From Comic Strips to Animation: Some Perspective on Winsor McCay

Author(s): TOM W. HOFFER

Source: Journal of the University Film Association , Spring 1976, Vol. 28, No. 2 (Spring
1976), pp. 23-32
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of the University Film & Video
Association

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20687319

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 From Comic Strips to Animation:
Some Perspective on Winsor McCay
TOM W. HOFFER
J Animation seemingly draws most directly upon the com
m mereiai appeal of the motion picture as a mass medium. In the
following article, Tom Hoffer, associate professor and acting
chairman of Mass Communications at the University of West
Florida, re-evaluates the efforts and contributions of cartoon
ist Winsor McCay. The seeming paradox of commercialism
vs. art is not resolved by McCay's on-again, off-again flirtation
with motion pictures. While McCay's contributions and moti
vations may be debated, the fact that his entrepreneurial
methods set the standards for the future cannot be denied.

A version of this article was presented at the annual University

II Film Association conference, August 1975, in Rochester, JP
\ New York. f

Introduction Romanticism

Winsor McCay has been called the "father of
animation," a prophet of animation, the in
ventor of animation and a comic strip artist
of the first order. Whether he retains all of
these titles is not as important as his early con
tributions to the animated moving picture, his
commercial exploitation of a new medium
(film) in the framework of the old (theater), his
symbiotic relationships obtaining among
theater, comics, films and merchandising activi
ties, and his later role as propagandist.1
As a "father figure" in early film animation,
McCay is correctly identified as an individual
ist. He is credited with having done almost all
the work himself, but this is not quite the case.
Mike Barrier recalled:
What was most important about McCay's
cartoons, however, was not what he did
but how he did it. He approached anima
tion as a highly personal, one-man medi
um and although he turned out a large
number of drawings in an astonish
ingly short time, he did not resort to
timesaving shortcuts.2
In the recent attention given to
McCay there is more praise
than criticism of his art, and an
obvious attempt to "protect" him
from getting his hands dirty in the
commercialism of exploiting his work.
This article seeks to provide some
perspective on that point,
in addition to providing a
description of McCay fs accomplishments
to arrive at some assessments.3
Mr. McCay was born in Spring Lake, Michigan,
about 1871 and died at age 63, in July, 1934.4
While various claims are being made for him,
a number of questions remain unanswered.5
In the search for Winsor McCay,
a romanticism of sorts has
crept into the statements of those
who remember only the most
favorable details. While many claim
for him the role of the artist
untainted with commercialism, the
evidence presented below demonstrates
that McCay was a clever entrepreneur who
knew how to exploit his talent. In some
respects, he appears to be the
predecessor to Mr. Disney himself.
A number of details about McCay's relation
ship with the Hearst newspaper empire, and his
immediate boss, Arthur Brisbane, seem worth
while probing, but so far the necessary evidence
is lacking. Another larger unanswered question
is why McCay abandoned animation, seemingly
content to spend his remaining years as a vaude
ville novelty and comic strip artist. His friends
and survivors explain that the man was an
artist-not the manager of an assembly line
manufacturing film product for an audience
increasingly developing the moviegoing habit.
His commercial successes, stemming from his
early newspaper cartooning, do not fit well
with the romanticized conclusion that he
gave up his success to meet his artistic destiny.

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 Comic Strip Prelude to Animation
Little Nemo strip
Probably McCay's best known
strip was "Little Nemo in
Slumberland, " which invariably
began with youngster Nemo dreaming
a fantasy, allowing the artist
license to exploit shape,
perspective and color.
