THE ANIMATED CARTOON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 19 April 1940, Page 9

THE ANIMATED CARTOON

"GULLIVER'S TRAVELS” HERE SOON. About 32 years ago a group of men gathered in a projection room to see a mircle. The lights in the room went off. With considerable sputtering and manipulation of primitive equipment, light was turned on in a motion picture projection machine and upon a screen at one end of the room appeared. drawings which seemed to move. That was the world premiere of Winsor McCay's "Gertie, the GigglingDinosaur.” the first animated cartoon ever seen on a motion picture screen. It really was a miracle. The giggling of Gertie may have looked like a cross between the convulsions of a dog with a tummy full of peach seeds and an elephant trying to do the rhumba on a crate of eggs without breaking one. Nevertheless, the lines actually moved on the screen and everyone thought

it was a miracle. The heads of the infantile motion picture industry even arranged a dinner in Winsor McCay's honour. At the end of the dinner the I general opinion of McCay was that he was an impractical dreamer given to wild-eyed delusions. Otherwise, it was a pretty good dinner. It was McCay's speech that caused him to be regarded as an impractical young chap with fantastic ideas. Can you imagine it? He said that some day the animated cartoon would take its place side by s ! de with films made with human beings as feature attractions on a theatre's programme. The listeners chuckled, and than went to the nearest moving picture house to see D. W. Griffith starred in “Rescued From an Eagle’s Nest.” If any of the gentlemen who laughed at McCay thirty years ago are alive today they undoubtedly are willing to admit the truth of the adage that "the prophet is not without honour, save in his own country.” Gertie’s giggling has developed into big business with two studios now turning out feature pictures with budgets that match the “super-colossals" of the realm of human actors. The two studios are those of Walt Disney and Max Fleischer, The greatest gross revenue in recent years was recorded by a cartoon. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.” Today, there are more than 3,000 people working on animated cartoons, although the cartoon field is dominated by few producers. There is a curious misconception as to who produced the first feature length cartoon. The general impression is that Disney’s "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” was the first. Actually, it was the third. Fleischer, previously, had made two very successful seven-reel cartoons. One was titled "Relativity" and the other "Darwin's Theory of Evolution.” In many ways, Paramount's "Gulliver's Travels” is the most ambitious feature cartoon yet made. In the past, cartoon features have limited themselves in the number of caricatures because of the problem of animation. In “Gulliver’s Travels” there are armies and village scenes, such as are technically known in the human side of the industry as "mob'’ scenes. The limitation upon the caricatures in the past was set because of the problem of animating so many figures, but now that the ice has been broken in "Gulliver's Travels,” cartoons will venture into the spectacle class. Before the featurelength cartoon came into being, much experimentation and heart-break went into the perfection of this new industry.

Silhouettes wore moving with smoothness and sureness across the lighted screen —proving to observers that animated cartoons were slowly reaching the stage where they could be viewed with something besides compassion. In. those early days the action drawings were inked upon the animation paper, while the so-called backgrounds were outlined on celluloid which rested over the animated figures. A method, just the reverse of that, takes place beneath the technicolour camera today. Many of the characters were, in private life, little more than paper dolls whose arms and legs were held intact by bits of thread and wire. Crude beginnings, indeed, for an art which was to flower, with Ihe coming of sound, into our most fascinating form of entertainment. The first screenings in New Zealand will probably be in Auckland and Wellington commencing May 3. For more than twenty years animated cartoons were silent —in spite of the '/soon-realised fact that this type of motion picture is complete only when (linked to sound. Being caricatures of 1 living things, the action was exaggerated; and the violent actions needed' sound to make them perfect. j Sound was achieved with the advent I of the first standard sound cartoon, Disney's beloved “Mickey Mouse.” The first coloured cartoon. “Pinto's Prisma Revue,” was created by Pinto Colvig. at present under contract to Fleischer Studios to “voice" several of the characters in “Gulliver's Travels.” Backgrounds were put on paper and painted by artists, instead of by second cameramen. Those backgrounds were in their proper place at last —behind the action sketches inked on overlying celluloid, but it was sound that gave the animated cartoons an over-widen-ing circle of friends that was soon to girdle the globe. Well drawn and realistically coloured, sound cartoons now are an established medium of enterI tainment. i “Gulliver's Travels" "'ill be released ' in New Zealand by Paramount who inE.’ UYUT.

1 dicate that the first prints are already on their way to this country. The first " screenings in New Zealand will probably be in Auckland and Wellington ■ commencing on May 3. i