The Animation Time Machine has just returned from its latest mission to the year 1924, gathering snippets of animation news from exactly 100 years ago!
Among the most popular animated short film series of the 1920s were Pat Sullivan’s Felix the Cat and Max Fleischer’s Out of the Inkwell starring Koko the Clown. Both were home-grown in the U.S.A. at animation studios in New York.
When the Animation Time Machine flew back through the temporal vortex to April 1924, its scanning circuits detected a surge of interest in both Felix and Koko not only in America … but in Europe, too.
Whizzing across the pond, the Animation Time Machine made a bee-line straight for London. In the April 1924 issue of U.K. film magazine Pictures and Picturegoer, it found an article by Elizabeth Lonergan celebrating the popularity of Koko the Clown with British moviegoers.
Lonergan begins by describing her visit to Fleischer’s studio, an outing that left her — by her own admission — a little baffled:
“I learned that it takes from 2,500 to 3,000 little drawings for one cartoon. I saw them drawn, photographed, put together and ‘reeled off.’ I found out a lot and had a mighty nice time but, between ourselves, I was almost as mystified when I came out as when I went in … A perfectly marvelous operation, but it left me dazed.”
Despite her confusion, Lonergan was impressed by the cozy surroundings in which Fleischer and his team plied their trade:
“Nowhere have I seen the co-operation and the friendly atmosphere that I found in his little office studio. Perhaps the fact that it is small, may account for some of the homelikeness of the surroundings, but whatever it is, it is most delightful.”
The article continues with interview material shedding light on Max Fleischer’s early career. As an Austrian immigrant newly arrived in the U.S. in 1887, the fledgling artist took night classes at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York, whose alumni include Jackson Pollock and Roy Lichtenstein. After working as a newspaper cartoonist at The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, Fleischer focused all his energies on pursuing his ultimate ambition — a career in the movies:
“My dream was to make drawings for the screen. At that time there were a number [of animated films] being made but none of them were perfected and the changes from one sketch to another were plainly noticeable to the audiences. I made up my mind to perfect a camera that would have the same ease in changing pictures that the regular motion picture ones did and I worked in my spare time perfecting such an invention. My theory was to make the process so smooth that the mechanical side would be forgotten.”
What’s this ‘invention’ that Fleischer is talking about? It’s none other than the Rotoscope, an innovative piece of apparatus Fleischer developed to translate realistic human movement directly onto animated characters. Convinced he was backing a winner, Fleischer threw everything into the task of making his Rotoscope a reality:
“I gave up my position and, as I had no money to waste, put all I could spare into the experiment and did away with the problem of office rent by working in my bedroom.”
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office finally approved Max Fleischer’s patent for the Rotoscope in 1917, the same year the U.S. entered the conflict in World War I. For Fleischer, wartime duties delayed the deployment of his new invention:
“Just as we were ready to go ahead the War came and I was sent to Ft. Sells to do war work. This consisted in making a series of films which were used in the instruction of the soldiers. I made drawings of different kinds which were destined to shorten the time of training. For instance, military maps, diagrams of cannon and guns which demonstrated themselves most plainly.”
After being mustered out of the armed forces in 1918, Fleischer was at last able to realize his dream and bring his Out of the Inkwell cartoons to the screen, initially with Bray Studios, then with Out of the Inkwell Films, Inc., the production company he founded in 1921 with his brother, Dave.
Concluding his interview for Pictures and Picturegoer, Max Fleischer has no doubt about what makes his films so appealing:
“I think I’m the only artist who makes his figures move exactly like a human being.”
Watch Koko the Clown in Max Fleischer’s Trip to Mars (released April 1, 1924):
Shortly after the Fleischer brothers found success with Out of the Inkwell, Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer unleashed their own animation juggernaut, Felix the Cat, who enjoyed his first outing in the animated film Feline Follies in 1919. Just five years later, having won the hearts of American audiences, Felix — just like Koko the Clown — was extending his reach into Europe.
Scanning through a pile of film journals from the spring of 1924, the Animation Time Machine located an article in The Film Daily called “The Felix Vogue,” celebrating the impact this cartoon feline was having on British culture:
“In London today Felix is the recipient of an honor in that the most popular song of the day is entitled ‘Felix Kept on Walking’ and it is being sung by many music hall performers. There are Felix handkerchiefs, Felix toys, Felix chinaware and an actor in vaudeville is made up to resemble Felix and struts in the same manner as Felix’s peculiar little walk.”
Watch Felix the Cat in Pat Sullivan’s Felix Finds Out (released April 1, 1924):
The feline invasion wasn’t limited to the United Kingdom. While Felix was drawing crowds in London, the production and distribution company Universum-Film AG (UFA) was teasing punters about the imminent arrival of “Felix der Kater” on the shores of Germany. The 1924 UFA rental program makes special mention of the avalanche of promotional Felix memorabilia about to descend on an unsuspecting public:
“Anyone who has recently had the opportunity to cross the street in England or America will have been surprised at how frequently the name ‘Felix’ appears. There are Felix cookies and Felix paperweights, Felix dolls and Felix wallpaper, Felix postcards and Felix plates. You can even see his distinctive silhouette on car radiators.”
The program leaves readers in no doubt about what to expect from the animated moggy:
“Now Felix the Cat has taken a big leap across the water. Felix is still unknown to the German public, but he won’t have to fight for his popularity for long. Just like in other countries, he will prove to be irresistible here.”
The words of the UFA program were prophetic. Long after Koko the Clown had slipped quietly back into his inkwell, Felix the Cat was still going strong. After the early success in movie theaters, the 1950s saw a television revival of the original cartoons. Later, Paramount Cartoon Studios produced a heap of new Felix shows. Over the years, Felix has appeared in various forms as a syndicated character and mascot.
Cats, of course, have nine lives. We’ve lost count of how many Felix has used up, but we’re confident he has a few more lives up his feline sleeve. Things may be quiet on the Felix front currently, but who knows what might be around the corner?
A Felix the Cat feature film, anyone?
Join us again next month when we dispatch the Animation Time Machine on another mission, back through the decades to May 1924!
