Comments associated with each animation title are from the publication:
"Notes on the Origins of American Animation"
by Scott Simmon (ca. 1921-25).

"Animated drawings were introduced to film a full decade after George Méliès had demonstrated in 1896 that objects could be set in motion through single-frame exposures.  J. Stuart Blackton’s 1906 animated chalk experiment Humorous Phases of Funny Faces was followed by the imaginative works of Winsor McCay, who made between four thousand and ten thousand separate line drawings for each of his three one-reel films released between 1911 and 1914.  Only in the half-dozen years after 1914, with the technical simplifications (and patent wars) involving tracing, printing, and celluloid sheets, did animated cartoons become a thriving commercial enterprise.  This period, upon which this collection concentrates, brought assembly-line standardization but also some surprisingly surreal wit to American animation. The twenty-one films (and two Winsor McCay fragments) in this collection, all from the Library of Congress holdings, include clay, puppet, and cut-out animation as well as pen drawings. Beyond their artistic interest, these tiny, often satiric, films tell much about the social fabric of World War I-era America."
 

International Film Service, Inc. ; animator, Raoul Barre.
An animated cartoon about a fat lady who attempts unsuccessfully
to lose weight.

(1916, I.F.S.). Animator: Raoul Barré.

Duration: 2:08 at 22 fps.
 

International Film Service, Inc. ; animator, Raoul Barre.
 An animated cartoon about an ineffectual policeman (Officer Heeler)
who quits the force after a losing battle against speeders.

(1916, I.F.S.). Animator: Raoul Barré.

Duration: 2:01 at 22 fps.
 

International Film Service, Inc. ; animator, Leon Searl.
An animated cartoon about Mr. Nobody Holme, who warms up his
sluggish automobile with the assistance of a stick of dynamite.

(1916, I.F.S.). Animator: Leon Searl.

These short satires of contemporary life are based on Tom Powers’s newspaper
comics. The comic-strip structure is barely altered in the two "Phables," from
a seven-film series of 1915-16 animated by the Canadian cartoonist Raoul Barré
before he moved on to direct adaptations of the Mutt and Jeff strip. Providing
odd marginal commentary in each film are the stick-figures "Joys and Gloom."

Duration: 1:21 at 22 fps
 

Toyland Films ; animator, Howard S. Moss."

Alice in Wonderland meets the Garden of Eden in this surreal fable
of a drunk rabbit, bowling dwarfs, and the two bewildered girls of the
title.". "Mary & Gretel explore the forest and come across Rip Van
Winkle, drunken woodsmen, and a bunny. They pluck magic flowers
and a fairy appears and sends them home." Incomplete.

from Motoy Film Series (1917, Toyland Films). Animator: Howard S. Moss.

Alice in Wonderland meets the Garden of Eden in this surreal fable of a
drunken rabbit, bowling dwarfs, and the two bewildered girls of the title.
The short-lived "Motoy" stop-motion puppet series was animated by
Howard S. Moss in 1917.

Duration: 4:02 (part 1) at 20 fps. Duration: 2:51 (part 2) at 20 fps.
 

International Film Service, Inc. ; animator, Raoul Barre.

An animated cartoon about a workman who recovers and returns
Miss Gotrox's lost purse containing 10,000 dollars, and receives a
Canadian dime as a reward.

(1916, International Film Service). Animator: Raoul Barré.

Duration: 1:58 at 22 fps.
 

Thomas A. Edison, Inc. ; animator and story, Willis O'Brien.

Uses puppet animation to tell a story of prehistoric times. Three suitors,
named the Duke, Stonejaw Steve, and Theophilus Ivoryhead, compete
for the hand of Miss Araminta Rockface. Ivoryhead, an unassuming weakling,
wins her hand when the others mistakenly believe that he has killed a large
ape which was actually felled by a dinosaur.

(1917, Edison). Animator: Willis O’Brien.

Fifteen years before creating his King Kong, former cartoonist Willis O’Brien
animated these clay-modeled dinosaurs and giant ape. He produced eight such
one-reelers for the Edison Company in 1917.

