The Animation Time Machine has just returned from its latest mission to the year 1924, gathering snippets of animation news from exactly 100 years ago!
During this month’s time-hopping excursion to May 1924, the Animation Time Machine did a quick survey of some of the cartoons playing in movie theaters during that month. They included Walt Disney’s Alice’s Wild West Show, Pat Sullivan’s Felix Pinches the Pole and Bray Studios’ Colonel Heeza Liar’s Knighthood.
Also doing the rounds were Fresh Fish, Railroading and Chicken Dressing, three cartoons by another famous name from the period, Earl Hurd. These films in particular caught the Animation Time Machine’s attention. Why? Because, in May 1924, they were distinctly long in the tooth, with Chicken Dressing dating from 1923 and the other two from 1922.
Back then, it wasn’t unusual for one-reelers to hang around for years. Cartoons were mostly used as program-fillers and the most popular titles enjoyed considerable longevity. So too did their stars. For example, Bobby Bumps, the cartoon boy featured in Chicken Dressing, had been around since 1915.
Here’s an extract from a review of Chicken Dressing, as published in The Film Daily:
“… another of the clever Earl Hurd comedies, which combine cartoon drawings and real objects in interesting and entertaining fashion. Earl Hurd Jr. is the cameraman and general boss of the studio which has on its payroll as star, a real chicken, Bobby Bumps, a cartoon drawing, Bobby’s dog, Fido, another cartoon, a real rabbit and a real kitten. This manner of handling material of this kind is exclusive with this brand of comedies. The novelty of it will surely appeal and the humor is of a clean, wholesome variety, appealing to all ages.”
The long-running Bobby Bumps series relied on Earl Hurd’s eclectic — and often surreal — blend of live-action and animation. However, what Hurd is best known for is the patent application he filed on December 19, 1914, subsequently granted on June 15, 1915, as Patent No. 878,091. The patent marks a milestone in animation, because it represents nothing less than the invention of cel animation.
Hurd’s patent established him as a true pioneer of animation. Addressing the Society of Motion Picture Engineers in 1933, film historian Earl Theisen stated:
“Earl Hurd introduced the modern technique of making cartoons … Hurd was the first to use celluloid for his action drawings, which he laid over a background, as is done today. It will be remembered that Bray, in his first efforts, drew his backgrounds on a translucent medium, which he laid over his characters for photographing, and wherever the background interfered or covered the character, that part of the background was removed. Earl Hurd’s first cartoons were the Bobby Bump [sic] series. Bray and Hurd combined their patents and formed the Bray-Hurd Company early in 1917.”
The partnership referred to by Theisen was with John Randolph Bray, founder of Bray Studios. Bray’s own patents included one that minimized flicker by mass-producing identical printed background cards. These cards contained blank areas within which animators drew their characters frame by frame. Developments like this enabled Bray to establish a commercial monopoly on the process of producing animated films. Combining his patents with Hurd’s helped Bray to maintain his stranglehold on the industry … and at least partial control of Hurd.
Scouring the journals of 1917, the Animation Time Machine unearthed a Moving Picture World article titled “Development of Animation Cartoons,” written by Bray himself. Never one to shun the limelight, Bray refers to himself rather grandiosely in the third person and takes every opportunity to blow his own trumpet. He has this to say on the subject of the patents:
“Mr. Bray was far from content with the quality of his early efforts and strove to improve his work both from the standpoint of smoothness of action and economy in time and effort. By everlastingly keeping at it he finally evolved processes which reduced the time of producing to a minimum, while at the same time he obtained an absolutely perfect result, eliminating entirely one of the greatest objections to animated cartoons — the jerkiness heretofore so apparent. These processes Mr. Bray patented and it is only by the use of them, together with certain later improvements devised by Earl Hurd, a young cartoonist long associated with Mr. Bray, that the quality of the animated cartoons produced by The Bray Studio, Inc., a corporation of which Mr. Bray is the head, is kept uniformly perfect.”
Bray’s article also provides some useful background on the early career of Earl Hurd, who started out in 1904 drawing newspaper cartoons for the Chicago Journal:
“Earl Hurd’s early attempts at animating his work, according to him, when projected on the screen, could only be looked at through smoked glasses. Characters that he thought would walk sedately into the picture did a St. Vitus dance, while other objects that had been drawn to move with speed and dispatch, such as brickbats, skillets and such like articles used in screen combats, moved sedately through the air. Perseverance, however, soon brought results and for the past two years ‘Bobby Bumps’ has kept his place as one of the best liked and best drawn cartoons in the entire profession.”
