Making Mutt and Jeff

Mutt and Jeff had staying power.

They were in the newspapers for more than 75 years, another comic strip that outlived its creator. There was a stage play on Broadway. And the term “Mutt and Jeff” became a popular way of describing men that were complete opposites, especially in size.

There were several animated incarnations of the duo in the silent film era. Bob Coar had a fine summary in this post on Cartoon Research so I won’t rehash it. They were well-known enough that some of the silents were re-traced, colour and a soundtrack added, and appeared on TV into the 1960s.

The Boston Globe took up about 2/3rds of a page in its Sunday paper of June 4, 1922 to describe how the cartoons were made. Manny Davis, later of Terrytoons, is quoted. The Bud Fisher studio at the time was near Fordham University and the head animator was Burt Gillett, later with Walt Disney.

ANOTHER INSIDE STORY OF FAMOUS MOVIE STARS—MUTT AND JEFF
Globe Reporter Sees How Famous Fisher Comedians Are "Animated" For Filmland
By MARJORY ADAMS
NEW YORK, June 2—They are among the best-known motion-picture actors in the world. They work every week with only a few days' vacation throughout the year. hey do stunts that would make Larry Semon and Douglas Fairbanks and Tom Mix break their contracts and turn to selling shoestrings or giving Chautauqua lectures. Yet they never receive a cent of salary.
Mutt and Jeff, the Bud Fisher comedians, who amuse the world in weekly animated motion pictures, are among the hardest worked of all motion picture stars. They bob up cheerfully every week, however, and so far have never struck for higher wages or less work.
Famosu Golbe Twins [sic]
Is there any one so benighted, so steeped in ignorance, that he never heard of Mutt and Jeff, the famous Globe twins?
The Long and Short of It—that is what they are called by thousands of Globe readers. Millions more know their misadventuires [sic] on the screen. Who hasn't wept tears of sympathy for poor little Jeff, and rejoiced when Mutt got hit with a custard pie or the hoof of a mule. Jeff generally gets the worst of it, but sometimes Mutt loses out, and then there is rejoicing indeed on the part of the Mutt and Jeff "fans." Sometimes they both get "stung," but the next day they are furnishing entertainment for the multitude, just as cheerfully as ever.
There are few persons in the world quite as important as Mutt and Jeff. That is why a Globe reporter was sent all the way to Fordham, to interview the two famous comedians. She found them very much at home in a studio of their own.
The Setting
It is a treat to visit the Mutt and Jeff studio. Very few visitors are allowed in the busy place. One walks up a flight of stairs and straight into a big room that looks like a newspaper office or a pleasant factory.
Every one is bent over his desk, very busy (where do they have newspaper office like that, Marjory?) with no time for amusement.
In the big room all the drawing and other work is done, with the exception of the photographing. The camera is placed in a smaller room in fact, there were two cameras in the photographic room.
An office for the officials of the company, which is also used for a projection room, and Bud Fisher's own private office completes the Mutt and Jeff studio.
They Work for Fun of It
"The set for the first scene calls for a circus ring surrounded by several hundred spectators."
When the ordinary motion picture director in Hollywood or Long Island reads this specification he tears his hair and then orders the chief property man to dig up a circus and $2000 worth of "extras" and some trick acrobats and a dozen other props. "It is going to be an expensive picture," he mourns.
There isn't the faintest bit of mourning in the Bud Fisher studies at Fordham, however, when Joseph Pincus, studio manager, or Burton F. Gillett, chief animator, reads such a specification in the first scene. Before the morning is half over one of the studio "animators" brings in such a set, all nicely drawn in pen and ink, with as many extras as are needed. A few more or less make no difference in the cost. "Extras" work for nothing in the Fordham studios, just the way the stars do. Elaborate sets don't cost any more than do hovels and Mutt and Jeff don't care whether they do their stunts in a palace or in a carpet tack factory. It is all in the day's work and a scene at Monte Carlo costs the producers no more than the salary of the animator who draws it. But there are other troubles which the ordinary motion picture director doesn't know a thing about.
But They're Temperamental
The Mutt and Jeff animated cartoon pictures started in as a novelty, but now are a real business and are used in competition against regular motion picture comedies. They must be as perfect as a real comedy, yet they require endless care and a tedious, exacting attention to detail. "Mutt and Jeff are as temperamental as any actors you ever saw," said Emmanuel Davis, assistant director and animator, "and sometimes when you think they are going to be very good in a picture they turn out to be very bad indeed, and we have to scrap the film. It all depends on the animator."
The Globe reporter found that even in New York it is believed that Bud Fisher himself draws all these cartoon-pictures. If Mr. Fisher spent every minute of the 24 hours a day for seven days he would be unable to make one film. It takes 10 animators, and 20 more planners, tracers, cleansers and other persons to finish one 500-foot picture in five and a half days. These 30 people work at top speed in order to finish the film. And between 3000 and 4000 are required for every photoplay.



