Who Created Felix the Cat?

In the 1920 in the US, a little cartoon animal saw its rise to fame. The character had a black tail, black ears, and a big smile. I’m not sure you know who I’m thinking of now, but it was not Mickey Mouse (even though later on, Mickey would share similar characteristics)... no, it was Felix the Cat.

Felix was the original brainchild and artistic creation of Otto Messmer, who in his 1919 cartoon Feline Follies created a cat that would later become Felix. At that time the cat would be called Master Tom, and in the movie Tom’s trying to overcome obstacles in his way to find the cat lady of choice.

For the third film of this series, the cat’s name was changed to Felix, but he might not be the shape you’d recognize if you know the later Felix. He just wouldn’t be as smooth and round, but had a more edgy side to him. It was in the mid-twenties when Felix’ design would become a little more round, streamlined and refined.

Three stages of Felix, taken from: Felix – The Twisted Tale of the World’s Most Famous Cat (by John Canemaker).

That “Felix redesign” wasn’t actually an artistic choice at first; one of Messmer’s co-artists only had in mind speeding up the production process (and he was successful in doing so). During the mid-20s, in movies like “Felix the Cat Shatters the Sheik,” Felix had a look resembling what you might know today. You can take a look at some of the black-and-white Felix the Cat movies at the Like Television site (note this is paid content).

One thing interesting in the story of Felix so far is that even when Felix the cat had risen to stardom (in the 1920s, a variety of merchandise like dolls, toys, greeting cards, and coffee mugs used to show his iconic figure, and Felix was a star of his own comic book), the creator of Felix had did not share this fame. There was only one man connected with the creation of the beloved cartoon animal; Pat Sullivan.

Now, Pat was indeed the producer of the movies. And more than that, he spent a great part of his life marketing those movies. Quite possibly indeed, without Pat, there would have been no Felix (and if there would have been, you likely wouldn’t be aware of him). But one thing Pat was not: the creator and artistic soul of Felix the Cat. That honor belonged to Otto Messmer. The following is from an interview where you can see Pat Sullivan posing as the real deal (from Felix – The Twisted Tale of the World’s Most Famous Cat) – to then humbly give his wife some credit for the original idea of Felix:

“I have earned all the cash for the Felix idea,” said Sullivan, “but my wife has the credit. She came into my room one day carrying a stray cat – just an ordinary, back-garden, music-making, narrow-tailed, unpedigreed sort of cat. ’Everybody cartoons men. Why not create an animal cartoon?’
“That was how Felix began.”

Surely, Otto Messmer was quite happy to work in quiet, being a humble and somewhat publicity-shy artist. And Pat Sullivan, an alcoholic (and convicted of rape in the second degree, though the actual circumstances of the incident remain somewhat unclear), was happy to live with the lie that gave him so much credit. And as with so many inventons in life, the creation and evolution of Felix was influenced by many people. But historians were to set the record straight on who actually was the artist behind Felix. Most notably, John Canemaker (Professor and director of the animation program at New York University Tisch School of the Arts) would revise the history books with his Felix biography Felix – The Twisted Tale of the World’s Most Famous Cat.

So, does that mean everyone today agrees on who created Felix? No, far from it. In the guide to an exhibition titled “Reclaiming Felix the Cat,” the State Library of New South Wales in 2005 writes:

’I made the cat and the cat made me,’ prophetic words from Pat Sullivan (1887-1933), the Australian creator of Felix the Cat, on a rare visit to Sydney in December 1925. Little could Sullivan know that some 40 years after his death in New York on 15 February 1933, two Americans – cartoonist and colleague Otto Messmer and author John Canemaker – would dispute that Felix the Cat was Sullivan’s creation.

Unknown to his opponents, in March 1917 Pat Sullivan had submitted a cartoon film, The Tail of Thomas Kat (the precursor of Felix), to the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress. His next film, Feline Follies (November 1919), reintroduced Thomas Kat as Master Tom. This cat became the prototype for Felix. Musical Mews followed quickly in the same month, with the cat renamed ’Felix.’

I talked to John Canemaker about this statement, and this is what he says:

Felix the Cat is important in the history of animation because he was the first cartoon character in a series of films to develop and display a definite personality, one with distinctive mannerisms. His was a personality (and a design) that evolved over time; during the 1920s, specifically.
It is not a question of who copyrighted the image of a cat in 1917, but who actually created/directed the films day after day from1919-1933, supervised the animators, invented the stories and the action within them and whose personal stamp is on the personality and animated actions of the cat..

I do not dispute the ownership of the character, which was copyrighted by producer Pat Sullivan.
Sullivan deserves full credit as an entrepreneur who promoted the character, merchandised it, and established a profitable business based on Felix throughout the world.
Messmer was always an employee of Sullivan’s and owned no legal rights to the character.

But I am looking at ownership and the word “creator” from the perspective of the one who directed the creative process behind Felix, who made him think and move and walk the unique way that he did on screen. It was that personality which made him a success and, according to eyewitnesses at the studio and supported by empirical evidence, it was Otto Messmer who was the creative force behind Felix both in the animated films and comics.
My book “Felix – The Twisted Tale of the World’s Most Famous Cat" contains many quotes and citations in support of this conclusion. Here are a few:

Eyewitnesses:

Felix animator Al Eugster was interviewed on camera in 1976 for the documentary “Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat” (Milestone Film & Video). He was hired at age sixteen by Messmer in 1925 as an animator’s assistant on the Felix films and spoke of the day-to-day production methods in the making of the films:
„Otto was all-around. Besides animating, as the animators finished their scenes or sequences, he would give them more work. He would, in a sense, be directing the picture . . . The script just came out of Otto’s head and it never seemed to get on paper somehow. There never seemed to be any conference. Otto would get an idea or a subject. He probably made notes, but there was no, what we call a formal script. He would have a pretty good idea of what he wanted and he would convey it to the animator . . . The animator would just discuss it with [Otto] on an individual basis and would pick up this scene or sequence and go ahead and animate it.”
Eugster thought of Messmer as “Mr. Felix the Cat, himself. Synonymous with Felix.” Besides all his creative duties, “every Friday Otto would go to the bank and pick up the payroll and we would get paid." Eugster also recalled that during his four years at the studio he didn’t see much of Pat Sullivan, who would come in occasionally and go into his private office, but was not involved in the production of the films.