Duration: 3:23 (part 1) at 22 fps.
 

Vitagraph ; producer and animator, J. Stuart Blackton.

Blackton (with only his arm showing on film) "draws" a series of funny faces,
including a line drawing of two faces, a man with an umbrella, a line drawing
of two faces in profile, a clown, faces of "Coon and Cohen," the profile of a
seated man, and a bottle of Medoc.

(1906, Vitagraph). Director/animator: J. Stuart Blackton.

This earliest surviving American animated film--in the strict sense of single
exposures of drawings simulating movement--uses chalkboard sketches and
then cut-outs to simplify the process. The opening title, animated with bits of
paper, repeats a trick seen the previous year in Edison films. J. Stuart
Blackton had in 1897 co-founded the Vitagraph Company, producer of the film.
The flickering seen here was common to the earliest animation and resulted
from the camera operator’s failure to achieve consistent exposure in manual
one-frame cranking.

Duration: 3:00 at 20 fps.
 

Felton/BDF Films ; [animator unknown].

A promotion for war savings stamps, reputed here to help confine
Germany's Kaiser to a circus cage.

(ca. 1918, BDF Films). Animator unknown.

Duration: 0:33 at 18 fps.
 

American Motion Picture Co. ; animator, Charles Bowers.

Concerns American soldiers in Europe after the armstice [sic]. One goes
AWOL with "Joy" (Miss AWOL) and after a series of mishaps with her,
he is thrown in a guard house while his fellow soldiers go home.A cautionary
tale for troops impatient to return home after the November 1918 armistice.

(ca. 1919, American Motion Picture Co.). Animator: Charles Bowers.

Two World War I propaganda pieces, for home-front and overseas
consumption, respectively. W.S.S. Thriftettes is a promotion for war
savings stamps, reputed here to help confine Germany’s Kaiser to a
circus cage. AWOL, with simple but effective line drawing from animator-
entrepreneur Charles Bowers, is a cautionary tale for troops impatient
to return home after the November 1918 armistice and brings the
"Joys and Gloom" to elaborate life.

Duration: 3:05 (part 1) at 22 fps. Duration: 2:35 (part 2) at 22 fps.
 

International Film Service, Inc. ; director and animator, Gregory La Cava.

The Captain gets a life insurance policy and gives it to his wife.
In gratitude she makes him a pie. The Katzenjammer Kids play
a trick on the Captain and sneak toads into his pie so that he
would think his wife is trying to poison him.

from Original Katzenjammer Kids Series (1918, International Film Service).
Director/ [animator?]: Gregory La Cava.

Rudolph Dirks’s comic about the immigrant German Katzenjammer
family (first published 1897) had been made into live-action films in
1912. This animated version is labeled "Original" because its producer,
W.R. Hearst’s International Film Service, had won a suit against Dirks
(a former Hearst newspaper cartoonist), forcing him to rename his strip
after the mischievous Katzenjammer children, "Hans und Fritz." Future
Hollywood director Gregory La Cava (My Man Godfrey, Stage Door)
supervised this film and the earlier Hearst shorts in this presentation.
Anti-German sentiment brought The Katzenjammer Kids film series
to a halt later in 1918.

Duration: 3:31 (part 1) at 22 fps. Duration: 3:29 (part 2) at 22 fps.
 

[Gertie on tour--excerpts] / Winsor McCay.

Gertie is a dinosaur who lives in present times. She encounters a train
and dreams of being the life of the party in her time.

(1921, Rialto Productions). Animators: Winsor McCay, John McCay,
and John Fitzsimmons.

Duration: 1:22 at 24 fps.
 

 [The centaurs--excerpts] / Winsor McCay.

A half human-half horse boy and girl meet and fall in love. They have
a baby and go home to their parents for a happy reunion.

(1921, Rialto Productions). Animators: Winsor McCay, John McCay,
and John Fitzsimmons.