McCay arrived in New York around 1902 after
15 years work as a cartoonist for the Cincin
nati Commercial Tribune and before that as a
"scenic artist" in what Judith O'Sullivan called
a kind of permanent freak show.6 "Little Nemo
in Slumberland" first appeared in the New
York Herald on October 15, 1905.7 According
to Woody Gelman, it was an "immediate
success" and soon thereafter was syndicated to
newspapers in the United States and Europe:
Week after week, McCay surprised his
readers with a profusion of delightful
images. His characters developed person
alities of their own and became instant
favorites. The appearance of Nemo him
self was based upon McCay's young son,
Robert, who in his adult years was to
assist McCay in some of his later work.8
McCay's fantasies in the Nemo strip were
always placed in a dream context and usually
ended with Nemo propped up or down in his
bed after surviving the fantastic voyage. Either
the objects were bigger than life, the characters
deviants from reality, or the environments
fantastic. Quite often the dreams conjured by
Nemo were attributed to eating something
before bedtime, helping to base the fantasy in
the logic of reality.9
While the Nemo strip developed characters over
a series of episodes such as Nem? himself, or
his sometime companion "Mr. Flip-Flap",
McCay's film animations did not.10 The
phenomenon of the "series," especially those
media exploiting either the same characters
from strip-to-strip or artists as in the emerging
star system (from film-to-film), became the
underlying foundation for merchandising media
products to mass audiences. McCay's work was
inconsistent with this phenomenon and did not
exploit the series characters of his highly re
garded and commercially successful Nemo
strip. 11
But Mr. McCay clearly saw the value of mer
chandising Nemo in other media. Hence, the
24
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Nemo strips were reprinted in books around
1908; a game based on the Nemo strip was
developed; post cards picturing Nemo and other
characters were sold; and Little Nemo dolls
were merchandised.12 McCay demonstrated
what Sydney Head would later describe as
symbiosis among various media, interrelation
ships which turn out to be mutually helpful,
i.e., profitable.13
Another attempt in the commercial exploita
tion of the Little Nemo character and strip
occurred with the creation of the Victor
Herbert operetta entitled, not surprisingly,
"Little Nemo."14 Not much is known about
how the operetta came to be created, but the
publicity made much of the connection with
the Herald comic strip.15 The three-act whimsi
cal musical "fantasy"16 was opened in the
Forrest Theater in Philadelphia on September
28, 1908.17 From there, the production moved
to New York City and the Amsterdam Theater,
opening on October 20th. The production ran
for 111 performances in New York City and
then traveled to Boston and Pittsburgh. After
two years, the operetta failed to recover its high
investment and became an economic failure.18
A point to be made here is that McCay and his
producers were well aware of the benefits
occurring to the comic strip when the Nemo
character was spun-off as another mediated
product, either through books, dolls, or an
operetta.19
Cartooning on Stage
While still cartooning "Little Nemo," and
accompanied by the Victor Herbert music,
"Sweet Mystery of Life," McCay took to the
vaudeville stage with his artist act called "Seven
Ages of Man." In front of a chalkboard, he
drew profiles of a man and woman as they
changed from birth through old age at the rate
of one drawing about every 30 seconds.20
McCay was apparently the first of well-known
artists to play the vaudeville circuits. Joe
Laurie, Jr., recalled:
The cartoonists, especially, flocked to
vaude, because it was vaude patrons who
read the funnies. . . . Cartoonists served
long and well on the big and small time.
Many headlined because of the popu
larity of their strip. They were, in a way,
"freak acts."21
Film Animations
Little Nemo
Shortly after his first year of vaudeville, McCay
began working on his first animated cartoon,
"Little Nemo." A Moving Picture World writer
observed that the Nemo film would draw upon
the comic strip's "natural advertising heritage,"
another way to maximize revenue potential.22
McCay tediously drew about 4000
drawings on transparent rice
paper, mounted on a thin grade of
cardboard. These were
photographed by Walter Austin
and "directed" by McCay's mentor,
J. Stuart Blackton.23
The finished film, as shown with McCay's
vaudeville act, did not have any storyline.
The characters from "Little Nemo in Slum
berland" would appear, disappear, enlarge,
"stretch" and move in limbo against a white
background. In addition to McCay's anima
tions, he also hand colored a version for his
vaudeville act.
Another version of McCay's "Little Nemo"
was made for commercial distribution, with
live-action sequences placed before and after
the animations. Vitagraph's star comedian,
John Bunny, makes a token appearance in
the film presumably to help boxoffice, and
proceeds to take part in a wager which pre
sumably "dares" McCay to animate pictures
of Little Nemo and his cohorts. The concluding
live-action shows McCay collecting his bet.24
Little Nemo was released to moving picture
theaters in April 1911, and within four days,
McCay featured the film in his act on the
vaudeville stage.
While the "live" interaction with an animated
image was probably somewhat unique, the idea
of combining film and theater had been demon
strated as early as 1901 when actor George
Ober used scenes from a Biograph film on Rip
Van Winkle. Scholar George Pratt also found
more examples in the Ziegfeld Follies of 1907,
1910 and 1915:
An actual picture is shown with [Ed]
Wynn directing same from the audience.
The players in the film projection follow
his every suggestion, enter and exit at
his behest, and talk back in panto
mime. . . ,25
Within three months, apparently buoyed by the
success of the Little Nemo film, McCay
announced to the trade that he was planning a
new film containing 6000 sketches to be a
"release" for vaudeville in the 1911-12 season.
