ANIMATION SPOT
By Howard
Beckerman
In a world where everyday our attention is directed to some
new idea or gimmick we tend to forget about older things that once served us
very well. Some of the most popular items disappear for our consciousness once
they drop out of public view. It is only when someone revives some once
pleasurable but now forgotten item that we realize how fickle our minds are.
Well, perhaps you noticed as I did recently the plush black and white dolls
that are appearing suddenly at local novelty counters. Felix the Cat is making
a comeback.
In the search for properties that generate popular interest
and lead to profitable merchandising and exploitation, almost every known
character out of the media, has been considered a possible candidate. Somehow,
Felix has been overlooked in recent years while other characters have gone onto
mass marketing bonanzas. The characters from the Peanuts comic strips are a
prime example. I can remember when Charlie Brown and his friends were
considered avant garde. This was back in the fifties when the life of the strip
was still considered a tenuous thing. Somehow, the antics of Linus and Lucy and
the dog Snoopy took hold and the characters today are the most ubiquitous
example of cartoon images that are taken for granted as having always been
there.
Interest in the acquisition of such potent grabbers of the
public interest was heightened in recent months with the debut of American
Greeting's Strawberry Shortcake characters that had already signed up millions
in advance sales even before this cherubic creation appeared on television. Not
every character can make it into the public consciousness, at least not in the
way that would make the accountants jump for joy.
Whatever it is about a series of squiggles or a funny voice
that amuses people to reach out for the likeness of a character on a greeting
card, a comic book or T-shirt is not easily discernible. Mickey Mouse certainly
had it and even today, 25 years after he made his last film, he is more than
ever a cult character appearing on all manner of consumer items. Betty Boop had
some of the necessary qualities as did Popeye who salvaged many a struggling
company from the grips of bankruptcy. Superman and Annie have succeeded in
ringing cash register to a crescendo beyond the dreams of their cartoonist
creators. Yet before all of these proven popular images of our time made their
entrances on the scene, there was Felix.
Felix the Cat was created in 1919 at the Pat Sullivan Studio
in New York. His creator was a young man who had stumbled into the animation
field almost by accident. When Otto Messmer's family moved to Fort Lee, New
Jersey sometime before World War I, when that city was a flourishing film
community prior to Hollywood's ascendancy, he began to work as a part-time film
scene painter at Universal. In August of this year, Messmer will be 90 years
old and he still resides in Fort Lee. Messmer met Pat Sullivan, a cartoonist
from Australia who had his own studio producing short animated films. Sullivan
was impressed with young Messmer’s talents and together they produced a series
of Charlie Chaplin cartoons with the great silent comedian’s approval. After
serving with the signal corps in France during the war, Messmer returned to
work with Sullivan. At this point Earl Hurd, another important pioneer from
those early years, was turning out films for the Paramount Screen Magazine, and
was looking for a filler to complete his schedule. Sullivan wasn't interested
but Messmer, always the amiable fellow, agreed to create a film. He put
together a series of gags about cats, namely one key cat, and called it Feline
Follies. This was the film that attracted the attention of John King at
Paramount who offered Sullivan a contract to produce more of them. Sullivan
wasted no time signing and Messmer went along with the deal as the animator and
manager of the series. It was King who choose the name of Felix from the
combination of words, Felicity, meaning good luck and feline for cat. In the
next ten years Felix became an international success, and the template for a
host of imitators. When Sullivan, who had become a millionaire from Messmer’s
creation, died in 1933, the studio passed out of existence because of legal
entanglements. Messmer went on to work for other animation companies as well as
continuing the Felix comic strip which as part of his celebrity status had been
issued by Kings Features at the height of the little black cats' popularity.
All of this happened before the birth of Mickey, Donald,
Pluto, Bugs and Daffy. Felix was revived for a short series of color theatrical
shorts at the Van Buren Studio a few years after the closing of the Sullivan
studio and were directed by Bert Gillette. After this short episode Felix
didn't get to smack his lips until the late fifties when cartoonist, Joe
Oriolo, who had inherited the chore of drawing the daily Felix strip from
Messmer was offered a chance to produce 250 films of adventures of Felix for
children's television programming. These films and all of the old films that
remain from the 20's (many of the classic Felix negatives had been destroyed in
a vault fire) were put under the ownership of Oriolo's Felix the Cat
Productions, while the licensing rights still belong to Kings Features.
It was Joe Oriolo, by the way, who with writer, Sy Reit
created Caspar the Friendly Ghost for Paramount. Much like Messmer he signed
away the rights. Today with the vast interest in cat characters that have taken
the fancy, Felix is once more in demand, and the demand seems to be big.
Already, leading department stores as Bloomingdales, have had to restock the fast selling Felix dolls, according to Joe Oriolo. "I must have signed a thousand autographs," says Oriolo, who was a guest of the store as a publicity gesture for the Felix dolls and other paraphernalia. For several years the humorous cat drawings of Kliban and the likeness of other cartoon cats such as Heathcliff, and Garfield have been giving Snoopy the dog a great deal of competition. Now it's Felix's opportunity once more to prove his undying popularity. "People love Felix," says the smiling Joe Oriolo, who has been holding the little cat in the wings for this new day, they keep coming over to tell me how much they always liked him and are glad to see him back." Plans for the future include putting Felix's visage on every conceivable item. Contracts have already been signed to make Felix once more the world wide celebrity he had been in the past. The little guy may even end up in a new series of cartoons, anything can happen. They say a cat has nine lives, they must have had Felix in mind, except that Felix will probably prove to have more lives than any other cat on the block.
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