Among the final films of master cartoonist Winsor McCay are these
pieces animated in collaboration with his son John and longtime
assistant, John Fitzsimmons. They may have been released as part
of the 1921 series Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend. Only these fragments
seem to have survived.

Duration: 2:06 at 26 fps.
 

Dawley Prods. ; producer and co-animator, Herbert M. Dawley;
animator, Tony Sarg.

During the stone-age the Stonehenge Circus entertained cavemen
and women. The circus had a dinosaur that doubled as a trampoline
and tightrope for the acrobats.

from Tony Sarg’s Almanac (1921, Herbert M. Dawley). Animators:
Tony Sarg and Herbert Dawley.

Illustrator and marionettist Tony Sarg’s Almanac series (1921-23)
showcased his mastery of an archaic animation form, the shadow
silhouette. Co-animator Herbert Dawley had produced Willis O’Brien’s
post-Edison claymations of prehistoric animals, and some influence or
common interest is apparent here. The color tints are copied from an
original print.

Duration: 2:24 (part 1) at 20 fps. Duration: 3:28 (part 2) at 20 fps.
 

Essanay Film Manufacturing Co. ; by Wallace Carlson.Dreamy

Dud steals a man's pipe because he is fascinated with smoking and
blowing smoke rings. He smokes the pipe and the smoke turns into
a ghost and carries him up to the moon and leaves him. Dud falls off
the moon and down to earth. He wakes up on the floor of his room and
resolves never to smoke.

Dreamy Dud Series (1915, Essanay). Animator/writer: Wallace Carlson.

Duration: 5:03 at 24 fps.
 

produced by the Gaumont Company ; animator, Harry S. Palmer

Based on the newspaper comic strip by "Pop" Mormand, featuring
a husband oppressed by his wife's obsession with high society and
consumer fashion.

(1915, Gaumont). Animator: Harry S. Palmer.

These two samples are from a series begun in September 1915 based
on the Keeping Up with the Joneses newspaper comic by "Pop" Momand.
The films begin with "out of the inkwell" drawings of the sort seen in
Winsor McCay films and later elaborated by Max Fleischer. Like other
comic strips and animated films of the era, notably Bringing Up Father
(published from 1912; filmed 1916-18), Keeping Up with the Joneses
features a husband oppressed by a wife’s obsession with high society and
consumer fashion. The series ended abruptly in February 1916 after its
animator, Harry S. Palmer, lost a patent infringement suit brought by John
Randolph Bray over the use of transparent celluloid sheets.

Duration: 3:34 at 22 fps
 

produced by the Gaumont Company ; animator, Harry S. Palmer.

Based on the newspaper comic strip by "Pop" Mormand, featuring a
husband oppressed by his wife's obsession with high society and
consumer fashion.

(1915, Gaumont). Animator: Harry S. Palmer.

Duration: 2:49 at 22 fps.
 

Bray Studios, Inc. ; animator, Earl Hurd.Bobby

Bumps plays a trick on his friend who wants to be initiated into his lodge.
When his friend outsmarts him and saves his life, they both agree to be
initiated into the lodge together.

(1916, Bray). Animator: Earl Hurd.

Probably the most popular of the several mischievous boy heroes in early
animation was "Bobby Bumps," whose series (1915-23) was inspired by
R. F. Outcault’s comic strip "Buster Brown." Its creator, Earl Hurd, owned
a 1914 patent for the use of celluloid and his employment by J.R. Bray
(at whose studio this film was made) consolidated a near monopoly on
streamlined animation technology. Racial stereotypes, from J. Stuart Blackton’s
"Cohen" and "Coon" caricatures in Lightning Sketches (1907) onward, are
depressingly endemic to early animated films. In Bobby Bumps Starts a Lodge,
there is, at least, a certain equality in the resolution.

Duration: 5:15 at 24 fps.
 

Bray Pictures Corporation ; animator and writer, Wallace Carlson.