How a Mosquito Operates was subsequently
released in December, 1911, and sold to Carl
Laemmle.26
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXVIII, 2 (Spring 1976) 25
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Gertie, the Dinosaur
In 1914, McCay added a new
animated film to his act
featuring a dinosaur called
Gertie.
One observer, Claude Bragdon, described
McCay's routines which reportedly helped him
earn up to $ 1000 a week.
McCay appeared on the stage arrayed
in the costume of a circus animal-trainer
and brandishing a whip. Presently, at
his summons, on the screen behind him,
Gertie is seen to emerge timidly from her
cave. At his command, she clumsily
raises her right foot and then her left,
and is rewarded with a large red apple,
tossed to her from her master's hand.
Under encouragement and with much
whip-cracking she goes through her more
difficult paces and ends by throwing an
elephant over a palm tree by the tail and
drinking the lake dry.27
For unknown reasons, but suspected com
mercial ones, there shortly appeared a second
"Gertie the Dinosaur." John R. Bray, holder
of several important patents in animation and
author of the series of animated cartoons
"Colonel Heeza Liar," produced the second
version of Gertie some time between 1910
and 1915.28 The two versions survive today
and the differences between them are obvious.
In McCay's film, the entire image, including
background, was redrawn for each of the
approximately 10,000 inked rice-paper eels.
Bray used a different technique, appearing to
draw only the moving portions of the ani
mated figure, and using several eels, including
a separate background cel. The Bray version
is currently being distributed by Blackhawk
Films, mistakenly billed as the original McCay
Gertie.
Entanglement with Hearst
McCay continued to work off-and-on
on his film animations and the
vaudeville circuits even after
switching cartoon jobs to
one of the Hearst Papers in
July 1911.
Mr. Hearst was not happy with McCay's out-of
town vaudeville playdates and insisted that
McCay confine his vaudeville work to New
York City. After 1911, McCay became closely
associated with Arthur Brisbane as his chief
editorial cartoonist on the New York Journal.
According to Oliver Carlson, McCay supplied
many of the ideas around which the Brisbane
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An advertisement from The Moving Picture World 22 (23 December 1914): 1863.

26

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editorials were developed. In the period prior
to World War I, McCay sometimes depicted
President Wilson as a graceless school master
misrepresenting to his pupils the patriotic
events of American history.29 Together with
the Brisbane editorials, the competing New
York World charged they were "more malici
ous, mendacious and incendiary" than those
dealing with McKinley prior to his assassina
tion.30
The Sinking of the Lusitania
The year after the tragedy, McCay announced
his plans to make The Sinking of the Lusitania
which was to become the longest animated film
until Disney released Snow White. John Fitz
simmons, who helped McCay on the earlier
Gertie the Dinosaur project, aided McCay in
his 25,000 eel project depicting the sinking. On
this film, his fourth, McCay used punched
celluloid eels and animated the moving parts,
incorporating more than one eel level.31
Fitzsimmons recalled that McCay was "worked
up" over the sinking, apparently providing the
motivation to sustain him over the 22 months
it took to complete the film. Sinking of the
Lusitania, revealing a decidedly anti-German
point-of-view and undoubtedly drawing upon
the rigor of McCay's editorial experience with
Brisbane, was released theatrically on July
20, 1918. There is nothing discovered so far
in the surviving and available literature indi
cating any kind of audience or editorial re
sponse to this film.32
Hearst's International Film Syndicate
In 1917, while McCay was working on the
Lusitania project, Hearst had set up a syndi
cate releasing cartoons in series, such as Walter
Lantz's Jerry on the Job, John Foster's
Katzenjammer Kids Bringing up Father, drawn
by Bert Green and others.33 The first Inter
national Syndicate efforts were produced simi
larly to the first John Bray cartoons in which
the background was drawn on a translucent
medium and the characters on an opaque sheet.
The background was then laid on top of the
character drawing. If the background "inter
fered" with character movement, that part of
the background was drawn on the same sheet
with the character. This system was later dis
continued in favor of the "celluloid over the
background" method.34
Given the McCay experience in
political cartooning for the Hearst
enterprises, and Hearst's knowledge
of McCay's early animations, it is a
small mystery why McCay did not
eventually have some connection with
the Hearst syndicate.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXVIII, 2 (Spring 1976) 27
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However, McCay's politics on the War were
different from those of Brisbane or Hearst.
