documentary Feature Film (won), for *Design for Death*

### Other awards — 1 won, 1 nominated

- Disney Legends 2003: Disney Legends (won)
- Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director 1981: Golden Raspberry Award for Worst Director (nominated), for *The Jazz Singer*

*From Wikidata, which records wins more completely than nominations.*

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© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/richard-fleischer