Hal Walker, hired by Messmer in 1920, was a Sullivan studio staff animator for nearly a decade; among many quotes, he said “Otto was the brains of Felix the Cat and I was his assistant." To Walker, Messmer was a soft-spoken “leader, not a boss. He was my hero. And always so defensive of Pat [Sullivan], the alcoholic." Walker was interviewed in 1978 by Edwin Walker, in 1981 by Ralph Bowman, and by me in 1989.

Joe Oriolo, who assisted Messmer on the Felix comic books starting in the mid-1940s and eventually collaborated with Pat Sullivan’s nephew to produced a Felix TV series in 1959, told the following to reporters at a Felix retrospective at the American Film Institute in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. in 1975: “I made it a point to bring out the fact that Messmer was the one who really created Felix the Cat and not Pat Sullivan.”

Dana Parker worked as an animator at the Felix studio from 1925-29. In a letter to me dated July 24, 1991, his daughter Jean Parker Katz wrote: “I was quite young when my father worked for Pat Sullivan Studios, but there are two things I remember his saying more than once. First, that Otto Messmer, not Pat Sullivan, had originated Felix; and, second, that he [Parker] had differed with Pat Sullivan about making sound cartoons with Felix. It was my impression that this caused him to leave the studio.”

Pat Sullivan’s alcoholism:
Sullivan died in 1933 at age 48; his death certificate lists the primary cause of death as “chronic alcoholism” accompanied by “terminal lobular pneumonia.”
Sullivan, observed by animator Hal Walker over a period of ten years, said the producer was “usually ossified . . . a mixed character in his moods.” One of Walker’s unofficial duties was “trying to escort Pat [Sullivan] from the saloon down in the lobby. He needed help, so I’d bring Pat upstairs and put him on a couch . . . This happened often." Sullivan’s well-known problem with alcohol would have prevented him from the kind of sustained effort needed to create a series of animated films – two films per month starting with the Educational contract in 1925.

Pat Sullivan’s absenteeism:
In 1917, Sullivan and Messmer were working together on short cartoons. Messmer was drafted into the army (and served in the trenches in Europe), and Sullivan was arrested for statutory rape of a 14-year old girl. He served nine months in jail and upon release, for a year, he struggled to promote and animate shorts. He was not successful until Otto Messmer returned from the war in 1919. Then the animation chores were once again in good hands and Sullivan could concentrate on drumming up business. This was the year Messmer drew “Feline Follies,” the first “Felix” cartoon as a last-minute filler in a Paramount Screen magazine series. My book also documents periods in the 1920s when Sullivan was absent from the studio for months, i.e., in 1925, while he and his wife toured Europe and Australia, a reporter paid a visit to the New York-based Sullivan studio and interviewed Messmer, the “production manager.” The production of animated cartoons is too complicated a process to be dictated long distance; it requires constant supervision and direct artistic input, which Messmer provided on a daily basis. During Sullivan’s extended absences from the studio, the Felix films continued to roll out with a consistent quality and content thanks to Otto Messmer’s guiding hand.

Comic Strips:
Otto Messmer drew the Felix the Cat Sunday comic strip for two decades from 1923 – 1943, which includes ten years after Sullivan’s death. Starting May 9, 1927, King Features newspaper syndicate started running a daily Felix comic strip which was drawn by one Jack Bogel, who was an animator’s assistant at the Felix studio.
The monthly Felix the Cat comic books were drawn by Otto Messmer from 1943 for eleven years. Messmer drew Felix the Cat strips in newspapers and comic books for over three decades.

Disney:
Walt Disney tried to hire Otto Messmer (but not Pat Sullivan) to work in his new Hollywood studio in 1928. He knew who the creative force behind Felix was. Years later, on a 1955 Disneyland television show on the history of animation (“The Story of the Animated Drawing”) Disney paid charming tribute to the unsung Messmer by commissioning animation of Felix walking and describing Messmer as Sullivan’s “collaborator.”

Style:
Messmer’s artistic signature, his characteristic drawing/design style is seen throughout his career in magazine gag cartoons, comic strips and comic books, animated films, including the giant Douglas Leigh electric animated signs in Times Square and around the world which he created from 1937 through 1973. Here was work incredibly similar to what Messmer did at the Sullivan studio: thinking up visual gags for black-silhouetted characters and animating them in his distinctive style.

To sum up, all of the above and more details and citations are to be found in my book “Felix – The Twisted tale of the World’s Most famous Cat,” should anyone take the time to fully read it. The Felix films are consistently great because Otto Messmer held a tight rein on the creation of each one. Though produced via a studio system involving many hands, the films and their star were essentially extensions of Otto Messmer’s personality and a manifestation of his unique creative mind.

As a Felix fan from Brisbane recently wrote me: “Sullivan’s legitimate claim as a producer is surely enough glory. Credit where credit is due.”

Philipp Lenssen on Tuesday, Jan 17 2006 reg. Cats.