McCay's son was serving in the conflict and
The Sinking of the Lusitania was just short of
a call to arms. Brisbane and Hearst, at least
in the preceding years, were against United
States intervention. Perhaps the recollections
of McCay's colleagues and friends were correct:
McCay had little desire to exploit his animation
talent commercially. But this view does not
seem to stand very well in view of McCay's
earlier exploitation of the Nemo strip with
operetta, vaudeville and merchandising activi
ties.
Other McCay Animations
McCay completed at least six more animated
films after Lusitania including Gertie on Tour,
Flip's Circus, The Centaurs, Dreams of a
Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville and Dreams of a
Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House, the last two
aided by his son, Robert McCay.
After 1921, McCay continued
newspaper cartooning on the
New York American until
his death in 1934, apparently
producing no more animated
cartoons.*5
Assessments
Animation Importance
Animated cartoons in 1909 were a novelty
and, according to animator Richard Huemer,
were not difficult to produce. He recalled:
If it moved, it was good. Actually, the
novelty carried it. The business got into
trouble when the novelty wore off, and
the people expected to see gags, and
better animation and better ideas. Which
of course, Disney eventually succeeded in
doing.36
Earl Theisen concluded that cartoons were
shown by exhibitors "more or less apologeti
cally" at the end of newsreels or vaudeville
acts.37 Robert Clampett recalled that audiences
didn't pay much attention to cartoons on the
playbill and up to the introduction of sound
were used as the "chaser."38 Huemer thought
that audiences were "faintly hostile" to car
toons, at least the early efforts:
Animated cartoons were sort of the
backwater of the movie business. Of
course, you know, they didn't pay any
money for them in the theaters. Dis
 tributors gave them away. They never
got any reviews in the trade journals.
They didn't get reviews until Disney
came along. . . .39
In short, the animated cartoon before the
introduction of sound did not hold a strong
appeal either for the industry or the audience.
But to authors such as Winsor McCay, anima
tion was a highly personal medium, especially
in contrast to the emerging techniques developed
by Bray, Hurd, Terry, the Fleischer brothers
and others. Their techniques made production
simpler and easier with a new emphasis on the
technical side sometimes displacing artistic
control.49 Even McCay adopted some of
those techniques which tended toward formula
in the repetitive use of wave eels described by
Fitzsimmons in the Lusitania film. The idea
of drawing motionless parts of characters
once, "tearing away" the animated body
parts, was originated by Raoul Barre 41 and
apparently incorporated into the Bray imitation
of Gertie and other cartoons. There is no
available evidence that this "slash" technique
was used by McCay, although he did use eel
layers and the Bray celluloid technique.
While McCay was not quite a
"one-man" medium, as
an early animator he can
be thought of as the first
to treat animation as a
personal medium.
McCay "Influence"
While it is difficult to measure?much less
assess?the influence of any one individual
or his work on subsequent events and be
haviors, others have claimed "impact" in the
broad reach of McCay's talent. Stevenson
wrote that Victor Bergdahl, the Swedish film
maker, was influenced by McCay.42 Paul
Terry paid McCay "unstinted tribute" indi
cating that McCay "inspired him."43 Nat Falk
concluded that McCay's work influenced Max
Fleischer and John Bray, but Bray has denied
this.44
McCay's Lusitania film was the longest anima
tion at the time and held a record of length
until Disney released Snow White. But, a
number of other questions remain unanswered
concerning McCay's relationship with the
powerful Hearst group, of his motivation for
making Lusitania. Indeed, the larger question
about why he gave up animation after 1921
will probably never be accurately answered.45
28
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McCay "Firsts"
In terms of McCay's work,
there is little doubt that his
efforts place him prominently
in the history of the animated
film.
John Canemaker emphasized that McCay had
no "models" or precedents for developing
timing, movement, character or other tech
niques.46 There were, however, the "models"
available from the flip-card wheels (depicted
in the live-action scene in Little Nemo) and
earlier Biograph thumb books.47 Insofar as
other "firsts" were concerned, McCay probably
made and exhibited the first hand-colored car
toon, Little Nemo, in 1911. He was also the
first to base a cartoon on a successful comic
strip.
The latter example speaks to a far more
important point concerning McCay: he demon
strated the growing symbiotic relationships
among theater, comics, and the fledging film
medium. In this regard, McCay was the prede
cessor to Walt Disney, who would later rein vig
?rate animated film by exploiting the tech
nology of sound and color. Unlike Disney,
McCay did not exploit his talent through a
formalized production procedure, nor did he
have a series of films exploiting his comic
characters. Strangely, McCay gave up his film
animation work after 1921 despite his skilled
techniques. Some have attributed this to
McCay's perceived reluctance to divide the
labor of animation into an assembly-line
approach. But this does not mean that Disney
or others totally eclipsed McCay.
