THE ANIMATED CARTOON

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 July 1940, Page 9

THE ANIMATED CARTOON

“GULLIVER'S TRAVELS." About 32 years ago a group of men gathered in a projection room to see a miracle. 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 Giggling Dinosaur,” the first animated cartoon ever seen on a motion picture screen. Nevertheless, (he lines actually moved' on the screen and everyone thought it was a miracle. The heads of the motion picture industry even arranged a dinne in Winsor McCay’s honour. At the end of the dinner the general opinion of McCay was that he was an impractical dreamer given to wild-eyed delusions. It was McCay’s speech that caused him to be regarded as'an impractical young chap with fantastic ideas. He said that some day the animated cartoon would take its place side by side with films made with human beings as feature attractions on a theatre’s programme. The listeners chuckled, and then went to the nearest moving picture house to see D. W. Griffith starred in “Rescued from an Eagle's Nest.” If any of those 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 “supercolossals” 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 pro-! ducers.

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. Even in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” there were never more than a score of characters in one scene. However, 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. In “Gulliver’s Travels,” cartoons will venture into the spectacle class. Mutt and Jeff had found their way out of the morning paper, and for a time blin-

ked at us in motion picture theatres, while their patter bubbled forth silently in rounded, rope-like balloons. Felix, the Cat, with folded arms and waving tail, paced softly before our fjyes. Terry Toons and Aesop's Fables came to movie life, as did Oswald the Rabbit and Krazy Kat, who was to worry his way into screen immortality. Max Fleischer’s Clown bobbed up regularly in the "Out of the Inkwell” cartoons to delight countless thousands just about the same time as Tony Sarg’s Silhouettes were moving with smoothness and sureness across the lighted screen. 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. 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. Sound was achieved with the advent 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 Fleischei 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 ever-widening circle 0.friends that was soon to girdle the globe. Well drawn and realistically coloured, sound cartoons now are ar established medium of entertainment. "Gulliver's Travels" will be shown ir Masterton shortly.