Otto Messmer

Otto Messmer (born August 16, 1892, Union City, New Jersey, U.S.—died October 28, 1983, Teaneck, New Jersey) was an American animator who created the character Felix the Cat, the world’s most popular cartoon star before Mickey Mouse. The attribution has been questioned by some, in part because of the claims of Australian cartoonist, promoter, and producer Pat Sullivan, for whom Messmer worked. The cartoons were unfailingly billed as “Pat Sullivan’s Felix the Cat.” According to the online Australian Dictionary of Biography, “Sullivan widely asserted that he and his wife had invented a black cat as a film character, featured in his short animated films The Tail of Thomas Kat (1917) and Feline Follies (1919).” Although the two undoubtedly collaborated to some degree, and it is unlikely that the cartoon would have been as popular without Sullivan’s promotion, Messmer’s biographer concluded that Messmer himself was the creative mind behind Felix, and that assertion is broadly accepted.

As a youth, Messmer was fascinated with drawing and the cinema. He learned the craft of animation from German American cartoonist Henry (Hy) Mayer, with whom he produced advertising films in 1914. His talents were noted by Sullivan, who hired Messmer in 1915 to work in his new animation studio in New York City. Together, Sullivan and Messmer produced more advertising films, but their partnership was interrupted for three years while Messmer served in the army and Sullivan was imprisoned for statutory rape. When they resumed their collaboration in 1919, Messmer created the character of Felix the Cat for a Paramount Pictures newsreel. The character was an international sensation, and the Sullivan studio continued to produce Felix cartoons until 1931—by which time Walt Disney had begun to corner the animation market with Steamboat Willie (1928) and other Mickey Mouse classics. Sullivan and Messmer’s Felix in Hollywood (1923), Felix Switches Witches (1927), and Comicalamities (1928) rank among the best in the Felix series.

Felix is regarded as the first cartoon star, and both his design and his unique character were highly influential. With regard to design, the ease of animating his simple black-and-white form was not lost on animators in other studios; most subsequent cartoon characters exhibit this simplicity. But his wholly original and complex personality was what audiences loved: he was joyous, shrewd, mischievous, and prone to his trademark behaviour of walking around in circles when perplexed. Felix’s popularity during the 1920s led to his being the first such character merchandised via popular products such as stuffed dolls, key chains, and comic books. The character was also featured in a long-running syndicated newspaper comic strip that Messmer created in 1923—the same year that the musical homage “Felix Kept on Walking” was the most popular song in Great Britain. The character may well have continued to be successful for many decades had not Sullivan resisted the advent of sound cinema and discontinued the series in 1931. Beset by alcohol and syphilis-related problems, Sullivan died in 1933; the disposition of his estate required court proceedings to determine who had the rights to the Felix character—he did not leave the rights to Messmer in his will, as he had promised. Always a modest man who shunned publicity, Messmer did not pursue the matter and, save for occasional minor contributions, retired from filmmaking.

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For more than 40 years, it was believed that Pat Sullivan was the creator, director, and head animator for Felix cartoons. His was the only name to appear on the films, comic strips, and merchandised products, and Sullivan himself helped perpetuate the myth in interviews and publicity releases. Not until the late 1960s did Messmer receive long-overdue credit for his creation, and he was hailed as a master and pioneer of early animation. After the end of the Felix series in 1931, Messmer continued to draw Felix comic books, supervised a brief resurgence of Felix for three films in 1936, designed animated billboards for New York’s Times Square, and directed animated commercials for television. Felix was revived for a series of cartoons in the 1950s and ’60s by Messmer protégé Joe Oriolo and again in the 1990s for a short-lived series on CBS television.