The basic techniques of animated films had been invented during the 1910s (p. 77), and the post-World War I period saw a boom in animation. New independent animation studios appeared, creating greater output and applying a division of labor that made the process of animation more efficient. Typically, head animators laid out the basic poses for the scene, the “in-betweeners” filled in the movements with additional drawings, other workers traced the drawings onto cels, still others filled in with paint, and a cinematographer photographed the images frame by frame. The result could be a series of cartoons released monthly or even biweekly. A whole new generation of animators set up shop as technical information about cels and the slash system was disseminated.
Most animation companies produced series with continuing characters or themes. These films would be released through an independent distributor, but that distributor might sign a contract with one of the big Hollywood firms to put the cartoons on its own program. The most successful independent distributor of this era was Margaret J. Winkler Mintz. By the early 1920s, she was financing and releasing the decade’s three most popular series: the Fleischer brothers’ “Out of the Inkwell” films, the cartoons based on Bud Fisher’s beloved “Mutt and Jeff” comics, and some of Walt Disney’s earliest efforts.
The Fleischer brothers, Max and Dave, had experimented with a new film technique called rotoscoping in the mid-1910s. The rotoscope allowed a filmmaker to take live-action films, project each frame onto a piece of paper, and trace the outlines of its figures. Originally, the brothers seem to have intended the device to be used for military purposes. Although the rotoscope was patented in 1915, World War I delayed further work on it. After the war, Max and Dave returned to work, this time tracing the live-action images as cartoon figures. They used a live-action prologue for each film in their series, featuring Max Fleischer as a cartoonist who creates Koko, a clown who pops “out of the inkwell.” The first cartoon was released in late 1919, and several others followed sporadically through 1920.
Rotoscoping was not intended to increase efficiency, as earlier inventions in cartooning were. Instead, by tracing the action one image at a time on cels, the cartoonist could easily produce characters that moved naturally as whole figures, rather than stiffly, moving only one or a few parts of their bodies, as in the slash and other simple cel systems. The Fleischer’s new character, Koko the Clown, swung his limbs through space freely, and his loose outfit swirled about him as he went (7.56). A reviewer of the period commented on this ease of movement:
[Koko’s] motions, for one thing, are smooth and graceful. He walks, dances and leaps as a human being, as a particularly easy-limbed human being might. He does not jerk himself from one position to another, nor does he move an arm or a leg while the remainder of his body remains as unnaturally stiff as—as if it were fixed in ink lines on paper.2
The Fleischers also employed the standard techniques of cels, slashing, and retracing, but rotoscoping gave these devices new freedom. The “ Out of the Inkwell” series prospered during the 1920s. In the early sound era, however, the Fleischers replaced Koko with the equally popular Betty Boop and Popeye.
The “Mutt and Jeff” series had begun as a comic strip in 1911. Its hapless stars were two moustached fellows, one tall, one short. The strip’s artist, Bud Fisher, agreed in 1916 to allow the celebrated strip to be animated. His name was invariably given as the creator of the cartoon series, even though over the years Raoul Barre, Charles Bowers, and various other animation veterans actually drew the cartoons. Distributor Mintz contracted the series for release through Fox, and it remained popular through the 1920s (7.57).
The young Walt Disney and his friend Ub Iwerks started their own commercial-arts firm in Kansas City in 1919. Failing to make money, they then worked for an ad agency, making simple animated films. There they started “Newman’s Laugh-o-grams,” a series of short animated films for local distribution. After this venture also failed, Disney moved to Hollywood. In 1923, he received backing from Mintz to create a series of “Alice Comedies,” which proved to be his first success. With his brother Roy, he formed the Disney Brothers Studios, which would eventually grow into one of the world’s biggest entertainment conglomerates.
During the 1920s, the staff of the firm included several of the major animators who would create series for Warner Bros. and MGM in the 1930s: Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and Isadore “Friz” Freleng. They all worked on the Alice series, which combined live action and cartoon images—a technique that was not new to cartooning (7.58). In 1927, the Disney studio switched to full animation with the “Oswald the Rabbit” series. In a legal battle, however, Charles Mintz, husband of Disney’s distributor, seized control of the character. Walt’s solution was to invent a new character called Mickey Mouse. The first two Mickey cartoons failed to find a distributor. A third, Steamboat Willie, incorporated the new sound technology and proved a huge hit. It helped catapult Disney to the head of the animation business in the 1930s.
Other series of this period proved highly popular. Paul Terry, who had worked at various animation studios during the 1910s, started his own firm, Fables Pictures Inc., in 1921. He launched a series called “Aesop’s Fables.” For these modern retellings of the classic fables Terry used a virtual assembly-line division of labor to turn out one film per week; the results were amusing but usually conventional (7.59). Terry left the company in 1928 to create Terrytoons, a firm he ran until 1955, when he sold it to television producers.
The most popular series of the 1920s starred Felix the Cat. Its nominal creator, Pat Sullivan, had opened his own studio in 1915, making ads and animated films. He began making Felix cartoons for Paramount around 1918. Although Sullivan signed all the films, the head of animation was actually Otto Messmer, who originated the character of Felix and handled the animation process. Mintz signed to distribute the series in 1922. The films were hugely successful, partly through the appeal of the feline hero and partly through the flexible animation style. In these films, Felix’s tail could fly off his body and become a question mark or a cane for him to lean on (7.60). By the mid-1920s, the films had achieved a
7.56 In The Clown’s Little Brother (1919 or 1920), Koko struts across the frame in a rotoscoped motion that seemed effortless and lively in the context of 1910s animation.
7.57 Mutt’s attempts to help Jeff get out of the pot attached to his head soon leads to dizzy escapades on a half-built skyscraper in Where Am I? (1925).
7.58 In Alice in the Wooly West (1926), animated exclamation points express the live-action heroine’s astonishment as she confronts the world of cartoon characters.
7.59, left The nightclub in which the protagonist fritters away his paycheck in The Spendthrift (1922), with the moral “A spendthrift blames everybody but himself for his misfortune.”
7.60, right Felix politely tips his ears in Felix the Cat in Futuritzy (1928).
Huge audience. Sullivan was also a pioneer in the use of tie-in products like dolls to further exploit the success of his cartoon character. Like most of the major animated series of the 1920s, Felix did not carry over well into the sound era, though there have been many later imitations of this character.
The U. S. film industry’s push into foreign markets during World War I gave it an enormous economic base for its expansion and consolidation during the 1920s. Most national film industries were too small to offer any significant resistance to American domination. Yet the cinema continued to be an international phenomenon, and many countries managed to make at least a few films of their own. Some countries in Europe were strong enough to support national industries and even to consider banding together to challenge American power. Moreover, for the first time, filmmakers in several countries were creating short experimental films that challenged the classical narrative approach of Hollywood cinema. We shall examine these trends in the next chapter.
World History
