Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat [ ˈfiː.lɪks ðə kæt ] (in Germany also Felix the Cat ) is an American cartoon character . The purely black figure with the white face and the huge grin, in combination with the surreal situations of the comics, became a figure known worldwide and highly recognizable . Felix's great success led to the creation of other cat comics such as Oskar the family man .
Felix was the first cartoon character whose popularity was big enough to draw audiences to cinemas simply because of its appeal. He was the most popular cartoon character of the silent film era. However, its popularity waned when the talkies came and the transition from silent to talkies failed, while Walt Disney was very successful with the first sound cartoon Steamboat Willie , which is why Mickey Mouse soon overtook Felix as the most popular cartoon character. In the 1950s, however, Felix made a successful comeback on television.
A character played by Felix became the first ever TV star in 1928, as a recording of her on a spinning record player became the first image televised.
"Feline Follies"
On November 9, 1919 , a cartoon character named Master Tom appeared in a short film by Paramount Pictures called "Feline Follies" (in German roughly "cat follies"), who clearly resembles Felix. The film was made in the animation studio of Pat Sullivan , a film producer who had immigrated from Australia , and was directed by cartoonist and animator Otto Messmer . The film was a success, and Paramount ordered more episodes with the character. The Paramount producer John King renamed it "Felix", a play on words from the Latin words felis (cat) and felix (happy, bringing luck, the lucky one). In 1924 , the animator Bill Nolan gave the still rough figure a post-treatment that made it rounder and more visually appealing. Felix's new figure, animated by Messmer's masterly animation, soon led to his rapid international fame.
The creative controversy
The question of whether Felix was invented by Pat Sullivan or Otto Messmer has not yet been answered. Sullivan stated in numerous newspaper interviews that Felix went back to him and that he designed the "key drawings" for the character. Sullivan's statement is supported by his cartoon short film called "The Tail of Thomas Kat", which premiered on March 18, 1917 , over two years before the "Feline Follies"; According to a television documentary on Australian broadcaster ABC-TV from 2004 , this "Thomas Kat" character is an even earlier "Felix" prototype.
Significant differences between Thomas and Felix also become clear from the representation of the figure of "Thomas Kat" that was preserved for the registration of the copyright: Where Felix miraculously succeeds in turning his tail into tools or other objects, this is not the case either anthropomorphic Thomas about a cat that loses its tail in a fight with a rooster and does not regain it either.
Sullivan was the studio owner and, as is customary in such cases in the United States, he acquired the copyright to all creative work of his subordinates. After his death, the rights to the character became part of the inheritance.
It was not until many years after Sullivan's death that some of his employees referred to Messmer as the creator of Felix. They claimed Felix was based on an animated Charlie Chaplin that Messmer had previously created for Sullivan's studio. The black, grinning cat of the "Feline Follies", which indeed dances like Chaplin, gives this theory a certain probability. The nascent figure is even more angular and has a considerably longer nose than the future Felix, but the famous pure black body is already there, whereas the coat color of the former Thomas Kat is not yet finally clear.
Regardless of who originally created Felix, it was Pat Sullivan who mercilessly marketed the character, while the unnamed Messmer drew a tremendous amount of Felix cartoons. In 1923 he even started a comic strip for King Features Syndicate .
The dispute over the intellectual authorship of Felix is well known in the animation and cartoon film scene. An episode of the animated series " The Simpsons " also dealt with the dispute.
"He's Some Cat!"
After the expiry of the distribution contract with Paramount in 1922 , Sullivan had his cartoons distributed by Margaret J. Winkler. Felix's popularity reached new heights under Winkler.
In 1923 the tomcat reached the peak of his film career. In the short film "Felix in Hollywood" he plays with the theme of his own popularity by such "co-stars" how he Douglas Fairbanks , Cecil B. DeMille , Charlie Chaplin , Ben Turpin and even the censor Will H. Hays made known . His image appeared on clocks, Christmas decorations and as the motif of the first giant balloon for the Macy's Department Store's Thanksgiving Day parade. Felix also became the subject of numerous popular hits. Even Paul Whiteman , the self-proclaimed "King of Jazz" and a famous band leader of the time, recorded a piece about the lively cat.
