The Animation Time Machine has just returned from its latest mission to the year 1923, gathering snippets of animation news from exactly 100 years ago!
The Machine’s first discovery was a copy of The Film Daily, dateline November 15, 1923, carrying big news from the world of animation — and on the front page, no less. “Red Seal Gets Inkwell Series,” shouts the headline. “Edwin Miles Fadman, president of Red Seal Pictures Corp., has secured world’s distribution rights to the Out-of-the-Inkwell Comedies. They will be sold via the state right market.”
The story marks a real milestone for Max and Dave Fleischer, creators of the classic series of animated shorts featuring Koko the Clown. Having cut their teeth at New York City’s Bray Studios, the two brothers broke away in 1921 to set up Out of the Inkwell, Inc., with Margaret Winkler acting as distributor. This 100-year-old article celebrates the historic moment in 1923 when, seeking yet more autonomy, the Fleischers joined forces with Edwin Miles Fadman to form their very own production and distribution company – Red Seal Pictures.
This antique announcement got us wondering — what did the Fleischers’ former distributor Margaret Winkler make of the move? We set the Animation Time Machine to work. It began by scouring the pages of the “Film Year Book 1922-23,” where it found a full-page advertisement from the Margaret Winkler era of Fleischer distribution. The ad showcases Out of the Inkwell alongside another highly popular animated series on Winkler’s books, namely Pat Sullivan’s Felix the Cat.
The Animation Time Machine then darted forward to an issue of The Film Daily from 19 December, 1923. Here it discovered a follow-up advertisement by Winkler with the headline “Warning,” aggressively asserting her legal right to continue to distribute Felix the Cat.
Is it a coincidence this feisty ad was placed barely one month after Ms. Winkler lost the distribution rights to Out of the Inkwell? Could it be Ms. Winkler was smarting having lost Koko as a client? Could it be she was just a teeny bit pissed off?
You’ll have to decide for yourself — the Animation Time Machine couldn’t possibly comment!
Lingering in November 1923, the Animation Time Machine unearthed a more light-hearted Fleischer-related newspaper report covering a lavish testimonial dinner tendered to legendary movie publicist Harry Reichenbach, famous for staging spectacular publicity stunts. Not only does the article list a number of crowd-pleasing novelties at the event — including “waiters garbed as policemen, ballet dancers, convicts and Bolsheviks” — but it also notes that “the Max Fleischer animated drawing The Life of Harry Reichenbach was a sensation.” Just a reminder that, as well as producing animated short films for theatrical release, the Fleischers also recognized the wheel-greasing benefits of hobnobbing with the great and the good of New York City movie-land.
The Fleischers weren’t the only animators operating in this era, of course. Returning to The Film Daily, the Animation Time Machine found a review of “Do Women Pay?” one of Paul Terry’s Aesop’s Fables series of animated shorts. The film was released in November 1923 and here’s what the reviewer-of-the-day has to say about it:
“This should be an exceedingly successful number of these amusing cartoon reels. Its story is a burlesque of several of the time-worn gags used in the dramas several years ago — the abduction of a girl by the villain who takes her to a deserted barn and locks the door and swallows the key — the little champagne supper for two — the struggle and finally the appearance of the hero just in the nick o’ time to save his bride. A laugh all the way through.”
Before returning to the present day, the Animation Time Machine had just enough, er, time, to scan the pages of a charming book published in the Fall of 1923: Pictorial Beauty on the Screen by Victor O. Freeburg. In Chapter VI – “Motions in a Picture” — the author has this to say about the art and craft of animation:
“Another peculiar type of pictorial motion, which has never before existed, and does not come into being until it is projected upon the screen, is the magic motion of the ‘animated cartoons.’ The artist who makes the drawings does not see the motions except in his own imagination. But the spectator in the theater is delighted to see the strangely bewitched men and beasts, birds and trees, rocks and streams, weapons and machines, all behaving in impossible ways that no maker of fairy tales ever dreamed of. Here is a new field of pictorial composition, with distant boundaries and fabulous wealth. Those who exploit it will be able to teach many a valuable lesson to the director who merely takes photographs of actors in motion.”
We think Mr. Freeburg hit the nail on the head with his talk of “strangely bewitched men and beasts, birds and trees, rocks and streams, weapons and machines … behaving in impossible ways.” After all, is this writer from 100 years ago not describing everything we continue to enjoy about animated films today? We think he is!
Graham Edwards is a veteran journalist who was senior staff writer at Cinefex, where he covered VFX-driven films and interviewed directors including James Cameron, Robert Zemeckis and Guillermo del Toro. He is also the editor of The Illusion Almanac. He also works closely with Maria Elena Gutierrez, helping her to promote the VIEW Conference. See more of his work at graham-edwards.com.
