Wild Minds. Reid Mitenbuler

       Prologue

      “Make Us Another”

      Otto Messmer was eager—for fame, for riches, for his big break. At night he could look into the sky above West Hoboken, New Jersey, and see the glow from Manhattan’s lights—barely two miles east, and yet a world away. He was a struggling young newspaper cartoonist, only twenty-three years old, on the verge of joining that more dazzling world across the Hudson River.

      This was in 1915, when the newspaper business was still healthy, at the peak of its clout and reach. Talented artists working within its system were rewarded handsomely. At the New York Journal, a star cartoonist like Winsor McCay made more than $50,000 a year in syndication—a sum that afforded him multiple homes, chauffeur-driven sedans, and the kind of bold wardrobe choices you don’t often find in the closets of people with less eccentric careers. It was a grand lifestyle, and one just starting to come within Messmer’s grasp. His work was occasionally published in the New York World and sometimes featured in Punch, Life, and Judge—the most prestigious humor magazines of the day. But there was a problem: these sporadic freelance appearances didn’t yet provide a stable living. Dry spells could mean washing his laundry in a bucket of cold water, or having to order the smellier cuts of meat from the butcher. Success seemed close, but he still needed a steady job.

      One day, in search of additional work, Messmer packed a portfolio of drawings under his arm and headed to Fort Lee, New Jersey, several miles to the north. In the earliest years of the movie business, before people realized that Hollywood had better light and cheaper taxes, Fort Lee was a leading center of the film industry. Visitors there might catch a glimpse of glamorous stars like Lionel Barrymore posing for photographers, the wind dancing in his hair; or perhaps D. W. Griffith standing next to his camera, shouting into a bullhorn. Messmer hoped to show his portfolio of drawings to the studios and get a job painting background sets for the movies.

      Messmer presented his work at Universal, then just an upstart studio. Among his sample drawings was a flipbook featuring a short cartoon about the war then happening in Europe. At this point, animation was still very new; some argued that it could blossom into a great art form, while others said it would never be more than a novelty—the debate was still up in the air. A few movie studios, including Universal, thought animated cartoons had entertainment potential, that they could be used as a kind of hors d’oeuvre before main features. When Messmer presented his little flipbook, the hiring man paused. “Look, don’t you know they’re starting animation?” he asked. “You look like you could fit in that.”

      Messmer was excited, but also worried. He had included the flipbook only to make his portfolio look thicker. He had no real understanding of how animation was done on a larger scale, nor did he know whom to ask. It was still a new and mysterious craft; the few people doing it guarded their methods as secrets, the same as magicians with their tricks. Messmer told the hiring man he was interested but admitted he had no idea what he was doing.

      The hiring man just shrugged. “Go ahead and see what you can do.”

      Messmer figured out the basics and made a one-minute test cartoon, entitled Motor Mat, about a reckless driver who fixes a flat tire by blowing a smoke ring with his cigar and using it as a spare. To Messmer’s mind, this was what cartoons should be: wild and fantastic, immune to the logic of physics or reality. Animation could magically bring to life worlds and ideas that live action couldn’t.

      When other Universal executives saw the cartoon, they gave Messmer a humble space where he could work on his ideas. It wasn’t even a proper office, just a rickety desk wedged into an open area between two film sets. Since movies were still silent in those days, the space was noisy from directors on different projects shouting over each other, competing to be heard. Amid this ruckus Messmer set to work drawing, trying to keep his pen from being jostled by crew members squeezing by. A few feet from his desk sat a caged lion, which the studio staff explained was used for jungle pictures and kept starved so he would “emote” more. Messmer, whose work often involved metaphors, no doubt wondered if this was some sort of omen.

      Universal fired Messmer shortly after hiring him—not because he wasn’t talented, but because it was easier to just buy animated cartoons from outside studios that specialized in them. Messmer thus began floating among jobs at the handful of new animation studios trying to figure out the craft and become profitable.

      Before any of his animation gigs was able to take off, Messmer was drafted to fight in World War I. He headed to Europe in 1917, dressed in his green wool Army uniform, keeping a diary of experiences that he no doubt hoped to some day use in his art. The diary’s early pages—full of beautifully looping penmanship and clever doodles­—­described a pleasant ocean voyage to France and then a march through a lush countryside of green hills and thatched-roof cottages. As the journey progressed, however, the diary’s tone darkened. Messmer began noticing artillery hidden among the wildflowers. He could hear the roar of battle off in the distance, and whiff the dry, sulfury smell of the guns. Once he joined the fighting, his penmanship grew thick and clumsy with descriptions of the war’s horrors: a friend’s pink brains splattered in the mud, the dying gasps of men’s last words. Atrocities were all around, but he sometimes found relief in the little things, like the moments when buried artifacts from medieval French cities would suddenly appear in the trenches, surfacing in the mud like lost treasure floating up from the seafloor. It was a moment like this that perhaps inspired Messmer to jot in his diary a possible scenario for some future cartoon: “Fearless Freddy. Digs for gold; digs up all kinds of things from the earth.”

      By the time Messmer returned home, in 1919, animation had grown as an industry. It was beginning to offer a viable way to make a living, although some thought it was still just a novelty. Cartoons hadn’t yet ignited the public’s imagination, and no cartoon character had captured people’s attention in the same way as real-life celebrities like Charlie Chaplin or Mary Pickford.

      Messmer resumed work in an animation studio run by Pat Sullivan, a convicted felon who had recently been released from prison. Sullivan was a rotten boss but allowed Messmer to work for other studios on his own time, so long as Sullivan made money from any deals. In this way, Messmer one day ended up at Famous Players–Lasky, the studio later known as Paramount, pitching an idea to an executive named John King.

      King leaned back in his chair as Messmer loaded the projector with a cartoon titled Feline Follies, featuring a black cat that would eventually be named Felix. Translated from Latin, the name loosely meant “good luck,” an ironic way to name a black cat.

      The film began with Felix being kicked out onto the street by his owner because he had failed to protect the house from mice. Distressed and worried about his fate, Felix wanders to the home of his girlfriend, Miss Kitty White, and begs her for a place to stay. It’s not a request Miss Kitty White seems excited about as she introduces him to a litter of neglected kittens and tells him he’s the father. Facing down this vision of a life shackled to domestic drudgery, Felix responds by rushing off to the local gasworks, putting a hose in his mouth, and committing suicide.

      Once the cartoon finished, the end of the film reel flapped loudly in the projector. Messmer leaned over to switch