Animation in the United States during the silent era
| History of animation in the United States |
|---|
The silent age of American animation dates back to at least 1906 when
Originally a novelty, some early animated silents depicted magic acts or were strongly influenced by the comic strip. Later, they were distributed along with newsreels. Early animation films, like their live-action silent cousins, would come with a musical score to be played by an organist or even an orchestra in larger theatres.[3] Silent cartoons became almost entirely obsolete after 1928, when sound synchronized cartoons were introduced with the debut of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse in Steamboat Willie, thus ushering in the golden age of American animation.
History
British-American filmmaker
Following the successes of Blackton and of French animator
During the 1910s larger scale animation studios were becoming the industrial norm and artists such as McCay faded from the public eye.
Around 1913 Raoul Barré developed the peg system that made it easier to align drawings by perforating two holes below each drawing and placing them on two fixed pins. He also used a "slash and tear" technique to not have to draw the complete background or other motionless parts for every frame. The parts where something needed to be changed for the next frame were carefully cut away from the drawing and filled in with the required change on the sheet below.[5] After Barré had started his career in animation at Edison Studios, he founded one of the first film studios dedicated to animation in 1914 (initially together with Bill Nolan). Barré Studio had success with the production of the adaptation of the popular comic strip Mutt and Jeff (1916–1926). The studio employed several animators who would have notable careers in animation, including Frank Moser, Gregory La Cava, Vernon Stallings, Tom Norton and Pat Sullivan.
In 1914,
In 1915,
Newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst founded International Film Service in 1916. Hearst lured away most of Barré Studio's animators, with Gregory La Cava becoming the head of the studio. They produced adaptations of many comic strips from Heart's newspapers in a rather limited fashion, giving just a little motion to the characters while mainly using the dialog balloons to deliver the story. The most notable series was Krazy Kat, with an early anthropomorphic cartoon cat character. Before the studio stopped in 1918 it had employed some new talents, including Vernon Stallings, Ben Sharpsteen, Jack King, John Foster, Grim Natwick, Burt Gillett and Isadore Klein.
The most popular cartoon series during the silent era was Australian-American film producer Pat Sullivan's Felix the Cat. Felix the Cat (Originally named Master Tom) first appeared in Feline Follies (1919) and became hugely successful throughout the 1920s. The studio later came into trouble during the advent of sound cartoons in the early 1930s when the popularity of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse was rising above Sullivan's Felix. Sullivan tried to adapt Felix by creating Felix sound cartoons, but they failed to please audiences and Sullivan closed the studio in 1930. He died three years later due to health problems related to alcoholism.[12]
Charles Bowers was a comedian and animator who made many bizarre films in the 1920s combining stop-motion animation and comedy. Many of them have been lost, but some have been released on DVD.
List of US animated silent films
Very incomplete list (most of the early films in general are lost, many were not documented, forgotten and/or insignificant). Listed filmmakers can be creators, directors, producers, animators or complete studios. If a series was taken over by other filmmakers, not all filmmakers will be listed.
