(This post was originally published on the sadly now-defunct site The Cinementals.) After the phenomenal success of Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), cartoonist Winsor McCay realized that he had found his passion in animation, and he was eager to create even more films. But his animated output was limited at the demand of his employer, publishing…
Considering that lately I’ve been in a rebellious frame of mind, it’s fitting that my selection for the Horseathon stretches the rules of “horse” as well as “classic film.” Having grown up with horses, there is no other suitable excuse for what I am about to do, except perhaps that I’ve reviewed National Velvet (1944) at…
I’ve previously mentioned my all-abiding love for the 1990s cartoon series Animaniacs here on the blog. Produced by Steven Spielberg, the show was more than a mere cartoon–it was a cleverly-constructed show that appealed to both adults and children with a hilarious combination of slapstick-y violence, meta references, and witty send-ups of pop culture icons. This week,…
It’s become a somewhat tragic cliché in the past few decades–the young, hopeful Hollywood star, making a big splash on screens big and small before the pains of growing up on camera manifest themselves in drug addiction and wasted talent. The list seems endless, from Danny Bonaduce to the Coreys (both Feldman and Haim) to…
By 1930, Mickey Mouse had become a bona fide animated star. Since his creation two years earlier at the hands of Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, he had starred in almost two dozen black-and-white shorts, ranging from his ever-popular debut in Steamboat Willie to Mickey’s Follies (1929), which introduced “Minnie’s Yoo Hoo,” the song that would remain Mickey’s theme for…
After leaving Disney Brothers, Ub Iwerks’ own self-named animation venture, the Iwerks Studio, opened in 1930. Backed by Celebrity Pictures, with a distribution deal from major studio MGM, Iwerks was in an enviable position right out of the gate, making more money than he had ever made working with Walt Disney. He hired a group…
Strange to think that a dinosaur eventually gave birth to a talking mouse … but that is essentially what happened when two young animators named Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks met in 1919. Disney is, of course, a legendary name in the history of animation, having arguably done more for the field than any other…
Like many early figures in the slowly-emerging field of animated film, Winsor McCay initially developed his artistic talent as a comic strip artist and vaudevillian. Born in Canada and educated in the United States, McCay got his start in entertainment doing “chalk talks” on the vaudeville circuit. Much like J. Stuart Blackton, a groundbreaking figure in…
True Classics 