The Oxford History of World Cinema (31 page)

and charts for calculating movement duration and lens depth of field. He placed various

media under the camera, including drawings, models, puppets, photographic cut-outs,

sand, stamps, and assorted objects. What Cohl's films did
not
exhibit was a traditional

linear plot; instead his background as a graphic artist became a source for ever-changing

scenes of fantastic drawings that metamorphosed into each other with irrational logic and

obscure symbolism. Bizarre though they seem today, Cohl's films were apparently

extremely popular. He worked for the Pathé and Éclair companies, the latter of which

assigned him to its American branch in Fort Lee, New Jersey, in 1912. He adapted a

cartoon series based on George McManus's comic strip 'The Newlyweds and their Baby'.

The success of these fourteen films inspired many other newspaper cartoonists to produce

or commission animated versions of their own works.

One interested graphic artist was Winsor McCay, unquestionably the most brilliant

newspaper cartoonist of the day. In 1911 he screened a short untitled film in which he

animated some characters from his 'Little Nemo in Slumberland' strip. The drawings were

meticulously retraced on cards, photographed by Vitagraph, and then the release print was

coloured by McCay frame by frame. In the live-action prologue McCay proudly displayed

the thousands of drawings and the flipping apparatus for testing the movements. In

addition to providing narrative integration for the animation, the prologue also vividly

showed how to draw and photograph animated cartoons to all who watched-and there

were many. In 1912 McCay made The Story of a Mosquito, in which static backgrounds

were used, retraced in each drawing. There were some ambitious experiments in moving

perspective.
Gertie,
presented on stage in 1914 and also released as a one-reel feature,

was the most accomplished animated film to date (and for many years thereafter). We see

McCay call Gertie the dinosaur out of hiding in her cave and put her through some circus-

like tricks. The film was rightly hailed as a masterpiece and contributed to the increasing

popularity of the genre. His The Sinking of the Lusitania: An Amazing Moving Pen

Picture was released in 1918. It depicted the wartime tragedy with a combination of

'objective' and 'cartoon' graphic styles. McCay conceived many film projects and

managed to finish several before his death in 1934.

INDUSTRIALIZATION: BRAY AND BARRÉ

From the popularity of 'The Newlyweds', McCay's extravaganzas, and the sporadic

releases by novice animators it was clear that audiences were delighting in these films.

The problem was that the craft was so labour-intensive that the rental return was

insufficient to offset production costs. Cohl and others had tried to use cut-outs to replace

some of the time-consuming drawing, but this compromised the graphic interest of the

films.

John Randolph Bray invented a way to alleviate much of the retracing which the older

methods required. A comic strip artist and fledgeling animator (having released one film

in 1913), Bray developed the use of transparent overlays made of sheets of cellulose

nitrate. It was through his encounter with another animator, Earl Hurd, who already held

patents on celluloid use, that he perfected what became called the cel system. This

involved separating the moving from the static elements in the picture. The background

and other non-moving parts were drawn on a paper sheet; moving figures were drawn in

their proper sequential poses on the transparent cels. These were laid over and

photographed individually to obtain the illusion of a figure moving across a stationary

background. This process remained standard in the animation industry until the advent of

xerography and computeraided design. Bray and Hurd aggressively protected their

proprietary claim to the process. Most animation studios from 1915 to the early 1930s

obtained licences from the Bray-Hurd patent company and paid royalties.

Bray was good at adapting techniques developed by others. This was also the case with a

competitor, Raoul BarrÉ, a talented comic strip artist from Montreal who, in collaboration

with William Nolan, began making cartoons for the Edison studio in 1915. BarrÉ, rather

than attempting to turn out films single-handedly, introduced the concept of a division of

labour, rather like a car assembly line with a hierarchy of jobs. Another valuable

contribution was the use of pegs on the drawing board which fitted precisely into punched

alignment holes on the tracing sheets. (McCay and Bray had used printer's cross-marks

for registering drawings.) BarrÉ and Nolan invented their own way of streamlining the

animation chore, but without using cels (and not patentable). The slash system, as it is

now called, also divided the composition into moving and static elements but,

ingeniously, the drawing was planned so that the background could be placed over the

foreground (the inverse of the cel system). Both elements were drawn on the same kind of

white paper. Holes were cut in the background sheet where the moving foreground figures

needed to show through. During photography the moving sheet was placed first on the

pegs, and the 'slashed' background was placed on top. For the next exposure the same

background sheet was used, but with the next moving sheet under it.

Borrowed by the Bray studio, BarrÉ's assembly-line concept and his perf.-and-peg system

became integral to United States animation production practice.

Another labour-saving practice patented by Bray, but probably pioneered by BarrÉ, was

'in-betweening'. The animator would sketch the beginning and end poses of a sequence,

then the intervening poses would be drawn by lower-paid assistants known as in-

betweeners.

ANIMATION STUDIOS

Besides the studio BarrÉ founded at Edison, he also worked briefly at the International

Film Service and for the Mutt and Jeff series in 1916. He formed a partnership with

Charles Bowers, who had contracted to make the series based on Bud Fisher's comic strip.

Bowers and Fisher eased BarrÉ out of the business in 1919, but the Mutt and Jeff series,

despite changes in studios, staff, and distributors, continued throughout the silent era.

The International Film Service studio was started by William Randolph Hearst in

December 1916. Since Hearst had contractual control over his newspaper cartoonists, it

was a natural business move to exploit their characters in movies. Gregory La Cava,

formerly a minor staffer at BarrÉ's, was hired to supervise the operation. One of his first

moves was to engage his former boss, Raoul BarrÉ. Though there were frequent changes

in personnel, the studio thrived. It ceased operation in 1918, not because it was

unprofitable, but because of political and financial difficulties in the parent company,

Hearst's International News Service. The animators migrated to other studios, including

Bray, which acquired the rights to animate Hearst comic strips in August 1919.

