A cat with two tales: Who created Felix the Cat?

Andrew Marshall

The world’s first animated superstar

Felix the Cat became the first global animated superstar during the Roaring Twenties, a period of economic prosperity and cultural dynamism. The anthropomorphic cat with large, wide eyes and a mischievous grin captivated audiences worldwide. Felix’s playful antics and charismatic presence in early animated films resonated deeply with the spirit of the Jazz Age, making the character a beloved figure across all demographics, including notable fans like Queen Mary of England.¹

Felix was the first animated character to be widely merchandised and licensed for consumer products, including as a mass-produced stuffed toy,² and the first on product packaging.³ Felix catalysed the lucrative modern character franchise and licensing business, now occupied by entertainment giants like The Walt Disney Company, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. and Nintendo. At the peak of his popularity, Felix had more ‘publicity producing angles than a centipede has legs’:

Men wore Felix tiepins and women wore Felix brooches. Smoke shops sold Felix cigars and automakers sold Felix radiator caps. Infants smelling of Felix baby oil napped under Felix blankets. Felix Crystal Radio sets … played [the songs] ‘Felix the Cat’ [and] ‘Felix Kept on Walking’.⁴

Felix was the first character balloon in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in 1927,⁵ and a Felix doll was one of television’s first images to be broadcast in 1928.⁶ Given his global appeal, Felix’s national loyalties are somewhat divided as the official mascot for the Royal Australian Air Force’s Squadron 11⁷ and the US Navy’s Strike Fighter Squadron 31.⁸ A friendly Felix-like character also battled an evil Mickey Mouse–like character in animated anti-American Japanese propaganda in the 1930s.⁹ Nearly a century later, Felix the Cat remains one of the most recognisable animated characters globally, enduring in the memories of the Baby Boomer and Generation X cohort familiar with Felix’s 1950s television reboot,¹⁰ and, more recently, his reinvention as a fashion icon.¹¹

Aldous Huxley praised Felix the Cat films in 1925, stating that the cinematic adventures of Felix were simultaneously realistic and surreal and concluding that a ‘study of Felix the Cat … would teach many valuable lessons’.¹² Felix did have many students. Inspired by Felix’s success, in 1923, a 23-year-old Walt Disney produced The Alice Comedies, a series of 57 short films featuring a live-action girl with animated characters. Margaret Winkler, a Felix distributor who could not renew her exclusive distribution rights, funded the series and encouraged Disney to include a blatant imitation of Felix named Julius the Cat. Julius became a prominent recurring character, and contributed to Walt Disney’s hallmark style, heavily influencing his next creations, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse.¹³

Felix the Cat was a product of the Sullivan Studio in New York, established by the controversial Australian animator and movie producer Patrick ‘Pat’ Sullivan. At the peak of Felix’s success, Pat toured the world, regaling the press with the character’s origin story, typically involving his wife, Marjorie (née Gallagher), encouraging him to draw a stray cat in New York. Sullivan claimed to have created Felix himself, and he was skilled at drawing the character for fans, friends and family during his travels.¹⁴

However, 34 years after Sullivan died, a competing claim came from an employee at the Sullivan Studio, a ‘painfully self-effacing animator from New Jersey named Otto Messmer who slaved for years in anonymity’.¹⁵ Messmer claimed to have created Felix the Cat for the film Feline Follies, which he said was the first film to feature Felix. Messmer’s claim gained significant US media attention in the late 1970s, including appearances for Messmer on television.¹⁶ Since then, US media outlets have favoured Messmer’s late-in-life claim to have created Felix, usually while painting Sullivan as a greedy, drunken studio proprietor who wrongfully claimed to have created the character.

Sullivan was afflicted by alcoholism, and he also had a serious criminal history. Detractors have claimed that the Australian animator was artistically inferior and lived such a dissolute lifestyle that he could not have created Felix. Some have published wild stories based on unsubstantiated gossip, including, for example, the outrageous claim that Sullivan’s mental faculties were impaired by syphilis. It was also claimed that, while allegedly inebriated and distraught over the potential loss of copyright in his Felix character, he urinated on the desk of a senior executive at Paramount Studios.¹⁷ The veracity of these claims, fuelled by decades of conjecture by Messmer supporters, is beyond the scope of this article.

This article addresses, and offers a resolution to, the question of whether Sullivan or Messmer created Felix—a contentious debate that has raged for over 50 years. While many Australian voices support Sullivan, half a century of US media support for Messmer has drowned them out. The article reviews operations at the Sullivan Studio, where Felix was created, and examines contemporary US copyright registration records. Drawing on this and other evidence, including historical interviews with animators, the article evaluates Sullivan’s and Messmer’s statements and their competing claims to have created Felix.