Dud wants to buy his girlfriend Maime an ice cream cone so he breaks
open his mother's bank, and splits their last dime in half in the process.
His mother punishes him so he runs away. Dud is scared by imaginary
ghosts in the dark, so he runs back home where he gets a spanking
from his mother.

from Us Fellers Series (1919, Bray). Animator/writer: Wallace Carlson.

These two variants of Wallace Carlson’s "Dreamy Dud," a boy with an
overactive fantasy life and a down-to-earth dog, reveal how animation history
does not always parallel artistic progress. The 1915 film from the Essanay
Studio has a simpler line-drawing method but a sharper wit, and is indebted
in style and content to Winsor McCay’s dreamy hero, "Little Nemo." The
later version, from Carlson’s 1919-20 Us Fellers series, is more complicated
but less comic, relying on the elaborate backgrounds available through the
Bray Studios’ patents.

Duration: 4:57 at 22 fps.
 

Thomas A. Edison, Inc. ; producer, J. Stuart Blackton, Albert E. Smith.

From Edison films catalog: Upon a large sheet of white paper a cartoonist
is seen at work rapidly sketching the portrait of an elderly gentleman of
most comical feature and expression. After completing the likeness the
artist rapidly draws on the paper a clever sketch of a bottle of wine and
a goblet, and then, to the surprise of all, actually removes them from the
paper on which they were drawn and pours actual wine out of the bottle
into a real glass. Surprising effects quickly follow after this; and the numerous
changes of expression which flit over the face in the sketch cause a vast
amount of amusement and at the same time give a splendid illustration of
the caricaturist's art.

(1900, Edison). Animator/actor: J. Stuart Blackton.

 Although this is not an animated film, the origins of animated film can be
glimpsed here. J. Stuart Blackton, then a cartoonist for the New York Evening
World, is photographed in Thomas Edison’s New Jersey "Black Maria"
studio performing a vaudeville routine known as the "lightning sketch,"
supplemented by stop-camera tricks that bring the drawn objects to life.
Copyrighted in 1900, it was probably filmed three or four years earlier.
 

Thomas A. Edison, Inc. ; producer and camera, Edwin S. Porter.

The set is of the interior of a bakery. A man in a baker's hat and
costume enters and begins kneading some dough on a table by the oven.
He notices a make-believe rat crawling up the side of a nearby barre
 and throws the dough at the rat, covering it completely. He then goes
over to the dough and begins to pummel it with his hands. His back is to
the camera, which obscures the actual manipulation of the dough, but
when he steps away there is now a sculptured mask to admire. He sculpts
another mask, and two other men, also dressed as bakers, come in, see
what he is doing, pick him up bodily, and stick him head first into the flour barrel.

(1902, Edison). Director/cameraman: Edwin S. Porter.

Another proto-animation film, incorporating what might be called a
lightning sketch" version of claymation. Presented as a one-shot film,
it too uses a stop-camera trick.

Duration: 1:19 at 20 fps.
 

International Film Service, Inc. ; animator, Leon Searl.

Krazy Kat's serenade outside the window of Ignatz Mouse meets
with a barrage of bricks.

(1916, International Film Service). Animator: Leon Searl.

Duration: 2:15 at 22 fps.
 

International Film Service, Inc. ; animator, Leon Searl.

While in the woods studying bugs, Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse
encounter a sleeping bee and an angry elephant.

(1916, I.F.S.). Animator: Frank Moser.

Duration: 3:21 at 22 fps.
 

International Film Service, Inc. ; animator, Leon Searl.

An animated cartoon about the adventures of Krazy Kat and Ignatz
Mouse at the circus, where they demonstrate their courage to each
other by attempting to scare a woman.

(1916, I.F.S.). Animator: Leon Searl.

Surprisingly, the animal hero became widely popular in American
animation only in the 1920s, especially with "Felix the Cat." The
earlier Krazy Kat series (1916-29), based loosely on the comic strip
by George Herriman, features lovelorn Krazy and the brick-tossing
object of his strange obsession, Ignatz Mouse. As with the next four
films, these brief films were initially part of William Randolph Hearst’s
International Film Service newsreels.

Duration: 3:00 at 22 fps.