The marvel of McCay's work is
the preservation of the dreamlike
qualities of his comics and McCay 's
use of perspective, foreshortening, and
elastic anatomy and the adaptation of his
comic strip to the film,
making his work quite unconventional
for the time.
Perhaps these remarks by John Canaday,
written on the occasion of a 1966 Little Nemo
exhibition at the New York Metropolitan
Museum of Art, best sum up the significance
of the early animator's work:
It took us a long time to discover jazz
as important music and the movies as
important theater, and the only thing
we have done with the comic strip is to
take it at its worst and further cheapen
it by adaptation to the second-rate
gigglmg pseudo-estheticism of pop art.
 Little Nemo would bear to fine art
today a relationship that crude medieval
woodcuts hacked out for popular con
sumption bear to masterpieces of med
ieval painting, if comparable master
pieces were being produced today, and
if fine art had not departed so violently
from any popularly intelligible forms.
As it is, I would give you 39 out of any
current 40 gallery exhibitions during a
typical week along Madison Avenue, and
take Little Nemo instead as a work of
art that had a reason for being and
fulfilled it.48
NOTES
*For an excellent and objective overview of
McCay's career as a cartoonist, animator, and
propagandist, see Judith O'Sullivan, "In Search
of Winsor McCay," American Film Institute
Quarterly 5 (Summer 1974): 3-9. Descriptions
of McCay's films are contained in John Cane
maker, "Winsor McCay," Film Comment 11
(February 1975): 44-47. For a summary of
animation history during the McCay period,
see Ralph Stevenson, The Animated Film
(New York: A.S. Barnes and Co., 1973); Nat
Falk, How To Make Animated Cartoons: The
History and Technique (New York: Founda
tion Books, 1943); and Earl Theisen, "The
History of the Animated Cartoon," Journal
of the Society of Motion Picture Engineers 21
(September 1933): 239-249.
2Mike Barrier, "Of Mice, Wabbits, Ducks and
men: The Hollywood Cartoon," American Film
Institute Quarterly 5 (Summer 1974): 18.
Barrier added, ". . . he created one of the most
luxurious of all Sunday comics pages, LITTLE
NEMO IN SLUMBERLAND. NEMO was a
rather stiff and literal fantasy, lacking the
fluidity of dreams, and the animation in
McCay's cartoons is similar; extravagant ideas
are executed in a pedestrian manner." There
are, of course, different appraisals of McCay's
work. Fortunately, much of his early work
survives, allowing others to make their own
judgments on the matter.
3J. Stuart Blackton's "Humorous Phases of
Funny Faces," copyrighted in 1906, is often
cited by historians as the "first movie cartoon,"
although there were various demonstrations
of "animation" with stop action and other
such tricks in the films of Emile Cohl, E.S.
Porter and others. As Stevenson pointed out,
if we were to define animated film as move
ment, not photography, one must include
Emile Reynaud who is said to have made the
earliest hand animation with his praxinoscope
projector, using films with pictures painted on
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Strips of celluloid, by 1888. Stevenson, pp.
25-26.
4John Canemaker, "The Birth of Animation:
Reminiscing with John A. Fitzsimmons,
Assistant to Winsor McCay," Millimeter,
April 1975, p. 14; "Winsor M'Cay, 62, Car
toonist Dead," New York Times, 27 July 1934,
p. 17, col. 1.
5 Memorabilia and ephemera of McCay remain
largely in the hands of private collectors,
although a set of his known films are available
at Cinematheque Qu?b?coise, 360 rue McGill,
Montreal H2Y 2E9, Quebec. A small collection
of McCay films are available for rent from the
Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street,
New York, New York. Anecdotes concerning
the discovery and near-throwaway of original
nitrate negative and prints are described in the
Canemaker Millimeter article cited in Note 4.
60'Sullivan, p. 4. The freak show was Coni and
Middleton's Vine Street Dime Museum, Cin
cinnati. From this experience, O'Sullivan con
cluded, "This decade of acquaintance with the
grotesque left its mark on McCay's style, and
his later work is replete with carnival motifs,
including distortions based on trick mirrors,
exotic animals, clowns and dancers."
7Winsor McCa^, Little Nemo, ed. Woody
Gelman (New York: Nostalgia Press, 1972),
pp. 8, 14; Edwin Emery, The Press and
America: An Interpretative History of Journal
ism (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc. 1972),
pp. 572-573.
8McCay, p. 8. Robert Winsor McCay was later
credited with helping McCay animate Bug
Vaudeville and Flying House, released in 1921.
