Directed by: Otto Messmer

Produced by: Pat Sullivan

Featuring: Master Tom (the character who would soon become known as Felix the Cat), Miss Kitty White, Skiddoo and a very determined army of mice

STORY

Before he was Felix the Cat, one of the most famous cartoon characters in the world, he was simply Master Tom, a mischievous black cat with romance on his mind and absolutely no idea that he was about to make animation history.

Feline Follies introduces us to Master Tom as he encounters the lovely Miss Kitty White. Tom is immediately smitten. Forget responsibility. Forget work. There is a pretty cat nearby, and Tom has much more important things to do.

Tom carefully prepares himself for romance and heads off to woo Miss Kitty. The two meet on that most traditional of feline romantic destinations — the neighborhood back fence. Tom serenades his sweetheart with enough enthusiasm to wake the neighbors, who are considerably less enchanted by his performance than Miss Kitty is.

Unfortunately, Tom has abandoned his actual job: guarding the house against mice.

And the mice notice.

With the cat safely occupied elsewhere, the rodents emerge and turn the house into their own private playground. Food disappears. Chaos reigns. By the time Tom returns, the damage has been done — and his furious owner wants nothing more to do with his spectacularly irresponsible feline employee.

Tom's romantic adventure doesn't exactly end happily either. His relationship with Miss Kitty brings another rather startling surprise, leading to a wonderfully dark piece of silent-cartoon humor that reminds modern audiences just how fearless early animation could be.

It is short, strange, funny, inventive and enormously important.

Because Master Tom wasn't going to remain Master Tom for very long.

The little black cat audiences met in Feline Follies would soon receive a new name:

Felix.

And animation had found one of its first true superstars.

AIN BACKSTAGE SECRETS & AINTOIDS
THIS IS WHERE FELIX BEGAN

Feline Follies marks the first screen appearance of the character who became Felix the Cat. When the cartoon was released in 1919, however, audiences weren't introduced to Felix.

They met Master Tom.

The character appeared again as Master Tom in The Musical Mews, released only one week later. By his third cartoon, The Adventures of Felix, released in December 1919, the cat had acquired the name that would make him famous.

BEFORE MICKEY, THERE WAS FELIX

It is difficult today to appreciate just how enormous Felix became.

Years before Mickey Mouse made his debut, Felix emerged as one of animation's earliest international stars. His expressive face, enormous grin, inventive adventures and unmistakable black silhouette made him instantly recognizable.

The success that followed Feline Follies helped transform the mischievous cat from a character in a short cartoon into a genuine popular-culture phenomenon.

WHO CREATED FELIX?

Now HERE is where animation history gets interesting.

The creation of Felix has been the subject of a long-running historical debate involving Pat Sullivan, whose studio produced the cartoons, and animator Otto Messmer, who is widely credited with directing and animating Feline Follies.

Sullivan publicly claimed authorship of Felix during his lifetime, while Messmer later maintained that he had created the character. Historians have continued examining the evidence surrounding exactly how Felix developed, so AIN isn't going to turn a century-old authorship dispute into a neat little sentence when the history isn't that neat.

THE FELIX NAME CAME LATER

The star of Feline Follies doesn't hear anyone call him Felix because he wasn't Felix yet.

According to one account attributed to Messmer, Paramount Magazine's John King suggested the name “Felix,” playing on associations with “feline” and “felicity.” Pat Sullivan later gave a different account of the name's origin.

What we do know is that the name was in use by the character's third film, The Adventures of Felix.

ONLY SEVEN DAYS LATER!

Talk about a production schedule.

Feline Follies was released on November 9, 1919.

Its follow-up, The Musical Mews, arrived on November 16, 1919.

That's exactly one week later. Recent scholarship has actually used that extraordinarily tight turnaround as evidence when reexamining some of the competing stories about how Felix and the early films originated.

AINTOID: FELIX WASN'T QUITE FELIX YET

Look carefully at Master Tom.

The essential personality is already emerging, but this isn't quite the rounded, instantly recognizable Felix that later audiences would know. Felix's visual design continued evolving during the 1920s.

That makes Feline Follies especially fascinating: we're watching the prototype of an icon before decades of familiarity made his appearance seem inevitable.

AINTOID: THE MAGIC OF THE TAIL

One of the delights of early Felix animation is the freedom animation gave its artists to make absolutely anything happen.

A tail doesn't merely have to be a tail.

It can bend, twist, communicate emotion and become part of a visual joke. Feline Follies already contains the kind of imaginative visual transformations that would become closely associated with Felix's screen personality.

The rules of the physical world simply don't apply when Felix is around.

AINTOID: PARAMOUNT WAS THERE AT THE BEGINNING

Feline Follies was distributed by Famous Players-Lasky Corporation through Paramount Pictures and appeared as part of Paramount's magazine-style theatrical program. Silent Era records its release as November 9, 1919 and identifies Master Tom as the prototype for Felix.

So audiences weren't sitting down for a modern standalone cartoon program. Shorts like this were part of the varied entertainment moviegoers could encounter during a trip to the theater.

AINTOID: A SURVIVOR FROM 1919

Here's something worth celebrating.

More than a century after audiences first saw Master Tom chasing romance while mice destroyed his workplace, the film still survives.

Silent Era identifies an archival print in the collection of the Cinémathèque Québécoise.

Considering how many silent films — including early animated films — have disappeared completely, the survival of Felix's first adventure is especially precious.

THE BEGINNING OF AN ANIMATION LEGEND

Nobody sitting in a theater in November 1919 could possibly have known what they were witnessing.

They were watching a mischievous cartoon cat called Master Tom.

But Feline Follies became the starting point for a character who would survive the silent era, appear in cartoons and comic strips, inspire generations of animators, become recognizable around the world and remain part of popular culture more than a century later.

That's why this little cartoon is more than a curiosity.

It's a piece of animation history.

And exactly the kind of forgotten treasure that belongs on Absolutely Indie Network.

META TAGS

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