Winsor McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) Turns 100!
Gertie peeks out.
The world’s oldest animated dinosaur, Gertie, turned 100
this year. Gertie made her world debut
in February 1914, with the animated dinosaur appearing to interact with her
live creator, the brilliant artist Winsor McCay (1869-1934), on a vaudeville
stage in Chicago. Last month, I celebrated this important early
cinema anniversary at a Museum
of Modern Art film event
hosted by John Canemaker (who led the audience in a “Happy Birthday” sing-along!)
but I didn’t celebrate here on my blog, where I had really hoped to find the
time to compose a multi-part blog series.
Someday I may still get to it, but in the meantime, here are
my notes on subjects and questions that might reward future development:
—Pay tribute to a hundred years’ worth of changes to the exterior of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History (contrast
today’s museum with a screen capture from 1914?).
—Illuminate those dark interiors of the AmericanMuseum of Natural History to better
expose the museum! (Poor McCay was
hampered by a refusal from the museum staff to allow appropriate film
lighting.)
—Compare/contrast: From McCay’s personality animation of a
mosquito in How a Mosquito Operates (1912)
to the full-blown personality animation of Gertie.
On command, Gertie lifts her foot,
complete with animated shadow.
—What it would have been like to first-hand witness
McCay’s vaudeville act with its lightning sketches? And what would it have been like to have been
in one of the first audiences for Gertie
the Dinosaur, with McCay snapping his whip???
—Speculate on the vaudeville musical
accompaniment that would have added a third component to the multimedia
production (film, live performance, and live music).
—Explore Gertie’s
use of the screen as an extension of the vaudeville stage, with great depth of
field (a lake extending into the distance).
—What kind of a dinosaur is Gertie? This question
would naturally lead to an exploration of turn-of-the-century dinosaur
representation.
—What kind of a sea serpent is in the water? This
question would naturally lead to an exploration of turn-of-the-century sea
serpent representation.
—Gertie as a toddler. Gertie with a diagnosis of ADHD.
—Gertie as a puppy.
—Gertie’s size, and the question of whether
Gertie is treated to a pumpkin or an apple.
—The bizarre anatomy of the four-winged
pterosaur.
—And Gertie’s eloquent tail—a charming example of
McCay’s masterful ability to capture personality in subtle comic details.
Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), a film by Winsor McCay.
Theoretically, it would seem like dinosaurs and dragons were tailor-made for the movies. But as filmmakers
quickly learned, believable giant monsters—with the stress on
“believable”—turned out to be difficult to capture on film. Therefore, most early films went the easy
route and excluded giant scaly beasts from their casts. Mary Pickford
became a star; T. Rex had to wait.
Fortunately, there were some uncompromising early visionaries who insisted their
art demanded the presence of a dinosaur or dragon.
McCay's Gertie the Dinosaur
dances for the camera.
First visionary:
Winsor McCay was an artist of dizzying talent, nationally famous for his
extraordinary “Little Nemo” and “Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend” comic strips. With his vaudeville background, McCay became
an early movie enthusiast and began considering the possibilities for animating
his drawings. His first major film success was a dinosaur cartoon: Gertie the Dinosaur.
Created in 1914, Gertie
the Dinosaur is a remarkably sophisticated hand-drawn cartoon.
The first version was five minutes in length and was designed to work in tandem
with McCay’s rapid-fire cartoon-drawing vaudeville act. While the film
was projected, McCay interacted with the brontosaurus on the screen. But
the real magic wasn’t in the mixed-media performance but rather the charming puppy-like
personality that McCay gave to Gertie, the first saurian star of the
screen.
McCay later revived her for a sequel, Gertie on Tour (1921), where Gertie left her original
prehistoric setting and toured contemporary America. While only a short fragment of the sequel has survived, McCay left tantalizing drawings of Gertie using the BrooklynBridge as a trampoline—four years before another
brontosaurus took a plunge off LondonBridge in The Lost World (1925).
An animated Buster Keaton
perched atop an
animated brontosaurus in The Three Ages (1923).
Second visionary:
Buster Keaton’s acrobatic comedy and movie-making prowess resulted in a string
of brilliant shorts and features in the 1920s. For his first self-directed
feature, The Three Ages in
1923, Keaton realized he needed a dinosaur. He envisioned a gag entrance
for himself, riding on the back of a brontosaurus and then scrambling to the top
of the dinosaur’s head to scan the horizon in a typical Keaton pose. As comfortable with special effects as he was
with slapstick, Keaton employed early stop-motion claymation to bring his
dinosaur to life.
Closeup of the dragon
in Siegfried (1924).
Third visionary:
Over in Germany,
up-and-coming film director Fritz Lang corralled the mammoth resources
available at UFA Studios to film a two-part Die Nibelungen, based on the legendary Norse stories of Siegfried,
Brunhild, and Kriemhild. The first of the two films, Die Nibelungen: Siegfried (1924), begins the
hero’s journey with the slaying of a dragon. Sparing no expense, Lang had the studio technicians
construct a massive 60-foot long puppet dragon, operated by a full crew
sweating inside the beast. The dragon appears to be based on the model of
the recently discovered Komodo dragons, dressed up with some dinosaurian spikes down its spine.
Fairbanks slays the dragon in The Thief of Bagdad (1924).
Fourth visionary:
American film star Douglas Fairbanks saw the Siegfried dragon and instantly knew he
needed a dragon, too. An
often-underestimated pioneer of commercial Hollywood,
the very athletic Fairbanks virtually invented
the Hollywood swashbuckler with The Mark of Zorro (1920), added grandeur
to the formula with the massive set designs for his Robin Hood (1922), and was on the lookout for an even bigger
project… He settled on an Arabian Nights pastiche, The Thief of Bagdad, with a plot that would easily incorporate a Siegfried-style
confrontation between hero and dragon. Working with production design
genius William Cameron Menzies, Fairbanks and his chosen director Raoul Walsh
were able to fashion a fire-breathing dragon that nearly lived up to its German
predecessor.
Not counting the Willis O’Brien work that we’ll get to soon (and maybe a half-dozen minor shorts by others), that’s just about it for dinosaurs and
dragons in the years preceding King Kong
(1933). It took considerable effort to make a believable dinosaur or
dragon in those days, and only a few film visionaries—those mentioned above—were
prepared to invest the time or money.
Surprisingly, the tremendous success of King Kong didn’t change things, with 1930s and 1940s Hollywood cinema remaining largely dino-free. Perhaps Kong set the bar too high.
Reference Sources
The Making of King Kongby Orville Goldner and George E. Turner
Living Dangerously: The Adventures of Merian C. Cooperby Mark Cotta Vaz
Willis O'Brien: Special Effects Geniusby Steve Archer
Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 1,Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Dinosaurs Past and Present, Volume 2,Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Charles R. Knight: The Artist Who Saw Through Time by Richard Milner
All in the Bones: A Biography of Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkinsby Valerie Bramwell and Robert M. Peck
Special features on the two-disc special edition, King Kong (1933) by Warner Home Video Inc.
... and an occasional sneak glance at Wikipedia entries (but always double-checking everything!)
Watch King Kong...
Purchase a King Kong DVD or Blu-Ray set at Amazon or Barnes & Noble.
Rent King Kong at Netflix or other rental service.
