Presenting Felix the Cat: The Otto Messmer Classics 1919 - 24
Felix the Cat was the first animated superstar, and these early shorts  reveal the source of the character's phenomenal popularity. Animator Otto  Messmer created Felix for "Feline Follies," a one-shot cartoon designed to  fill a gap in an installment of theParamount Screen Magazine. Messmer had  learned how to use mime and expressions by studying the films of Charlie  Chaplin, and even in his relatively crude debut film, Felix seems alive. The  characters in the "Bobby Bumps" cartoon, who appeared in the same issue of theScreen Magazine, look stiff and uninteresting by comparison. In "Felix Turns the Tide" (1922), the plucky feline volunteers to  serve in a war against rats: he puffs out his chest and marches and struts in a  sly parody of military demeanor. Felix encounters Gloria Swanson, Ben Turpin,  Tom Mix, and Cecil B. DeMille in  "Felix in Hollywood," and does an imitation  of Chaplin, who accuses him of "stealing my stuff." Most of these films  feature the early, blockier version of Felix: we can only hope for the release of a second disc of the even funnier later cartoons, when the character was given  a more rounded and appealing form.--Charles Solomon