For all Bray’s self-aggrandizement, it was Hurd’s legacy that endured. In January 1941, shortly after the release of Fantasia, the Society of Motion Picture Engineers was addressed by Walt Disney, who by now had surpassed all his peers to become an unstoppable force in animation. Here’s what Disney had to say about Earl Hurd:
“The greatest single contribution of the pioneers came from Earl Hurd who invented the idea of tracing the moving parts of a cartoon on celluloids superimposed over opaque backgrounds. This great labor-saving device is still the foundation of our modern method.”
So much for Earl Hurd’s early years. Resuming its primary mission, the Animation Time Machine swooped back to May 1924, where it found Hurd gearing up to make a brand new cartoon series called Pen and Ink Vaudeville. By mid-summer, the series was almost ready to roll, as reported in Moving Picture World:
“Earl Hurd has completed arrangements whereby he will produce, for release through Educational Film Exchanges, Inc., a series of thirteen single-reel animated cartoon subjects to be known as the Pen and Ink Vaudeville series. The subjects will be released one every four weeks during Educational’s 1924-25 season. The first release will make its appearance on the program during the week of August 31. Each release will present a complete comedy vaudeville bill done in Hurd’s inimitable cartoon comedy style. The first subject of the series will be Boneyard Blues.”
The Pen and Ink Vaudeville series didn’t survive beyond its initial 13-week run. This may be partly down to its stark white-on-black style — achieved using animated paper cutouts on a dark background. Also, many of the visual gags look tired even for 1924.
The Animation Time Machine was preparing to wrap up its visit to May 1924 when it spotted a strange anomaly. On 22 June 1924, The Film Daily trailed Pen and Ink Vaudeville thus:
“A new series of 13 Earl Hurd Cartoon Comedies will be included in the 1924-25 Educational program, along the lines of Pen and Ink Vaudeville.”
Wait a second! Read that again: “… along the lines of …?” What’s that supposed to mean? Could it be that the Pen and Ink Vaudeville series was based on a film Hurd had released previously?
Circuits buzzing with curiosity, the Animation Time Machine made a fresh sweep of journals published earlier in the year. After an exhaustive search, it turned up a review in The Film Daily dated 17 February — six months before the release of the 13-film Pen and Ink Vaudeville series:
“Another novelty recently shown at the Rialto was a one-reeler called Pen and Ink Vaudeville, produced by Earl Hurd. This was a burlesque cartoon on a vaudeville show, which was made very effective and amusing by the orchestral accompaniment. For instance, with the cartoon of a trombone player, German band, vocal artist, etc., the necessary sounds were made by the different instruments in the orchestra, much to the amusement of the audience.”
Earlier still, on 20 January 1924, The Film Daily published this wry commentary about a show at the Rialto:
“Manny is a trap drummer. Formerly of the Rivoli orchestra. But switched to the Rialto last week. To help put over Earl Hurd’s Pen and Ink Vaudeville. And got away with it. Incidentally used a new contraption to make a sound like singing. Hurd is so tickled to death with the result that he will buy Manny a new drum. Maybe.”
Finally, the Animation Time Machine found this snippet from 15 January 1924, tucked away in Harriette Underhill’s roundup of the Rialto’s program for the New York Tribune:
“There is an amusing Earl Hurd cartoon called Pen and Ink Vaudeville.”
What does all this mean? What exactly did audiences see at the Rialto in January and February 1924? Was it a lost Earl Hurd cartoon with the same title as the series he didn’t release until the fall of that year? If so, where is that film today?
Or is the Animation Time Machine jumping at shadows? Was this simply the first cartoon of the upcoming Pen and Ink Vaudeville series, produced and exhibited early in order to test the waters? Certainly it sounds similar in format. If so, could it have been an early presentation of Boneyard Blues?
We may never know. Further searches yielded no more useful information. The Animation Time Machine returned to the present day with its temporal tail between its legs, having failed to identify this mystery film either in the records of the 1920s, or in modern histories of animation.
Luckily, the Animation Time Machine made up for its failure by bringing back a delightful quote from that 1941 address by Walt Disney, in which Disney describes himself, Earl Hurd and all the rest of those early animators as “the last of the pioneers and the first of the moderns.” Turning his attention to the future of animation, Disney concludes his address with this charming thought:
“What I see way off there is too nebulous to describe. But it looks big and glittering. That’s what I like about this business, the certainty that there is always something bigger and more exciting just around the bend; and the uncertainty of everything else.”
Big, glittering and filled with uncertainty. Now that’s animation!
Join us again next month when we dispatch the Animation Time Machine on another mission, back through the decades to June 1924!
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