Scene I
In the first place a real scenario is written. The senario [sic] is based on Bud Fisher's actual cartoons, only it is more elaborate and with more detail and action. Last week the studio director had just completed a new photoplay, "Falls Ahead," a burlesque on the rescue scene of "Way Down East." Here is the way the first scene was plotted out.

"Scene 1. Exterior of Mutt and Jeff's blacksmith shop. Mutt and Jeff with blacksmith apron on. Old man with a mule says, 'Look out for him. He swings a wicked Mutt and Jeff take mule inside."

There are between 10 and 14 scenes in the scenario. But the first scene took just two days to complete. The other scenes weren't so difficult. The animators are the high-paid members of the staff and they do what Bud Fisher would do if he were the sole member of the drawing staff. These men draw the pictures on a transparent drawing board. They work over electric lights, as every line is important and must be drawn exactly in place. Every drawing is done on paper punched with two holes. The paper fits over two little pegs and thus there is no chance of anything going awry.
Sets, and Cells and Such
The animators don’t draw every picture completely. Far from it. Otherwise it would take much longer than a week to complete a 500-foot reel. The "set," or part that doesn't move, is first transferred to celluloid. The circus ring, for instance, with the hundreds of cheering people, was transferred at once from the drawing on paper to a sheet of celluloid just the same size, with the same two little holes punched at the top to keep the sheet in place. This set doesn't change for several pictures.
In the case of a recent picture showing a circus scene, three celluloid sets were made. In one scene the people were sitting apathetic, in another they were beginning to cheer, in the third they were cheering madly.
These were used with more than 25 drawings representing Mutt and Jeff doing a stunt in the middle of the circus ring. Then the celluloid sets were placed over each separate drawing of Mutt and Jeff, thus completing the picture and making it ready to be photographed by the motion picture camera.
The first set, showing the audience apathetic and not much interested, was used with the first five or six pictures of Mutt and Jeff doing their riding stunt. Then the next "cell" (in studio parlance) was placed over the next drawings—maybe for 10 or more times.
The final "cell," showing the people cheering madly and throwing their hats in the air, was placed over the last scenes in which Mutt and Jen conclude their involuntary stunt of riding on a goat. These "cells" save endless drawing and tracing and make the Mutt and Jeff cartoons possible.
Making Mutt Talk
Not only are the “sets” drawn in on celluloid, but also the parts of the picture that remain stationary for any length of time. Suppose Mutt is haranguing Jeff. Perhaps the only part of Jeff's figure that moves is his mouth, as it drops and drops while listening to Mutt's talk. Jeff's figure is drawn in with the mouth lacking. The figure is then transferred to celluloid, and the different drawings done by the animator are only that portion of the mouth which moves. The "cell" is then fitted over the drawings of the mouth and the picture is complete. When it is photographed it looks the same as if each separate picture had been drawn in completely and not just in part. The same “cell” is used for as many pictures as possible.
These “cells,” or celluloids, are used over each drawing. Sometimes one or more are perfectly blank—sometimes each one of them has drawings and parts of drawings on them. But it is necessary to use the three "cells" to give "tone to the picture."
Flip Flipped
When the animators complete the 3000 drawings and partial drawings, then the pictures are "flipped" by the director to see that the action is continuous and nothing Is lacking. The pictures then go to the planners. The planners are the people who plan the rest of the mechanical work. Much of the work is purely tracing, and the animators don't do that.
They are paid for being able to make the little figures of Mutt and Jeff “real”; the tracers are those who trace certain parts of the animators' work and leave out or put in lines that are necessary to the action.
One set, for instance, showed Mutt and Jeff being driven in state to a palace. In some of the scenes a certain line was necessary, in others the figures of Mutt and Jeff interfered with it. The tracers traced from the original set the same scene, but left out as much of the line as was necessary. Both "sets" were on celluloid and when the figures interfered with the line on the first set then the second celluloid set was used in photographing.
