Colonel Heeza Liar
Colonel Heeza Liar ( German : Colonel Heeza Liar ) is an animated film character designed by the American producer , director and screenwriter John Randolph Bray in 1913. The 59 animated films produced at JR Bray Studios with Colonel Heeza Liar as the title character were released from 1913 to 1917 and from 1922 to 1924 . They were the first animated series with a permanent main character.
Colonel Heeza Liar is a short and plump army officer who constantly gets into adventurous situations, which he escapes with great difficulty. The figure was probably designed as a caricature of former US President Theodore Roosevelt and as an allusion to his life as a big game hunter and as a colonel and commander of the Rough Riders , a regiment of the US cavalry . It is characterized by the reproduction of a series of incidents in the style of the lying stories of a Baron Münchhausen , which quickly expose a narrator as a braggart, but enable attractive depictions in animated films. The name of the character also corresponds to that, Heeza Liar is pronounced like He's a Liar - he is a liar .
The plot of ten of the episodes published in the war year 1915 take place in the First World War and let Colonel Heeza Liar experience corresponding adventures as war correspondent for The Daily Bluff .
Production notes
The first films in the series, beginning with Colonel Heeza Liar In Africa , were produced in an early stage of the Cel Method. In order to avoid the laborious drawing of the backgrounds for each individual picture, the variable parts of the drawings were mainly painted on preprinted backgrounds, the drawing of which was removed from the relevant places. There were also backgrounds with unprinted areas where it was already foreseeable that changes would take place in those parts.
The method used by Bray proved impractical. In 1915, Earl Hurd started working for Bray, who in June 1915 received a patent for the production of animated films with the help of Cels . Hurd brought his new technology to Bray, so in 1915 they began making the Colonel Heeza Liar films this way too. Compared to animated films such as Gertie the Dinosaur by Winsor McCay , which were released a little earlier and which consisted of frames entirely hand-drawn frame by frame, the use of Cels meant faster work and a denser sequence of new films. With Colonel Heeza Liar, a total of eight films were released in 1913 and 1914, sixteen in 1915 and twelve in 1916. However, the quality was severely impaired. So many scenes are repeated in the course of a film, the figures do not move in the depth of the picture, but almost exclusively in one plane, their size accordingly remains the same, if several figures appear in one picture usually only one moves and often remains the image content remains completely unchanged for several seconds.
The series ended in 1917, but continued with other collaborators from 1922 to 1924. The producer was still John Randolph Bray, and Vernon Stallings , who worked with the younger draftsmen Walter Lantz and Clyde Geronimi , now wrote and directed . A characteristic of the second row are the frequent cuts with real film scenes, in which Walter Lantz can usually be seen.
Filmography
| title | publication | distribution | Written and directed by | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colonel Heeza Liar In Africa | December 6, 1913 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's African Hunt | January 14, 1914 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | Sometimes referred to as identical to its predecessor Colonel Heeza Liar In Africa . The title was intended to promote sales as an allusion to the documentary Paul J. Rainey's African Hunt . |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Shipwrecked | March 14, 1914 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar In Mexico | April 22, 1914 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, farmer | May 18, 1914 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Explorer | August 15, 1914 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar In The Wilderness | September 26, 1914 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, naturalist | October 24, 1914 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Ghost Breaker | February 6, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar In The Haunted Castle | February 20, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Runs The Blockade | March 20, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar And The Torpedo | April 3, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar And The Zeppelin | April 10, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar In the War Zone | April 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Signs The Pledge | May 8, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar In The Trenches | May 13, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar at The Front | May 16, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, aviator | May 22, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Invents A New King Of Shell | June 5, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Dog Fancier | July 10, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Foils The Enemy | July 31, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, War Dog | August 21, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar at The Bat | September 4, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Nature Faker | December 28, 1915 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Waterloo | January 6, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar And The Pirates | March 5, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Wins The Pennant | April 27, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Captures Villa | May 25, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar And The Bandits | June 22, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Courtship | July 20, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar On Strike | August 17, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Plays Hamlet | August 24, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Bachelor Quarters | September 14, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar Gets Married | October 11, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, hobo | November 15, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar at The Vaudeville Show | December 21, 1916 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar On The Jump | February 4, 1917 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Spy Dodger | March 19, 1917 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Temperance Lecture | August 20, 1917 | Pathé | John Randolph Bray | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Treasure Island | December 17, 1922 | WW Hodkinson Corporation | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar And The Ghost | January 14, 1923 | WW Hodkinson Corporation | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, detective | February 1, 1923 | WW Hodkinson Corporation | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Burglar | March 11, 1923 | WW Hodkinson Corporation | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar In The African Jungles | June 3, 1923 | WW Hodkinson Corporation | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar In Uncle Tom's Cabin | July 8, 1923 | WW Hodkinson Corporation | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Vacation | August 5, 1923 | WW Hodkinson Corporation | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Forbidden Fruit | November 1, 1923 | WW Hodkinson Corporation | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Strikebreaker | December 1, 1923 | WW Hodkinson Corporation | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Mysterious Case | February 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Ancestor | March 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Knighthood | April 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Sky Pilot | May 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Daredevil | June 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Horseplay | July 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Cave Man | August 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Bull Thrower | September 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar The Lyin 'Tamer | October 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar's Romance | November 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings | |
| Colonel Heeza Liar, Nature Faker | December 1, 1924 | Standard Cinema Corporation / Selznick Pictures | Vernon Stallings |
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons. American Animation in Its Golden Age . Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York et al. 1999, ISBN 0-19-503759-6 , pp. 12-15.
- ^ David Callahan: Cel Animation: Mass Production and Marginalization in the Animated Film Industry . In: Film History 1988, Vol. 2, No. 3, pp. 223-228, here pp. 225-226, JSTOR 3815119 .
- ↑ Michael Barrier: Hollywood Cartoons , p. 21.