As mentioned earlier, Felix was also the first picture to be broadcast by a television station in the United States. The RCA chose a paper mache Felix doll for an experiment in New York's Van Cortlandt Park in 1928 . The image was chosen because of its strong contrasts and because it could withstand the strong lights that were needed. The figure was mounted on the rotating turntable of a phonograph and was broadcast for around two hours a day. After a one-off payment to Sullivan, the doll on the turntable remained the test image that the RCA used to fine-tune its image resolution for almost a decade.
Felix's great success also attracted numerous impersonators. The appearance and characters of other cat characters from the 1920s , such as Julius from Walt Disney's Alice Comedies , Waffles from Paul Terry's "Aesop's Film Fables" and Bill Nolan's adaptation of Krazy Kat from 1925 , all seem to be modeled on Felix.
The cartoons were also popular with the critics. They have been cited as wonderfully imaginative examples of surrealist filmmaking. Felix was said to represent a child's ability to be amazed ; creating the fantastic when it is absent and playing lightly with it when it is present. His famous walk - his hands clasped behind his back, his head bowed, lost in thought - became a trademark that was reinterpreted by critics around the world. Felix's tail, which could be a shovel in one moment and an exclamation mark or pencil in the next, made it clear that anything can happen in this world.
Felix the mascot
Given his unprecedented popularity and the fact that his name was derived from the Latin word for "bringing good luck", some individuals and organizations adapted Felix as a mascot. The first was a Los Angeles Chevrolet dealer and friend of Pat Sullivan's named Winslow B. Felix, who opened his showroom in 1921 . The three-sided neon sign of Felix Chevrolet with its huge, smiling images of Felix on the corner of Figueroa Street and Harbor Freeway is now one of the city's attractions. In 1922 Felix became the mascot of the New York Yankees , and Charles Lindbergh also took a Felix doll with him on his historic flight across the Atlantic .
Felix's popularity continued. At the end of the 1920s, the Second US Navy Bomb Squadron (VB-2B) adopted a picture of Felix running, happily carrying a bomb with a burning fuse, as a symbol of unity. They kept it during the 1930s, while initially operating as a combat squadron under the designation VF-6B and later VF-3. After the Kampfgeschwader had been disbanded, the VF-31 Tomcatters Kampfgeschwader took over the standard symbol at the beginning of World War II .
The aircraft carrier-based night combat squadron is active to the present day. The symbol of Felix with the burning bomb remains the symbol of unity to this day. The squadron now claims to be the second oldest combat squadron in the Navy.
From silent to sound film
After The Jazz Singer, the first sound film in feature film quality, was released in 1927 , Pat Sullivan of Educational Pictures , then the distributor of the Felix films, was pressured to make the leap to "talking" cartoons, but Sullivan refused. Further conflicts led to the break between Educational and Sullivan. It was only when Walt Disney's Steamboat Willie made cinema history as the first animated film with a synchronized soundtrack that Sullivan also recognized the possibilities of the sound film. He managed to secure a contract with Copley Pictures to produce sounding Felix cartoons, but the results were disastrous. More than ever, it seemed like Disney's Mouse would pull the audience away from Sullivan's mute star.
Not even the introduction of new characters like nephews Inky and Winky could win back the lost audience and Copley Pictures canceled the contract. Sullivan announced plans to open a new studio in California , but those plans never came to fruition. Things went from bad to worse with the death of Sullivan's wife, Marjorie, in March 1932 , on which Sullivan broke up. He fell into alcoholic depression, his health deteriorated rapidly, and he began to lose his memory. Otto Messmer could no longer cash his checks because Sullivan's signature had become illegible. He died in 1933 and his studio was in pieces.
