The origin story of Felix the Cat will be a surprising revelation to most. This and other early cartoon characters were often subversive and decidedly adult—not qualities usually associated with animation now. Many people today assume that cartoons have always primarily been children’s entertainment. However, this reputation—that there is something inherently juvenile about animation—is relatively new. It began in the 1950s, when the studios stopped making animated shorts for theatrical release, and cartoons moved to television. The natural habitat of cartoons was no longer in dark movie theaters, where profits were generated by admission tickets; it was now in living rooms, on television, where squeamish corporate advertisers had influence over what was presented. Those advertisers were also starting to notice how the postwar baby boom had created an enormous new audience of young people, and that their parents had plenty of disposable income. Once these new factors were understood, animation changed almost overnight. Before, it was something created by artists who saw themselves in the sophisticated mold of artists like Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. After, it became a way to sell sugary breakfast cereal to kids. While recent history has seen a revival of some cartoons that echo the older sensibilities—glimpsed in the occasional feature, or in television shows like The Simpsons, South Park, or BoJack Horseman—the art form still carries a reputation from when it was disrupted.
This book is about animation’s origins and rise, the first fifty years, wild decades spanning the early twentieth century to the 1960s. The cartoons created then were often little hand grenades of social and political satire: bawdy yet clever, thoughtful even if they were rude. Some Betty Boop cartoons contained brief glimpses of nudity. Popeye cartoons were often loaded with sly messages about the injustices of unchecked capitalism. The teaming of animators with jazz musicians like Cab Calloway was, in the 1920s and ’30s, just as subversive as hip-hop would be in the 1980s and ’90s. The old Warner Bros. cartoons—Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and more—occasionally offered some of the most perceptive social commentary of their era. Much of this color was censored when these old cartoons were repackaged for new formats and audiences, particularly television and young children. Much of their original spirit was reimagined, if not forgotten.
The people who made classic cartoons offer a treasure trove of colorful backstories. These wild minds occupied the same zip codes as stand-up comics like Lenny Bruce, Joan Rivers, Richard Pryor, or Dave Chappelle in years to come. Like much great art, their work could be controversial—much of it upsets the sensibilities of later generations fancying themselves as sensitive and enlightened. Understood in the proper context, however, classic cartoons reveal much about the past, its people, and American culture. During its first half-century, animation was an important part of culture wars about free speech, censorship, the appropriate boundaries of humor, and the influence of art and media on society. During World War II, it played a large role in propaganda and popular culture. Later on, it would demonstrate how the medium affects the message.
This book is a narrative history of the personalities behind animation’s first half-century, when the art was experimental, subversive, spooky, sometimes dangerous, and often hilarious. This is the tale of an older age and a younger nation, collapsed to the scale of a curious industry: the promise and ambition; fortunes made and lost; a rise and then the fall. It is also about art and how creative people work, how their art was shaped by its time, and how that art affected the future.
Chapter 1
“Slumberland”
In 1911, newspaper cartoonist Winsor McCay confidently declared himself to be “the first man in the world to make animated cartoons.” Perhaps he made his claim because he was unaware of the others, or maybe he just meant that he was the first to do it his way. Ultimately, it didn’t matter. Once the words were uttered, controversy erupted and other cartoonists came forward, indignantly declaring their own right to the title. In truth, McCay wasn’t technically the first—multiple people had come up with similar concepts around the same time—but he was the most famous and admired of all the contenders. Thus, to him went the credit and the glory.
Ever since McCay was a boy, people spoke of him the way they spoke of legends. His family claimed he drew his first picture before he said his first word, while people from his hometown shared similar apocryphal stories about his unique artistic gifts. The effect of these stories was to provide a sense of clarity about the vast scope of his talent, and to imbue Winsor with a sense of destiny.
McCay was already famous when he created his first animated cartoon in 1911. By that time, he had revolutionized the newspaper comic strip into something resembling movie storyboards of the future: the illusion of motion, creative perspective, people frozen in action poses. His strips were filled with epic stories, capturing the public’s imagination and making Winsor one of the most widely recognized newspaper cartoonists in the country.
Despite these achievements, McCay was restless, wanting to expand his art further. He was drawn to the new technology behind motion pictures—then a burgeoning art form—and couldn’t stop talking to his newspaper colleagues about the movies’ potential. Soon he began dreaming of making his comic strips move in a similar way. He would animate only a handful of cartoons during his lifetime, but they were wildly influential, inspiring many other cartoonists—early greats such as Max Fleischer, Otto Messmer, and Walt Disney—to do something similar.
His influence was profound, but Winsor McCay’s impact on animation was all but forgotten by the time of his death, in 1934. Some two decades later, his name would fade from public memory, even though many of his protégés, such as Walt Disney, would become famous. Disney was generous about celebrating those who had inspired him, however, and decided to produce, in 1955, a short television segment about McCay. Before it aired, Disney invited McCay’s son, Robert, himself now gray at the temples, to come visit his studio in Burbank, California. After a private tour of the grounds, full of sunshine and swaying palms, the two men eventually found themselves standing in Disney’s office, gazing out the window. Warm and casual, Walt gave credit where it was due. “Bob,” he said, sweeping his hand across the gorgeous view of his empire, “all this should have been your father’s.”
Winsor McCay earned his first money from art in the late 1880s, by drawing portraits of people at Sackett & Wiggins’s Wonderland, a dime museum located in Detroit, Michigan. He lived in nearby Ypsilanti and was attending classes at Cleary’s Business College, where his parents had sent him to learn practical skills such as typewriting, shorthand, and simple accounting. But Winsor bristled at the prospect of a life involving practical skills and played hooky so he could go draw portraits instead. He dropped out of school shortly thereafter.
Decades later, memories of Wonderland would resurface in McCay’s animation. The museum was a warren of velvet curtains, red brick, and flickering gas lamps. Dwarfs and bearded ladies roamed the hallways while tattooed men announced upcoming shows: Professor Matthew’s Circus of Performing Goats! or Billy Wells! The man with the iron skull who allows stone and boards to be broken on his head! Wonderland taught Winsor a practical lesson he would use later in his career: always please your audience. “A great many women and girls had me draw their pictures, and even at that age I was wise enough to make all of them beautiful whether they were entitled to it or not,” Winsor said. “I used to leave that place with my pockets bulging with money.”
Young and restless, McCay left Ypsilanti and, after a short stint in Chicago, landed in Cincinnati in 1891. Those who knew him said this was where he found his true voice as an artist—his “heart was always with the Queen City,” his son Robert recalled. The town still possessed some of its glory from the old riverboat days, picturesque yet gritty, an optimistic place