Today Google Doodle celebrates the 107th anniversary of Winsor McCay. Winsor Zenic McCay (September 26, 1869 – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator, best known for the comic strip Little Nemo.
| cCay is in
issues #2 & 4 of
 |
Winsor McCay + Little Nemo = fame and fortune.
The End.
Not quite that easy. For starters, McCay was born in 1867
(the same year as Frank
Brangwyn, Arthur Rackham
and Sidney Sime) and had
an eccentric and checkered career behind him when he moved to
New York in 1903. It still wasn't until two years later, at the
age of 38, that he started the Little Nemo Sunday
comic strip in October of 1905. In his very excellent Winsor
McCay - His Life and Art, John Canemaker chronicles his prolific,
inventive, strange and often heart-breaking career. I summarize
below. |
|
Winsor McCay c.1906
(collection of Ray Winsor Moniz) |
Winsor McCay was born Zenas Winsor McKay in 1867, probably
in Canada. He was named after his father's employer and he quickly
dropped Zenas in favor of Winsor.
Little Nemo June 17, 1906
But I'm getting ahead of myself. McCay left Michigan for Chicago
in 1889 where he worked for a printer and roomed with Jules Guerin.
In 1891 he moved to Cincinnati. There he settled into the only
type of work he knew - he went to work as a staff artist for
a local dime museum. He married, had two children, and took on
extra work painting signs and, eventually, making drawings for
a local newspaper. It was there that he first developed his skill
with a pen - everything up to that point had been crafted with
pencil and brush. He also supplemented his income by submitting
drawings to the humor magazine,
Life, beginning in 1899.
One of Canemaker's favorites from
Life, and mine as
well (and
Harvey
Kurtzman liked it enough to reprint it in an issue of
Help!,
too), is a six-panel masterpiece that anticipates cinemascope,
camera tracks and pans, and even special effects. This was 1903
and McCay was obviously ready for the big time. As Canemaker points
out, his accurate renditions of galloping horses indicate a familiarity
with Eadweard Muybridge's photographic motion studies of 1887.
Few cartoonists had mastered the cartoon pacing and motion better
than McCay at this time, and his one foray into the Sunday comic
strip,
Tale of the Jungle Imps was equally advanced.
He was just a small-town, hard-working artist from Cincinatti.
What could he do in New York?
An
invitation to take a job at the
New York Herald prompted
McCay to find out. In late 1903, he relocated and began the most
prolific chapter of his cartooning life. From 1904-1911, McCay
produced a string of comic strips that have overridden many of
his other accomplishments. While I would never minimize the value
of his comic strip work, you have to understand that McCay was
driven to draw. Whatever those inner demons were, he was compelled
by them to draw and draw and draw. His output during these eight
years surpasses the lifetime work of some equally famous cartoonists.
In early 1904, there were three abortive attempts at newspaper
strips:
Mr. Goodenough,
Sister's Little Sister's
Beau, and
The Phurious Phinish of Phoolish Philipe
Phunny Phrolics. The real explosion of effort began, appropriately
enough, with
Little Sammy Sneeze.
Little
Sammy sneezed every Sunday from July 24, 1904 to December 9, 1906.
Since everyone knew what was going to happen in each strip, it
was the build-up that mattered. Each strip was exactly six panels
with the last reserved for Sammy's comeuppance, so pacing was
everything. And it worked for 2½ years.
Not content to do just one strip, he began
Dream of the
Rarebit Fiend on September 10, 1904. His most successful
strip, this ran until June 25, 1911. It was for a different paper
and signed "Silas".
Dream was a thoroughly
adult strip devoted to adult nightmares and phobias - all caused
by overindulging in Welsh rarebit (or cheese pie) just before
bed. At right, it's the size of the new hat and the husband's
imagined reaction that disrupts the wife's sleep.
For all the sophistication of McCay's drawings, the other
aspects of his strips were never very polished. The word balloons
and lettering were always merely adequate and the writing seemed
to be an afterthought, hurriedly composed to carry a visual joke.
Still not drawing enough, McCay created
The Story of
Hungry Henrietta from January 8 through July 16, 1905.
In a very modern take on child-rearing, this was the story of
a young girl raised by a loud and self-absorbed family that continues
to proffer food in place of love. Henrietta is happiest in the
last panel when she's given a treat instead of a hug.
In search of salve for the drawing demon, McCay began
A
Pilgrim's Progress on June 26, 1905. It ran for more than
five years, ending on December 18, 1910.
All of these strips were formula based, requiring only a new
setting for Sammy to sneeze at, a new nightmare to exaggerate,
another situation for the parents to ignore Henrietta's real needs,
and another attempt by Mr. Bunion to rid himself of the valise
of 'Dull Care'. This formulaic approach allowed McCay to invest
all of his creativity in the drawing. Even the panel shapes and
sizes of each strip were fairly stable (with
Rarebit Fiend
being the most experimental). So with three strips running each
week in two different newspapers, as well as other daily cartoons
and drawings for the
Herald, McCay was finally ready to
create his masterpiece. And on October 15, 1905,
Little
Nemo in Slumberland debuted.
Simply put,
Little Nemo revolutionized the comic
strip. At 38, McCay was at the very peak of his talent and the
New York Herald had the most talented and creative
color printing staff in the business. Together they crafted a
weekly fantasy that week by week revealed
Slumberland to
be more magical than even L. Frank Baum's
Oz (created in
1899) and more wonderful than Lewis Carroll's
Wonderland
(1865). Books and websites abound praising Nemo far more than
I could possibly do in this short bio. Nemo was published in the
New York Herald until July 23, 1911. The strips have been
reprinted many times. Find them and lose yourself in this masterpiece.