Sullivan's brother licensed Felix to Van Beuren Studios in 1936 with the intention of producing color and sound films. The studio got rid of Felix's established personality and transformed him into any other funny animal popular at the time. Due to financial problems, the studio had to close that same year, so that only three new short films were made.
Felix's comeback
From 1953 Felix's early short films with music were broadcast on television. Otto Messmer retired from drawing the comic strip the following year and his assistant Joe Oriolo (creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost , in Germany Casper, the friendly spirit , also Casper, the little spirit and Casimir, the friendly spirit ) took over. Oriolo reached an agreement with Felix's new owner, Pat Sullivan's nephew, to start a new series of Felix cartoons for television. From 1958, Oriolo let Felix play the leading role in 260 television cartoons distributed by the Trans-Lux company.
Like the Van Beuren Studio before, Oriolo gave Felix a tamed and lively personality, more geared towards children, and introduced new elements such as Felix's magic bag, a satchel that could take on any shape and quality, just as Felix wanted . The show is also famous in the USA for its distinctive theme song composed by Winston Sharples.
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"Felix the Cat, The wonderful, wonderful cat! |
"Felix the cat, The wonderful, wonderful cat! |
In addition to Felix, the show also contained all previous supporting characters and introduced many new ones, including: the sinister, mustached professor; his highly intelligent nephew Poindexter (with an IQ of 222); Rock Bottom, the professor's bulldog-faced assistant; an evil, cylindrical robot, "King of the Moon", named "The Master Cylinder"; and a short , humble and kind Eskimo named Vavoom, whose only word was the earthquake-inducing exclamation of his own name. All of these characters were voiced by voice expert Jack Mercer.
Oriolo's stories always revolve around the unsuccessful attempts of Felix's opponents to steal his magic satchel, although in unusual twists the opponents also appear as Felix's friends. These cartoons (and those of Oriolo's son and successor, Don Oriolo), proved popular, but criticism pale them compared to Messmer's earlier work, especially since Oriolo's cartoons were only aimed at children. The technical means of animation and simplistic fables, which were limited by budgetary scarcity, did not reduce the popularity of the series either. Don Oriolo is currently marketing the character of Felix.
In 1996 Felix reappeared on television with newly produced episodes under the title The Twisted Adventures of Felix the Cat .
2004 TV movie appeared Felix the Cat Saves Christmas ( Felix the Cat Saves Christmas) .
Motion picture
In 1988 the film Felix - Der Kater ( Felix the Cat: The Movie ) was released. The US-Hungarian-German co-production ended up being a flop with audiences and critics, particularly in the USA, where it only came to cinemas in 1991.
Felix Comics in Germany
In 1927 the book Felix the Cat, Part 1: Strange Adventures (Neue Berliner Verlags-Ges.) Was published with German verses by Arthur Rebner . Alfred Polgar wrote the foreword . The series was not continued.
Around 1957/1958 some original comic strips by Felix appeared in the Leipziger Volkszeitung. The figure was then even taken over by the house draftsman at the time, Joachim Nusser , and continued as an independent "GDR Felix" independent of the original.
From 1958 to 1981, Bastei-Verlag published more than a thousand issues of the weekly color comic book Felix . It also included series such as Bessy , Wastl , Clever & Smart (as Flip & Flap ), Suske and Wiske (as Ulla and Peter ) and others.
literature
- John Canemaker , Felix, The Twisted Tale of the World's Most Famous Cat , 1991, Pantheon, New York.
- Donald Crafton; Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898-1928 , 1993 University of Chicago Press.
- David Gerstein, Nine Lives to Live , 1996, Fantagraphics Books.
- Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons , 1987, Penguin Books.
Web links
- To Otto Messmer and Felix
- To the "GDR Felix"
- The official "Felix the Cat" website (English)
- David Gerstein's "Felix the Cat" website (English)
- Toon Tracker's "Felix the Cat" website (English)
- "Felix the Cat and the goose that lays the golden eggs" can be downloaded directly from the Internet Archive .
- Theme song
