Felix the Cat

File:Felix 1936.jpg

Felix the Cat in a 1936 Technicolor video capture from one of the three Van Beuren Studios outings.

Felix the Cat is a cartoon character. Created in 1919, the black body, white eyes and giant grin of the animated cat, coupled with the surrealism of the situations in which his cartoons placed him, combined to make him one of the most recognizable cartoon characters in the world. Felix was the first cartoon character to attain a level of popularity sufficient to draw movie audiences based solely on his star power.

The "wonderful, wonderful cat" was also the "very first television star" — the first image ever broadcast by any television transmitter.

Felix in cinema

According to an Australian ABC-TV documentary screened in 2004, Felix the Cat had his origins in a character named Thomas Kat, who appeared in a half-reel picture called "The Tail of Thomas Kat" in 1917.[1] The movie was produced in New York City, by the animation studio of an Australian émigré named Pat Sullivan.

Master Tom, a character resembling Felix, appeared in the Paramount Pictures short Feline Follies in 1919. Feline Follies was a success, and Paramount ordered more shorts starring Tom. Paramount producer John King renamed the cat "Felix", after the Latin words felis (cat) and felix (luck) and animator Bill Nolan helped Otto 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 Charles Chaplin pictures, would soon rocket Felix to international fame.

Creation disputed

It remains a matter of dispute whether Felix was created by cartoon producer Pat Sullivan or his employee, a cartoonist and animator named Otto Messmer.

Sullivan claimed in numerous newspaper interviews that it was he who created Felix and did the key drawings for the character.

However, many years after Sullivan's death, Messmer and other Sullivan employees stated that Felix was based on an animated Charlie Chaplin that Messmer created while working at Sullivan's studio. Messmer subsequently took on freelance animation work for Paramount Pictures following World War I, and on November 9, 1919, the short Feline Follies debuted. The cartoon does star a black, grinning cat who moves and dances like Chaplin. This nascent creature was blockier and longer-snouted than today's Felix, but the familiar black body was already established because Messmer found solid shapes easier to animate.

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.

Meanwhile, the uncredited Messmer continued to produce Felix cartoons on a nearly mass-produced scale. He even began a comic strip in 1923 distributed by King Features Syndicate, which added significantly to his workload.

Felix also starred in an animé-esque film, which intoduced new characters and a totally new concept for Felix the Cat

Unprecedented fame

At the height of his fame in 1925, Felix's image could be seen on clocks, Christmas ornaments, and as the first giant balloon ever made for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Felix 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 for 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 each 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, and even Mickey Mouse were all designed to look much like Felix.

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, or an exclamation mark or pencil the next, serves to emphasize that anything can happen in his world.

Felix as a mascot

Given the character's unprecedented popularity and the 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 his historic flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

This popularity persisted. In the late 1920s, the U.S. Navy's Bombing Squadron Two (VB-2B) adopted a unit insignia consisting of Felix happily carrying a bomb with a burning fuse. They retained the insignia through the 1930s when they became a fighter squadron under the designations VF-6B and, later, VF-3. Early in World War II, a U.S. Navy fighter squadron currently designated VF-31 replaced its winged meat cleaver logo with the same insignia, after the original Felix squadron had been disbanded. The carrier-based night fighter squadron, nicknamed the "Tomcatters," remained active under various designations through the present day and Felix still appears on both the squadron's cloth jacket patches and aircraft, still carrying his bomb with its fuse that still hasn't burned down. The squadron, having adopted the insignia, heritage, and traditions of the original Felix squadron, now claims to be the second oldest fighter squadron in the Navy.

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 Van Beuren Studios 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 Beuren's distributor dropped him.

Felix on television

File:Felix bag.jpg

Kinescope still from an early episode of the television series showing the Magic Bag (note the difference in detail in comparison to the 1936 still).

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!

File:Felix tv slate.jpg

Video capture of television opening title slate.

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).

References

John Canemaker, Felix, The Twisted Tale of the World's Most Famous Cat, 1991, Pantheon, New York, ISBN 0-679-40127-X.
John Cawley, Jim Korkis, The Encyclopedia of Cartoon Superstars, 1990, Pioneer Books.
Jeff Lenburg, The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons (2nd ed.), 1999, Facts on File.
Charles Solomon, The History of Animation: Enchanted Drawings, 1994, Outlet Books Company.