The son died sometime in the 1960s from
cancer. All others of McCay's immediate
family, including daughter Marion, are also
deceased.
9 John Fell concluded that, along with a tradi
tion of caricature as another resource, cartoon
ists were technologically "encouraged" to
exploit fantastic themes since printing tech
niques did not permit tonal gradation for
depth, movement or other devices. Thus,
". . .the early cartoonists were deprived of
almost everything. With the printing tech
niques at his disposal he could only suggest
perspective with a vanishing point, foreshort
ening, and the obscuring of smaller distant
objects with larger near ones. He could shade
primitively with straight hatches and cross
hatches. The colored inks were flat; he couldn't
create the depth possible with the luminosity
of glazes. These limitations thrust the early
cartoonist into strongly visible stylizations."
See John Fell, "Mr. Griffith, Meet Winsor
McCay," Journal of the University Film Assoc
iation 23, no. 3 (1971): 74-87. One of Fell's
major conclusions is that McCay employed
"movie-like" techniques in his early comic
strips. However, based upon McCay's sur
viving animated cartoons, many of these
techniques did not appear in the McCay film
animations. John Canemaker concluded:
". . . one notices the influence McCay's theat
rical background had on his film subjects and
action; most of the films are presented in a
rather stagey, as opposed to cinematic, way,
with extremely limited use of close-ups."
See Canemaker, Film Comment.
10While McCay apppeared to derive a good
living from his Nemo strip, his commercial
success with animated film in vaudeville
featured a cartoon character called Gertie, the
Dinosaur. Nemo, as a film animation character,
was not resurrected after the initial animation
distributed by Vitagraph in 1911.
11 Perhaps the business arrangements involving
the New York Herald's syndication of Nemo,
and Hearst's insistence that McCay give up his
out-of-town (New York City) vaudeville ap
pearances pushed McCay into abandoning any
further exploitation of the Nemo strip into a
film animation series. According to Woody
Gelman, McCay did continue the Nemo char
acter in comic strips, but under the title "In
the Land of Wonderful Dreams." Telephone
interview with Woody Gelman, Long Island,
New York, 14 July 1975. O'Sullivan briefly
outlined the apparently stormy relationship
between McCay and Hearst on the issue of
McCay's outside vaudeville act which featured
the film animation, Gertie, the Dinosaur.
See O'Sullivan, p. 8.
12 Gelman interview. Mr. Gelman stated that he
collected some of the McCay (and Nemo)
emphemera. The French edition of Little
Nemo (1972) pictured the "Little Nemo"
game.
13Head wrote, "Relationships among the
media, despite fierce competition for adver
tising dollars and consumer attention, might be
described, in biological terms, as symbiotic.
They interrelate in complex ways which turn
out in the long run to be mutually helpful.
They use each other's material and talent;
they invest in each other's stock ; they benefit
from each other's technological development."
See Sydney Head, Broadcasting In America
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1972), pp.
217-244.
30
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14The symbiotic relationship among theater,
comic strips and film has been demonstrated
often. But in the early years of the United
States film industry, there was a great deal of
"borrowing" from the stage. For example,
Edwin S. Porter, in 1903, turned the well
known stage production "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
(derived from an earlier book) into a film,
adding his "cinematic license" with the story
line. Kemp R. Niver, The First Twenty Years:
A Segment of Film History (Los Angeles:
Artisan Press, 1968), pp. 33-34.
15 The libretto was written by Harry B. Smith
and published by Cohan and Harris, New York.
See Joseph Kaye, Victor Herbert (New York:
G. Howard Watt, 1931), p. 265. Henry Blossom
started the project but apparently dropped out,
replaced by Mr. Smith. See Edward N. Waters,
Victor Herbert: A Life In Music (New York:
Macmillan, 1955), p. 322. In Waters'judgment,
the music in "Little Nemo" did not rank among
the best of the Victor Herbert operettas. The
Nemo strip of 15 November 1908 featured a
promotion of the operetta. In frame two, Nemo
is seen passing a sign on a fence, reading
"Coming, the glorious operatic spectacle Little
Nemo, Biggest theatrical event of the age." The
point of the strip is to explain who is in the
operetta. In the Nemo strip of 17 January
1901, Little Nemo and Flip-Flap wrestle
themselves into a huge snowball which crashes
through a sign as they roll down a hill. The sign
reads in frame 13: "The stupendous operatic
spectacle, Little Nemo, Dazzling chorus,
gorgeous costumes, bewildering scenic effects,
entrancing music, all laughter." See McCay pp.