It wasn't syndicated, so the fame of the strip is based on the
readers of just one paper.
Well, not entirely. 1905 was the heyday of vaudeville and a frequent
feature was the chalk-talk artist - an artist who could stand
in front of an audience and draw on a chalk board.
Nemo
was an immediate hit and McCay, who liked nothing better than
to draw (and never seemed to have enough money, no matter how
much he made), took to the boards on June 11, 1906. He was a hit,
there, too. As his bookings along the east coast increased, so
did the logistical difficulties of producing three weekly comic
strips and other drawings for the papers. Many strips from this
period were drawn in backstage dressing rooms and in hotels as
he toured with his act. When
Little Nemo made it
to Broadway in 1908, McCay was performing his chalk-talk across
the street and had to miss a portion of opening night. The approbation
of the live audience was just as crucial to him as the regard
of those watching the musical based on his work.
Within
five years of arriving in New York, McCay had become one of the
top artists and performers in the city. Both his comic strips
and his vaudeville act were based on pacing and movement. He was
about to combine all of these elements into one new art - the
animated cartoon.
While he wasn't the first person to make an animated cartoon,
he was the man who defined the industry. The quality of his cartoons
would not be matched for another 25 years. His pacing and understanding
of the medium was far ahead of his time. And he drew all of the
4,000 cels of his first film,
Little Nemo, (natch!)
himself! This while he was still drawing his three strips and
performing his vaudeville act. The
Little Nemo film
was released to theater and used in his act, as was his second,
How a Mosquito Operates - this 6,000 drawings long.
When these films were released into wider distribution, McCay's
fame spread, especially to the fledgling animation community.
When the
Herald rejected his request to take some time
off to go perform in Europe, McCay waited until his contract was
up and jumped over to the Hearst paper,
The American, in
July of 1911. The
Herald lost its star of three strips,
and McCay lost his freedom.
All McCay wanted to do was draw. All Hearst wanted was someone
who did as he was told. Drawing meant performing to McCay and
it meant expanding his knowledge of animation.
Nemo
was published in the Hearst papers under the title
In the
Land of Wonderful Dreams, since the Herald owned the
Nemo
name. The coloring was less than what he was used to and he was
devoting most of his energy to his next animated film,
Gertie
the Dinosaur. The lack of attention showed, especially
in blandness of the 27 daily strips he created for Hearst from
1911 to 1913. His editorial cartoons were masterpieces of pen
work, and that's where Hearst decided to relegate his talents.
On December 13, 1913, he was told by his employer that he was
to give up his comic strips and do "serious" editorial
work. In February of 1914,
Gertie debuted to stunning
reviews. McCay projected the film on his white sketch pad and
in a carefully choreographed sequence interacted with the animated
dinosaur and actually joins her on screen for the finale. A filmed
opening was attached to the animation for theater distribution.
(See above for one drawing from the thousands he made to create
the film.)
McCay's east coast vaudeville bookings began to dry up as Hearst
made it known to the proprietors that he would 'prefer' that they
not engage McCay. In 1914, McCay signed a contract with Hearst
not to appear outside of New York City. Now all McCay had to look
forward to each day was a compulsory appearance at the newspaper
office and making pen & ink editorial cartoons that stretched
across all eight columns of the editorial page. These large drawings
needed lots of visual interest since most of the editorial stances
they illustrated were fairly simplistic. A world war was coming
and Hearst was agin it.
McCay's
personal beliefs are often considered to be reflected by these
editorial drawings. While I don't claim special knowledge of his
mindset, I do know that his last major animated film was a recreation
of the sinking of the Lusitania and amounted to a call to arms.
Hearst and his editor Arthur Brisbane actually lobbied in the
paper for an understanding of Germany's position on the matter. I
can't imagine a more repressive occupation than being forced to
put forth a public face that was the opposite of your own. The lack of humor in all of these drawings must have been depressing,
too. But the drawings, themselves, were magnificent. Click the image at left for a sad sample of a great talent in the service
of a small idea.
In 1924 he left Hearst and returned to the now
Herald Tribune
and tried to revive
Little Nemo. It lasted for two
years, but proved to be out of touch with the public. McCay was
allowed to purchase all rights to the character for $1 - a magnanimous
gesture that doubled as a sad evaluation of his efforts.
He died in 1934 after spending his last eight years back at
the
American drawing editorial cartoons for Arthur Brisbane.
McCay was a light-hearted man who just wanted to make beautiful
pictures. He wanted animation to be an art. He wanted newspaper
strips to appeal to the eye and the soul. He wanted to draw. No
matter how many barriers stood in his way, he managed to accomplish
that. Still, he's best remembered for one strip he drew for only
six years. That alone would have been a magnificent legacy. Thankfully,
there is so much more.
To learn more about Winsor McCay, see:
| Winsor McCay - His Life and Art |
John Canemaker, 1987 Abbeville |
| Little Nemo in Slumberland: So Many Splendid Sundays |
Peter Maresca, 2005 Sunday Press |
| The Vadeboncoeur Collection of Knowledge |
Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. 2000 |
The Vadeboncoeur Collection of ImageS B&W 2,4
Cipto Junaedy
source |
Jim Vadeboncoeur, Jr. 2004, 2008 JVJ Publishing |
