The Birth of the Animated Feature Film

Film animation owes its origins to the comic strip first appearing in 1892, called “The Little Bears and Tigers.” The strip was written by James Swinnerton for The San Francisco Examiner. In 1893 “Down Hogan's Alley” by Richard Outcault was published in the New York World. “Down Hogan's Alley” introduced a character clad in a yellow nightshirt known as “The Yellow Kid.” The comic strip very quickly became a well-established feature.
 
Other early comic strip examples that also gained a large appreciative audience very quickly were “The Katzenjammer Kids,” Krazy Kat” and “Bringing Up Father.” Some of these comic strips introduced live human actors (such as “Buster Brown”) who later starred in live action films. Others, notably “Krazy Kat” and “Bringing Up Father” were very conducive to adapting to animated films.
 
William Randolph Hearst started the use of animated versions of the Sunday Funnies to increase circulation of his newspapers. These early versions were basically pen and ink drawings without any background as no one had figured out how to do backgrounds s yet.
 
Story lines were so simple as to be nonexistent. The early animations were just a few sight gags, strung together to produce a two or three minute movie. If dialogue was called for, the animator drew a bubble and inserted words into it the same as for the drawn strips. The film paused long enough for the audience to read the words and then started again.
 
The novelty of these new animated movies, no matter how crude and how short, soon captured the audience due to their novelty. The attraction wore thin, however, when the audience found them too short and too simplistic to captivate them for very long.
 
The early animators, like Barre, John Bray, Earl Hurd, Leon Searle and Walter Lantz, tried to lessen the negative aspects of the animated film and make them more realistic by raising the bar on the quality of the drawings and adding more drawings to make up a real story.
 
In 1915, Earl Hurd invented the cel. Mr. Hurd was an employee of the John Bray Studio and his cel became the first major breakthrough in the field of animation. A cel is created by tracing the drawings of the comic strip onto clear sheets of celluloid and laying them over suitable backgrounds on the animation board then photographing them.
 
The John Bray Studio produced nothing but animated films. During World War I, the Studio was asked by the U.S. Army to produce training and educational cartoons for their soldiers. These were a huge hit and The Bray Studio was flooded with similar orders from other Government Departments and from large corporations as well.
 
The Bray Studio, unfortunately, while creative was badly managed and soon operating costs grew higher than revenue. Sam Goldwyn bought the controlling interest in Bray Studios in 1920. As in many corporate takeovers, Sam Goldwyn brought about a significant reorganization of Bray Studio causing talent to walk out the door, including Earl Hurd.
 
Bray himself now paid scant attention to animated films and during the 1920's focused instead on dethroning Hal Roach as the king of two-reel comedy. This venture failed and John Bray disappeared from the scene.
 
The end of Bray Studio is a fine example of what happens when creative types and bean counters collide. Creative types are interested in continually perfecting their craft and bean counters are interested in continually increasing the bottom line. Fortunately for those fans of animation, the downfall of Bray Studio did not signal the end of animated features. As a matter of fact their popularity has grown by leaps and bounds over the ensuing decades as the films grew more artistic, real and sophisticated. They are now entertaining more movie goers than ever before and show no sign of decline.