156, 163.
16Claire Lee Purdy, Victor Herbert: American
Music-Master (New York: Julian Messner,
1944), p. 183.
17Waters, p. 323.
18Waters concluded that "producer's ambition"
was responsible for the failure of the operetta.
Up to 1910, it was Herbert's most expensive
production, once described as "confusingly
kaleidoscopic" to the audience. According to
Waters, it also had "The delicious soothing
effect that is part of dream life; something
suggestive of total irresponsibility, of that
physical and mental lassitude that lends itself
unconsciously to the banishment of care."
Waters, p. 323. Before 1910, the "average"
production costs for a musical were between
$20,000 and $30,000. Before the curtain went
up on "Little Nemo," $86,000 had been
expended due to the large number of scenes,
special lighting, exotic costumes and an array
of "trapdoor" devices in the sets. See Waters,
pp. 325-326. For a first person observation of
McCay's Little Nemo on tour in Cincinnati
(1909), see Montogomery Phister, "People
of the Stage . . . ," Cincinnati Commercial
Tribune, 28 November 1909. Phister also
interviewed McCay, including more back
ground on his early experiences at the turn of
the century.
19 George Pratt has demonstrated that the
relationship between stage and screen was really
a "two-way borrowing" by documenting
instances in which the theater incorporated the
moving picture. Winsor McCay offered one
adaptation of this approach by turning his
vaudeville cartooning act into an animated
film with McCay interacting with the image
on stage. See George Pratt, "Early Stage and
Screen: A Two-Way Street," Cinema Journal
14 (Winter 1974-1975): 16-19. An earlier
McCay strip, "Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend,"
was turned into a short film, with consider
able "cinematic license" taken by E.S. Porter
in the live-action version.
20 This particular Herbert tune, according to his
assistant, John Fitzsimmons, was McCay's
favorite. Telephone interview with John Fitz
simmons, New York, 20 July 1975. Telephone
interview with Woody Gelman, Long Island,
New York, 14 July 1974. See Canemaker,
Film Comment, pp. 44-45.
21 Joe Laurie, Jr., Vaudeville: From the Honky
Tonks to the Palace (New York: Henry Holt,
1953), p. 211. Douglas Gilbert credits "bill
maker and showman" Willie Hammerstein as
the one who first put cartoonists on the New
York vaudeville stages," . . . not because he
had any regard for their acts as entertainment,
but because he could cash publicity through
them. He booked four outstanding men: Winsor
McKay [sic], Bud Fisher, Rube Goldberg and
Tad D organ. Their patter was terrible and the
acts were flops, but Willie got his advertising."
Douglas Gilbert, American Vaudeville: Its Life
and Times (New York: Whittlesey House,
1940), p. 250.
22 Judith O'Sullivan, p. 7, citing "Winsor
McCay: Artist, Inventor and Prophet, " Moving
Picture World 8 (22 April 1911): 900.
23Ibid. Theisen, p. 242, says, "Walter Austin"
did the photography; O'Sullivan used the name
"Walter Arthur."
24Canemaker, Film Comment, p. 45. The
Little Nemo films have also been called Winsor
McCay Meets John Bunny, Winsor McCay
Explains His Moving Cartoon to John Bunny
and Winsor McCay Makes His Cartoons Move.
JOURNAL OF THE UNIVERSITY FILM ASSOCIATION, XXVIII, 2 (Spring 1976) 31
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2 5Pratt, p. 19; citing New York Dramatic
Mirror, 23 June 1915, p. 14.
2 6 "Film of 6000 Sketches," Variety 23 (22
July 1911): 5; Theisen, p. 242. John Cane
maker (Film Comment, pp. 45-44) refers to
a film titled The Story of a Mosquito released
in January 1912, and indentifying it as McCay's
second ink-on-rice paper animation. Presumably
both titles refer to the same film. Canemaker
described the film as "gruesomely funny."
"Steve, a spiffy mosquito with a top-hat,
discovers a sleeping drunk and bores his long
probaseis into the man's nose, neck, and dome
in gluttonous search for alcoholic blood. Soon
he has partaken of so much he can hardly fly;
in the end, Steve explodes."
2 7 Claude Bragdon, "Mickey Mouse and What
He Means," Scribner's Magazine 96 (July 1934):
41; New York Times, 27 July 1934; Woody
Gelman recalled seeing the McCay filmartist
act in the New York Paramount theater some
time in the 1920s. Fitzsimmons specifically
recalled McCay's act in Jay's theater in 1912,
indicating that McCay had a long-time stage
experience, from 1906 to sometime in the mid
twenties. Telephone interviews with Woody
Gelman (14 July 1975) and John Fitzsimmons
(20 July 1975).