| Date | Filmmaker | Title | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1906 | J. Stuart Blackton | Humorous Phases of Funny Faces | |
| 1911 | Winsor McCay | Little Nemo | character Flip returned in Flip's Circus (circa 1918–1921, survives only in fragments) |
| 1912 | Winsor McCay | How a Mosquito Operates | |
| 1913–1915 | Sidney Smith | Old Doc Yak (20 episodes) | first series with a recurring character |
| 1913–1917, 1922-1924 | John Randolph Bray | Colonel Heeza Liar (58 episodes) | second series featured live-action/animation |
| 1914 | Winsor McCay | Gertie the Dinosaur | follow-up Gertie on Tour (circa 1918–1921) survives only in fragments |
| 1915 | Willis O'Brien
|
The Dinosaur and the Missing Link: A Prehistoric Tragedy | stop motion |
| 1915-1955 | Paul Terry | Farmer Al Falfa (series) | produced for several studios, with sound since 1928 |
| 1915-1916 | International Film Service | Phables (series) | |
| 1915-1925 | Bray Productions | Bobby Bumps (series) | first cel-animated series |
| 1916–1923, 1925-1926 | Barré Studio | Mutt and Jeff (series) | licensed from the comic strip by Bud Fisher |
| 1916–1917, 1920–1921, 1925-1940 | Winkler Pictures, Screen Gems
|
Krazy Kat (series) | with sound since 1929 |
| 1916–1918, 1920 | International Film Service | The Katzenjammer Kids / The Shenninigan Kids (37+5 episodes) | |
| 1918 | Winsor McCay | The Sinking of the Lusitania | regarded as the first animated documentary |
| 1919-1930 | Pat Sullivan | Felix the Cat (series) | with sound since 1928, revived in 1936, 1959–1962, 1988, 1997, 2001, 2004 |
| 1918-1929 | Dave Fleischer / Max Fleischer | Out of the Inkwell | live-action/animation featuring Koko the Clown |
| 1921 (September) | Winsor McCay | Bug Vaudeville, The Pet, The Flying House | three separate shorts, forming a Dream of the Rarebit Fiend anthology |
| 1921 | Winsor McCay | The Centaurs | survives only in fragments |
| 1921 | John Coleman Terry | Joys and Glooms | |
| 1921-1923 | Laugh-O-Gram Studio (Walt Disney & Ub Iwerks) | Laugh-O-Grams (series) | |
| 1924–1927 | Walter Lantz | Dinky Doodle (series) | |
| 1923-1927 | Walt Disney & Ub Iwerks | Alice Comedies (series) | |
| 1921-1929 | Paul Terry | Aesop's Fables (series) | |
| 1927-1928 | Walt Disney & Ub Iwerks | Oswald the Lucky Rabbit (series) | taken over by other studios until 1938, with sound since 1929, additional short in 1943 and cameos in other films |
| 1925 | Willis O'Brien
|
The Lost World | feature with stop motion creatures |
Significant distributors of animated films: Margaret J. Winkler, Charles Mintz, Educational Pictures, Red Seal Pictures, Bijou Films
Legacy
Three films by Winsor McCay (Little Nemo, Gertie the Dinosaur, The Sinking of the Lusitania) were each inducted into the National Film Registry[13]
See also
- Belle Époque
- Roaring Twenties
- Classical Hollywood cinema
- Golden age of American animation
- History of animation
- List of animated feature films
References
- ^ "A Brief History On The Golden Age Of Animation". Odyssey. August 1, 2016.
- ISBN 0-8160-2252-6
- ^ Janis Johnson (January–February 2005). "Saving the silents". Humanities magazine. National Endowment for the Humanities. Archived from the original on September 8, 2008. Retrieved March 17, 2008.
- ^ Crandol, Michael. "The History of Animation: Advantages and Disadvantages of the Studio System in the Production of an Art Form". Archived from the original on August 21, 2011. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
- ISBN 9781557836717– via Internet Archive.
- ^ Solomon 1989, pp. 22–23.
- ^ Crafton 1993, pp. 153–154.
- ^ Crafton 1993, p. 150.
- ^ Solomon 1989, pp. 24–26.
- ^ McLaughlin, Dan (2001). "A Rather Incomplete but Still Fascinating History of Animation". UCLA. Archived from the original on November 19, 2009. Retrieved April 18, 2012.
- ^ US1242674A - Method of producing moving-picture cartoons. - Google Patents
- ^ Gordon, Ian (2002). "Felix the Cat". St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture. Retrieved June 24, 2009.
- ^ Brief Descriptions and Expanded Essays|Film Registry|Library of Congress
Sources
- Solomon, Charles (1989). Enchanted Drawings: The History of Animation. New York: Random House, Inc. ISBN 978-0-394-54684-1.
Further reading
- Crafton, Donald (1993). Before Mickey: The Animated Film 1898–1928. University of Chicago Press.
- Fleischer, Richard (2005). Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the Animation Revolution. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2355-0.
- Gifford, Denis (1990). American Animated Films: The Silent Era, 1897–1929. Mcfarland & Co. ISBN 0-89950-460-4.