What has been credited as the first Felix the Cat cartoon, it’s Feline Follies!
This in itself is not a remarkable story as much as it is a remarkable accomplishment. Watching it over one hundred years from when it was created, it is difficult for the modern sensibility to understand that it was the common man offering of the time. There was minor competition in the day from Max and Dave Fleischer; it is hard to call them the competition as what they were doing with rotoscope animation technology was not what Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer were doing with the “Master Tom” animation that would become Felix (Feline Folies, 2019). It would not be fair to compare it with the work of Windsor McCay either; what makes it an accomplishment as an animated short is the removal of the animator from the film.
The work itself is not about the artist, but the story of the cat, and let us be clear that it is not a story of Shakespearean proportions. Tom Cat meets Miss Kitty, goes on a few dates, lets his work protecting the kitchen lapse so the mice play, and goes to her home to meet seventeen kittens that look just like him, and unable to handle parenthood, decides to inhale gas to end his life.
Availability: Online, as it has lapsed into the public domain; many public domain cartoon collections and the occasional DVD, such as FELIX! (UPC 017078981629).
References
Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. (1919). Feline Follies.
Feline Follies. (1919, November 9). Retrieved January 7, 2020, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0141008/.
Feline Follies. (2019, November 8). Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feline_Follies.
Gerstein, D. A. (2007).
The Classic Felix Filmography (1919-1936). Retrieved January 7, 2020, from https://www.webcitation.org/64uP4K8Kc?url=http://felix.goldenagecartoons.com/ftcclassicfilms.html.