Felix Dogs It

Dancing butterfly. Dancing bear. Dancing flowers. Not exactly something you’d find in a Felix the Cat cartoon, but that’s what we get in April Maze. It was reported by Film Daily on September 21, 1930 that it was one of nine Felix synchronised to music by Copley Pictures. Basically, the Felix shorts were doing what other sound cartoon series were doing, and poorly at that. There was no singing or dialogue; just sound and vocal effects.

Felix isn’t only saddled with flora and fauna taking his screen time, he’s stuck with yowling kids. They even pray—twice! It’s far from the drunken Felix in Woos Whoopee. However, there are a few elements of the old Felix cartoons, such as the living wieners.

Felix and the kids go on a picnic. Among the food—wieners. I suppose they are supposed to be hot dogs, even though there are no buns, as the wieners bark like dogs.



When it starts to rain, Felix and his kids run away. The wieners follow behind, leaping.



Cut to the next scene where the wieners are rolling in a circle like a wheel. Because there’s a storm, the director (Otto Messmer?) switches from a positive to a negative of the shot off and on during the scene.



Cut to the wieners acting like horses, pulling Felix and the kids in the picnic basket along the ground.



Copley Pictures is still in the Film Daily Year Book in 1934 as the producer and distributor of Felix, but it stopped making new cartoons some time in 1930.