When the tracers get through with their work the rest is purely mechanical. The cleaners removed smudges and lines, the blackeners "black in" the necessary parts.
Ha! . . . the Exposer
"There isn't any way of getting these figures blackened in except by doing it by hand," said Mr Gillett. After the figures are blackened then the pictures are "matched up" and numbered to make sure that they will go before the camera exactly right.
In real movies people can move fast or slow. When Mutt and Jeff motion pictures are made each picture is taken separately and therefore the action has to be timed. The average motion picture camera takes 16 pictures a second. Thus the Mutt and Jeff producers attempt to "time" their pictures so that 16 exposures will be run through on the camera in one second.
The "exposer" is a very necessary person in the Bud Fisher studios at Fordham. He figures out how many times each picture should be exposed. Each exposure means one pressure of the button, which takes a picture. The Mutt and Jeff cartoons are not taken on the ordinary motion picture camera which a crank is used, but on a special camera in which a pressure of the button means that one picture is taken. Sometimes the same picture is exposed three times, sometimes twice, sometimes more times. The "exposer" figures it all out and then makes out a chart which looks like a problem in calculus and tells the photographer exactly what to do. It tells him which "cells" to use for every picture, and how many times to "click the button," before he changes the "cells" or the drawings. It looks very complicated, but the photographer is evidently quite used to it.
Mutt and Jeff Framed!
The camera which is used in the studio is clamped firmly into place. The pictures are placed on the table, with the holes of the "cells" and the drawings holding them in place so there is no chance of their moving. They are brightly lighted from beneath and above. The photographer clicks the camera and removes and replaces drawings and celluloids as calmly and as mechanically as if he were making buttonholes in an overall factory. No romance here—it's all plain hard work.
After the picture is completed it is tried out in the private office where a curtain and small projecting machine occupy prominent positions. Then comes the "cutting." In some cases only one little picture or "frame," as they call it, is removed. In regular motion picture one "frame" is never removed, it's always cut by the number of feet. But "Mutt and Jeff" cartoons are made by so tedious a process and so much detail is necessary in producing them that it is not strange that the same accuracy an detail is used in the cutting.
Marjory Sees Show for Nothing
The Globe reporter was given a special showing of Mutt and Jeff cartoon-pictures in the office of the manager. Some scenes that looked very simple were said to be very difficult and required days to complete while the very spectacular scene in which some falls that l[o]oked as impressive as Niagara and roared and splashed most realistically were said to have been made with only three drawings, changed every exposure.
"We don't know what we've got until we see the completed picture," said Mr Pincus. "Perhaps we have a fine story and everything seems wonderful. Yet we really can't tell until it’s all done. We write the scenarios from Mr Fisher's cartoons. Mr. Davis, Mr Gillett and myself are the scenario writers and directors as well. But the finished picture is the only proof we have that our ideas were good. A clever animator, however, can make even a bad idea very funny."
Mr. Pincus also explained the more technical points in making three and four different "actions" on the screen at once. It was interesting but it would take an expert photographer to follow the various processes. He showed several sample pictures, in which the number of drawings necessary for as action were illustrated. It took eight drawings for a man to open a door, and three different celluloids, for instance.
Made ln Three Rooms
The Mutt and Jeff movie cartoons were first made five years ago. They are made in three rooms in a small studio in Fordham, right near the Fordham Elevated station. Fordham University is across the square.
The pictures were first made as a novelty, and now are used often in place of regular comedies. Although the studio has been at Fordham for five years, the producers will soon move to New York city itself, to be closer to the Fox Films Corporation, with which the company is affiliated.
"It's the only studio in the world where there are no extra lists, casting directors or stages," said Mr. Pincus.