‘Cartoon Roots’ a History Lesson on Silent Animation

4/10/15, 2:46 PMCartoon Roots a history lesson on silent animation

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Cartoon Roots a history lesson onsilent animation" March 20, 2015 | ! G. Michael Dobbs

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Im always amazed when I encounter young lm fans and they have little idea that lmsexisted interesting, compelling lms prior to 1980.

When I taught lm classes at Western New England University in the 1990s, I was alwayssurprised when otherwise open-minded students were aghast and agog at the thought ofwatching old movies. Their reactions to silent movies were magnied.

Im happy to say that through skillful selection I managed to coax them into actually payingattention and perhaps enjoying many of the lms I forced upon them.

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Silent lms were where so much of the language of cinema was created camera and editingtechniques. It was also the period in which story archetypes were developed. What might beconsidered hackneyed in a newer lm was original during the 1920s.

A new compilation of silent cartoons shows just how much was developed for that mediumduring the period from 1907 to 1926. Cartoon Roots is an education in silent animation.Archivist Tommy Jose Stathes presents a carefully archived selection of his extensive collectionof silent animation.

By the way, Stathes is a young man in his 20s.

Sold as a Blu-ray and DVD combination, the discs include a great selection of extras includinggalleries of production materials such as scripts as well as vintage promotional items. It is agreat package.

Serious animation fans and some attentive Baby Boomers should recognize names such asMax Fleischer (the producer of Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons among others); Walter Lantz(best known for Woody Woodpecker); animator and writer Dick Heumer (a major gure atDisney); and Paul Terry (the head of Terrytoons, the home of Mighty Mouse and Heckle andJeckle).

The early work of these artists is presented along with some of the earliest Americananimation by J. Stuart Blackton, Raoul Barre, Earl Hurd and John Bray.

The result is a mini-course in the development of animation. The discs come with an insightfulbooklet and Stathes includes three early sound cartoons, none of which this animation fan hashad the opportunity of seeing before. I was impressed.

Three of these shorts feature a combination of live action with animation that shows just howearly that technique originated. As Im a Fleischer loyalist, Im partial to how the technique wasused in The Circus (1920) with Ko-Ko the Clown attempting to train a horse. Fleischersinvention of the rotoscope is on display here as the technique allowed an animator to use liveaction footage as the reference for a cartoon character. The device also assisted in theblending of live action and animation.

Silent animation can be very surprising in its content. In the 1923 short The Jolly Rounder byTerry, a married hippo is in trouble with his wife. His buddy decides the way to cure that is forhim to dress in drag and appear with his married friend to make the wife jealous and forgetwhy she is angry with her husband really.

Silent animation reected as did live action cinema of the time the use of politicallyincorrect ethnic humor. Although the collection is not dominated by such material, it is thereand should be considered within the context of the cartoons and the time in which they wereproduced.

The wonderful design of Felix the Cat, superbly directed by animator Otto Messmer, is seen inthe 1922 short Felix Comes Back. Messmer, one of the animations great talents workedanonymously while his producer Pat Sullivan, who owned the character, took all the publiccredit. Felix has been cited by some animation historians as an example of the humor comingout of the established personality of the character rather than just a series of gags.

Cartoon Roots is available from Amazon.

***

Stathes told Reminder Publications that his interest in animation rst came through hisexposure at a young age to classic cartoons of the 1930s and 40s on home video. It wasthrough his interest in history, though, and reading several books about animation that helearned about silent era cartoons. When he was able to see some silent animation he said theyfascinated him. They intrigued his intellectual curiosity and he was drawn to their visuals.

His collection of prints started in a roundabout way. He had been given some 8mm homemovie prints of cartoons, but being a child of the VHS era, he really didnt know what theywere. His godfather had a projector and showed him the lms.

I was instantly hooked, he said. He recognized immediately a dierence between looking at aprojected lm and one on videotape.

He began to seek out prints of lms and before the advent of the Internet went to antiqueshops and ea markets looking for lms. Now, Stathes works with other collectors and hasassembled an impressive catalog of movies in a variety of gauges: 8mm, 9.5mm, 28 mm,16mm and 35mm.

Stathes also started an in-depth research project on the John R. Bray Studio, the rstsuccessful animation studio. Bray was the producer who began breaking down the animationprocess into an assembly line, which made producing cartoons aordable.

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Bray and animator Earl Hurd also developed the clear cel on which characters were drawn, ameans that also saved time and money.

Bray always fascinated me, he said.

Stathes said he doesnt have a favorite producer or studio, I love a lot of it, he said.

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‘Cartoon Roots’ a History Lesson on Silent Animation