Felix the Cat
Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created by cartoonist and animator Otto Messmer. His black body, white eyes and giant grin, coupled with the surrealism of the situations his cartoons placed him in, combined to make him one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in the world. In fact, Felix the Cat was the first cartoon character to attain a level of popularity sufficient to draw movie audiences based solely on his star power.
Felix in cinema
Felix the Cat had his origins in cartoons starring an animated Charlie Chaplin that Messmer created while working at the animation studio of Australian émigré Pat Sullivan. Messmer subsequently took on freelance animation work for Paramount Pictures following World War I, and on September 1, 1919, the short Feline Follies debuted. The cartoon starred a black, grinning cat named "Master Tom" who moved and danced like Chaplin. This nascent creature was blockier and longer-snouted than today's Felix, but the familiar black body was already established since Messmer found solid shapes easier to animate.
Feline Follies was a success, and Paramount ordered more shorts starring Master Tom. Paramount producer John King renamed the cat "Felix", after the Latin words felis (cat) and felix (good luck) and animator Bill Nolan helped Messmer redesign the fledgling character in 1922, making him both rounder and cuter. Felix's new looks coupled with Messmer's mastery of character animation, learned largely from his work on the Chaplin pictures, would soon skyrocket the character into the international consciousness.
Unprecedented fame
Felix reached the height of his worldwide fame in 1925. Pat Sullivan marketed the cat relentlessly, making up all sorts of tall tales about the character's origins and even taking credit for being the character's sole creator. Felix was everywhere. His image adorned clocks, Christmas ornaments, and the very first balloon in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. His was even the first image ever broadcast by television when RCA chose a papier-mâché Felix doll for a 1928 experiment via W2XBS New York in Van Cortlandt Park. The image was chosen due to its tonal contrast and its ability to withstand the intense lights needed. The doll was placed on a rotating phonograph turntable and photographed for approximately two hours per day. After a one-time payoff to Sullivan, the doll remained on the turntable for nearly a decade as RCA fine-tuned the picture's definition. Felix's great success also spawned a host of imitators. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, Bosko, even Mickey Mouse were all designed to look as much like Felix as possible.
The cartoons were a hit with the critics as well. They have been cited as wonderfully imaginative examples of surrealism in filmmaking. Felix has been said to represent a child's sense of wonder, creating the fantastic when it is not there, and taking it in stride when it is. His famous walk - hands behind his back, head down, deep in thought - became a trademark that was analyzed and re-analyzed by critics around the world. Felix's expressive tail, which could be a shovel one moment, an exclamation mark or pencil the next, only serves to emphasize that anything can happen in his world.
Meanwhile, the uncredited Messmer continued to produce Felix cartoons on a nearly mass-produced scale. He even began a comic strip in 1923, which added significantly to his workload.
Felix as mascot
Given the character's unprecedented popularity and fact that his name was derived from the Latin word for "luck", some rather notable individuals and organizations adopted Felix as a mascot. The first of these was a Los Angeles Chevrolet dealer and friend of Pat Sullivan named Winslow B. Felix who first opened his showroom in 1921. The three-sided neon sign of Felix Chevrolet with its giant, smiling images of the character is today one of LA's best-known landmarks, standing watch over both Figueroa Street and the Harbor Freeway. Others who adopted Felix included the 1922 New York Yankees and aviator Charles Lindbergh who took a Felix doll with him on historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean.
This popularity persisted. Early in World War II, the U.S. Navy aviation squadron VF-31 replaced its winged meat cleaver logo with an image of Felix happily carrying a bomb with a burning fuse. The carrier-based night-fighter squadron, nicknamed the "Tomcatters," remains active today and Felix still appears on both the squadron's cloth jacket patches and aircraft.
From silent film to sound
In 1928, Walt Disney's "Steamboat Willie" made cinematic history as the first talking cartoon with a synchronized soundtrack. In response, Felix's distributors urged Pat Sullivan to make the leap to "talkie" cartoons but Sullivan refused. Other characters, particularly Disney's, drew audiences away from Sullivan's silent star. Not even the addition of new characters by 1930, namely Felix's nephews Inky and Winky, girlfriend Kitty, and friendly foil Skiddoo the Mouse could regain the franchise's audience, and Sullivan's distributors eventually cancelled their contract. Sullivan made preparations to start a new studio in California that would produce sound cartoons but he died in 1933, leaving his studio in shambles.
Sullivan's brother licensed Felix to the Amedée Van Buren studio in 1936 with the intention of producing Felix shorts both in color and with sound. The studio did away with Felix's established personality and made him just another funny animal character of the type popular in the day. The new shorts were unsuccessful, and after only three outings Van Buren's distributor dropped him.
Felix on television
In 1953, Felix's earlier shorts entered syndication on television, now with musical soundtracks. Messmer retired from drawing the Felix comic strip in 1954 and his assistant Joe Oriolo (creator of Casper the Friendly Ghost) took over. Oriolo struck a deal with Felix's new owner, Pat Sullivan's nephew, to begin a new series of Felix cartoons on television. Oriolo went on to star Felix in 260 television cartoons distributed by Trans-Lux starting in 1958. Like the Van Buren studio before, Oriolo gave Felix a more domesticated and pedestrian personality geared more toward children and introduced now-familiar elements such as Felix's Magic Bag of Tricks, a satchel that could assume the shape and characteristics of anything Felix wanted. The program is also remembered for its distinctive theme song written by Winston Sharples:
- Felix the Cat,
The wonderful, wonderful cat!
Whenever he gets in a fix
He reaches into his bag of tricks!
- Felix the Cat,
The wonderful, wonderful cat!
You'll laugh so much your sides will ache
Your heart will go pit-a-pat
Watchin' Felix, the wonderful cat!
The show did away with Felix's previous supporting cast and introduced many new characters. These include the sinister, mustachioed Professor; his intelligent but bookish nephew Poindexter (with an IQ of 222); the Professor's bulldog-faced, bumbling sidekick Rock Bottom; an evil, cylindrical robot and "King of the Moon" named The Master Cylinder; and a small, unassuming and friendly Eskimo named Vavoom, whose only vocalization was a literally earth-shattering shout of his own name. These characters were performed by voice actor Jack Mercer.
Oriolo's plots revolved around the unsuccessful attempts of the antagonists to steal Felix's Magic Bag, though in an unusual twist, these antagonists were occasionally depicted as Felix's friends as well. The cartoons (and those of Oriolo's son, Don) proved popular but critics have dismissed them as paling in comparison to the earlier works by Messmer, especially since Oriolo aimed the cartoons at children. Limited animation (required due to budgetary restraints) and simplistic storylines did nothing to diminish the series' popularity. Don Oriolo continues to market Felix today in projects such as Felix the Cat: The Movie (1991), and the television series Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat (1995-1997) and Baby Felix (2000). A new theme song was also created, "Felix Keeps on Walking."
References
- Cawley, John & Korkis, Jim (1990). The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars. Pioneer Books.
- Lenburg, Jeff (1999). The Encyclopedia or Animated Cartoons (2nd ed.). Facts on File.
- Solomon, Charles (1994). The History of Animation: Enchanted Drawings. Outlet Books Company.