Former Hearst cartoonist Paul Terry, who claimed to have his own cel patents, resisted

Bray's attempts to extract licensing fees. After years of trials and negotiations, an

agreement was finally reached in 1926. Meanwhile Terry had cranked out more than 200

weekly cartoons in his Fables Pictures studio. Though originally the films were whimsical

adaptations of Aesop's fables, the literary conceit was quickly exhausted. Farmer Al Falfa

and other original characters cavorted in the series. In 1928 Terry's partner Amadee Van

Beuren bought a controlling interest in the business, renamed it after himself, and it

became a leading studio in the early 1930s. Terry went on to found Terrytoons, which he

supervised until 1955.

MAX AND DAVE FLEISCHER

The Fleischer brothers broke into the movie business by way of Dave Fleischer's

invention, the rotoscope. The device projected single frames from a strip of movie film

one at a time on to the back of a glass drawing surface. The images could be traced on to

paper or cels and then rephotographed by the normal animation process to obtain

drawings that moved 'realistically' when projected. J. R. Bray put Max and Dave Fleischer

in charge of instructional film production, much of it exploiting the clarity of rotoscoped

images. In April 1920, the 'Out of the Inkwell' series featuring a rotoscoped clown began

appearing irregularly on the Bray programme. Rave reviews in trade journals and even

the
New York Times
emboldened the animators and they set up their own studio in 1921.

Yet it was not until around 1923 that the clown was given a name: Koko. The premiss of

each 'Out of the Inkwell'was that a cartoonist, played by Max, would bring Koko out of

the ink bottle and place him on the sketch pad whereupon the figure would 'come to life'.

Koko became one of the most important early cartoon stars.

Unfortunately the Fleischers were not as good at business as they were at making films,

and their Red Seal studio foundered in 1926. They settled at Paramount, releasing more

'Out of the Inkwells'with 'Ko-Ko' renamed to secure copyright. In the early 1930s the

Fleischers' Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor eclipsed the clown's stardom.

WALTER LANTZ

The future creator of Woody Woodpecker began his career in animation washing cels for

reuse at the International Film Service, but soon became a director for La Cava. He joined

the Bray studio in 1919, first designing posters and advertisements and then, after Max

Fleischer left in 1921, becoming general supervisor of the animation studio. The first

series he directed for Bray, beginning in 1924, was 'Dinky Doodles', which superimposed

an animated boy character over photographed backgrounds. 'Unnatural Histories' started

in 1925, and 'Hot Dog' (with Pete the Pup) in 1926 (until the studio closed in 1927). In all

these series, Lantz appeared as a congenial actor. He joined Universal in 1928 and one of

his first assignments was to direct 'Oswald the Lucky Rabbit', a character which had been

originated by Disney.

WALT DISNEY

Walter Elias Disney had the good fortune to grow up in Kansas City, Missouri, where

most of the distributors had exchanges for the Midwest region. The owner of one of the

large theatres contracted with Disney and his partner, Ubbe (nicknamed Ub) Iwerks, for a

series of 'Laugh-OGrams', short combinations of cartoon jokes and advertisements. When

the series proved to be a financial failure, Disney moved to California in 1923 in order to

be closer to the film industry. His 'Alice Comedies'were distributed by pioneer cartoon

businesswoman Margaret J. Winkler. Alice was a live character who acted out her

adventures in an animated world. Her companion Julius was a Felix look-alike. Between

1923 and 1927 there were over fifty 'Alices'released. In 1927 Disney and Iwerks created

Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and received enthusiastic praise in the trade press. But Charles

Mintz, Margaret Winkler's husband and by then business manager, had secretly set up his

own Oswald studio in New York and hired some of Disney's staff to produce the films

(until Mintz was replaced by Lantz and the series returned to Hollywood).

Disney's response to losing the rights to Oswald was to compete with another animal

character, a black mouse which Iwerks imbued with a Buster Keatonesque personality.

Two Mickey Mouse cartoons were completed in early 1928, but no national distributor

was interested. Disney and his brother Roy decided to plan a sound cartoon. Steamboat

Willie was recorded on the Powers Cinephone (a sound-on-film system with a rather

dubious legal pedigree). It was not the first sound cartoon (the Fleischers and Paul Terry

had beaten Disney to this milestone), but it was the first one with singing, whistling, and

audiovisual percussive effects (such as cats miaowing when their tails were pulled)

specifically designed for sync sound. After the film opened in November 1928, silent

cartoon production was obsolete. The economics of sound film-making caused a

realignment of the industry, with many independents and one major studio -- Sullivan's

-failing to make the change-over.

SULLIVAN AND MESSMER

Otto Messmer was a neophyte cartoonist at the Universal Weekly newsreel in 1915 when

comic strip artist and animator Pat Sullivan walked in to arrange to have some drawings

of his own photographed. Sullivan's personal problems (he was gaoled for raping a minor)

and Messmer's service during the war delayed them but in 1919 they were releasing

cartoons for the Paramount Screen Magazine. One of these, Feline Follies, featured a

mischievous backyard cat -- soon to be known as Felix. In 1921 Margaret Winkler began

to distribute the series and continued to do so until 1925. Despite constant bickering and

lawsuits with Sullivan, Winkler successfully promoted the cat to national prominence.

The studio was run by Otto Messmer, who was in charge of all the details, large and

small. Long before, Sullivan had withdrawn completely from the creative side of Felix

production, focusing only on travel and business arrangements. Increasingly his