Morphing gags are funniest when they come out of nowhere. Here’s one I like in Romeeow , a 1930 sound cartoon starring Felix the cat. Feli...

The makers of silent films didn’t rely on the theatre pit orchestra to provide sound effects. Like title cards to make the plot understandab...

At the start of 1927, E.W. Hammons’ Educational Pictures offered theatres a brand-new cartoon every week, with two different series alternat...

Breaking the fourth wall? Felix the cat did it in the silent era all the time. Here’s one of many examples. This scene is from The Oily Bir...

Animated cartoons are entertainment and, like any entertainment, a cartoon that appeals to one person might not appeal to another. It’s visc...

Depicting violence in an animated cartoon is more than just a punch in the mouth. Otto Messmer used a great effect in the later Felix the C...

Hallucinating Felix is fun. There are some great scenes Felix Dines and Pines (1927) of morphing monsters. We get a bit more of the same i...

In 1950, he was a 58-year-old maintenance worker for a candy company in Los Angeles. That doesn’t sound like the description of a fairly sig...