2 8 For a brief resume of Bray's background,
see John Canemaker, Filmmakers Newsletter,
January 1975, 28-31. Telephone interview with
Don Glut, Los Angeles, California, 21 July
1975; telephone interview with Robert
Clampett, Los Angeles, California, 23 July 1975.
Bray commercially exploited his talent in
animation considerably. By 1919 or 1920, he
was the head of the film industry's largest
organization producing theatrical cartoons,
training films and scientific shorts.
29 Oliver Carlson, Brisbane: A Candid Bio
graphy (New York: Stackpole Sons, 1937),
pp. 218, 198.
30Ibid. Apparently, even Mr. Hearst took a
hand in offering suggestions for McCay's pen.
Once he wired: "McKay [sic] could make
strong eight-column cartoon, occupying in
depth two-thirds editorial page, showing smaller
figures Uncle Sam and Germany shaking their
fists at each other on left side page and on
right side big head and shoulders of Japan,
with Knife in hand, leaning over into picture
and evidently watching chance to strike Uncle
Sam in back. Title of picture to be: 'Watch
ful Waiting. Look Out, Uncle Sam, Your
Neighbor Japan is Eagerly Awaiting An Op
portunity to Strike You in the Back." Despite
their reported close professional relationship,
a search of the Arthur Brisbane papers at the
George Arents Research Library, Syracuse
University, failed to reveal a single letter or
memorandum between McCay and Brisbane.
31 Canemaker, Film Comment, p. 46; Milli
meter, p. 15; Falk, p. 13; Telephone interview
with John Fitzsimmons, New York, 20 July
1975. In an interview with Canemaker, Fitz
simmons recalled: "I did the water, the waves.
He made a set of 16 waves and numbered them
1 to 16, and those waves would roll nice and
smooth. We were using celluloid then for
LUSITANIA. A friend of his, Apthrop (Ap)
Adams came to visit him from Cincinnati and
he talked him into staying on and helping. So
it was Ap's job to take McCay's drawing and
put my wave number on there, and Ap liked to
hit it up once in a while. So we went through
this whole damn thing and even photographed
it, and the waves were going all over. Ap had
gotten all the numbers mixed up and, oh boy,
we had to wash it all off."
32Colin Simpson, Lusitania (London: Trinity
Press, 1972), has documented a revised version
of the events quite in contrast to McCay's.
33Theisen, p. 246.
34Ibid.
35 New York Times, 27 July 1934. A list of
known McCay films is included in Canemaker,
Film Comment.
3 6 Richard Huemer (with Joe Adamson),
"From This You are Making a Living?"
American Film Institute Report 5 (Summer
1974): 12.
37Theisen, p. 244.
38Telephone interview with Robert Clampett,
Los Angeles, California (23 July 1975).
39Huemer, p. 17.
32
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40Mike Barrier, p. 19.
41 Falk, p. 18;Canemaker, Film Comment.
42Ralph Stevenson, p. 27.
43Falk,pp. 13-14.
44Falk, p. 14. Canemaker, Filmmakers News
letter, p. 29.
4 5 Much of the memorabilia and papers of
McCay have probably been lost. An anonymous
source indicated that Mr. McCay's son, Robert,
sold off various items from time-to-time after
Winsor McCay's death.
46Canemaker, Film Comment and Millimeter.
47Kemp Niver, Biograph Bulletins: 1896-1908
(Los Angeles: Artisan Press, 1971), p. 1.
48John Canaday, "Little Nemo At The Met,"
New York Times, 13 February 1966, p. 21.
Upon his death, McCay's employer published
the following: "Winsor McCay. . .was recog
nized by his fellow craftsmen as the one among
them without a peer. His distinction was built
on unsurpassed technique, seemingly unlimited
imagination, unsparing insistence on detail and
inventive genius. His ability spread beyond
ordinary bonds. He created comic strips of rare
humor, drew editorial cartoons of smashing
force, performed in more than credible success
in the apparently strange role of vaudeville
headliner, and he invented the animated car
toon." "Winsor McCay Praised. . ." New York
American, 27 July 1934. In the same issue,
Arthur Brisbane wrote: "Millions will learn,
with sorrow, of the sudden death of Winsor
McCay, one of the greatest of American car
toonists. . . . Mr. McCay's pictures combine
power with simplicity. He was an earnest,
sincere man, honored by his work while he
lived, deeply regretted now."