The Big Cartoon DataBase reports the very sad passing of a true Hollywood legend, director Richard Fleischer, son of animation producer Max and the captain of Walt Disney’s foray into large scale filmmaking and first American shot live-action feature film 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, for which he famously asked his father’s permission before accepting the job. Over the years, Fleischer rose to prominence helming a series of taut, pacey B-movies such as The Narrow Margin (1952) before becoming one of Hollywood’s most sought after and varied directors, with films ranging from special effects adventures (Fantastic Voyage, 1966, The Vikings, 1958), musicals (Doctor Dolittle, 1967), thrillers (Compulsion, 1959, The Boston Strangler, 1968, Soylent Green, 1973), war epics (Tora! Tora! Tora!, 1970), and modern blockbusters (Conan The Destroyer, 1984). He’d spent his recent years writing a tell-all memoir and curating his father’s legacy, which included the creation of Betty Boop (and the good Popeye shorts), supervising a pair of deluxe LaserDisc box sets dedicated to the famed black and white sex symbol as well as the still-in-print recent biography Out Of The Inkwell: Max Fleischer And The Animation Revolution. Fleischer died on Saturday of natural causes in Los Angeles, aged 89.