The Sullivan Studio

Pat Sullivan opened his animation studio with the help of Pat Powers, a co-founder of Universal Pictures.¹⁸ After illegally emigrating to the US, shining shoes and prize-fighting to make a living, the Australian animator got regular work with McClure Newspapers, illustrating the comic strips of William Marriner.¹⁹ When Marriner died in a house fire, the talented and eccentric Raoul Barré introduced him to the animation business through a short stint at the Barré-Bowers Studio, where Sullivan worked as an animator.²⁰ The newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst also offered Sullivan a role at his International Film Service; however, after gaining animation experience, Sullivan convinced Powers and Universal Pictures to fund his animation studio through an output deal.²¹

Output deals give a film distributor a steady content supply and provide a diverse and constant catalogue in exchange for a commitment to purchase distribution rights to a set number of films over a specified period. Sullivan was a good negotiator, reflecting his time selling pianolas in Sydney. He was also knowledgeable about the film distribution business, having reportedly toured a ‘bioscope’, an early film projector,²² when exhibiting Pathé films in several Australian cities²³ and, later, in London.²⁴

Established in a cramped residential apartment, steps away from Times Square in New York City, the Sullivan Studio was fully operational by 1 January 1916.²⁵ With just Sullivan and a few other animators, ‘blackeners’²⁶ and a photographer, the studio was a lean start-up; however, it set a blistering pace from the beginning, releasing more than a dozen films in its first year.²⁷ The Universal deal pressured the Sullivan Studio to maintain sufficient production of high-quality content.

In the early days of animation, making short films was hard work. Animators would photograph drawings on paper rather than celluloid at the Sullivan Studio. Films ran at 10 frames per second, with one or two exposures per drawing,²⁸ requiring between 700 and 1,000 drawings and three weeks’ work for a four-minute reel.²⁹ Each reel was typically several hundred feet long, and while Universal Pictures paid Sullivan for each foot of film, it gave him a limit for animated features of 450 feet per reel.³⁰ In an industry that required a ferocious work ethic, Sullivan had a reputation as ‘an unusually hard worker’.³¹ Walter Lantz estimated that cartoonists at his studio were ‘capable of drawing up to 20 drawings a day’,³² but Sullivan boasted that he could produce 100–150 drawings daily.³³

When Sullivan recruited animators, his business model was simple and egalitarian, reflecting the Australian’s socialist leanings and time illustrating for the Australian Worker.³⁴ Sullivan proudly ‘split’ his revenue with the hired animators:

I worked up this business through hard work, and it has taken me a year to do it, or a year and a half. I worked on the basis of my men—I get a dollar a foot for my product. I finance everything and find a market—camera and everything. I give the boys 50 cents a foot clean, and I take 50 cents and stand all expenses. The ideas and everything I give them.³⁵

Sullivan’s straightforward approach was corroborated by the other animators at his studio and his friend, the Australian poet Hugh McCrae. McCrae visited Sullivan in New York during those early years and shared the following anecdote:

During my stay in New York, I got to know Pat Sullivan, the comic-strip artist, very well, and he offered me—‘believe it or not’—fifty-fifty in his proposed ‘Felix the Cat’ business. He said: ‘You draw better than I do. I can supply the ideas.’ Like a fool, I refused—and bang went not [sixpence], but a thousand pounds a month!³⁶

Although somewhat hyperbolic, McCrae’s story corroborates the business model that helped establish the Sullivan Studio as an ‘animation factory’ that gave Sullivan’s jobless creative friends and young animators a steady income and the opportunity to get their work seen. Animators worked autonomously, with Sullivan overseeing the films through production, ensuring the studio’s output met distributors’ requirements.³⁷ Depending on the deal with his distributor, either Sullivan or the distributor retained copyright.

Messmer’s early work

At 24 years of age, Otto Messmer was the first animator Sullivan recruited. The eager young New Yorker immediately got to work on his first animated film after joining the studio. Messmer had been developing his character Motor Mat without success, but Sullivan gave the animator a platform and released Motor Mat and His Fliv as a Powers Comedy Cartoon distributed by Universal. The film is presumed lost, but its description is delightful. Motor Mat purchases a mail-order car that won’t stop once it starts. When the engine gives out, he ‘gets a little squirrel to be his engine’ by hanging a nut in front. When Mat wants to reverse, he changes sides. When copyright was registered, Sullivan credited Messmer, describing the film as a ‘Sullivan Cartoon, Drawings by Otz Messmer’.³⁸

Following Chestnuts, a minor release with the prominent credit ‘By O. Messmer’ on the title card,³⁹ Messmer’s next significant project was The Love Affair of Ima Knut, released on 25 March 1917.⁴⁰ Messmer’s Ima Knut character was reminiscent of Colonel Heeza Liar, a popular animated character at that time, created by John Randolph Bray of J. R. Bray Studios. Messmer was a fan of that character and stated that Bray’s work inspired him to take up animation.⁴¹ Again, Messmer received full credit, and when copyright was registered, the film was described as an ‘Animated Cartoon by Otto Messmer’.

The surviving Ima Knut footage, available on popular video-sharing platforms, features crude animation and poor character development. Messmer’s sexism and racist depictions of African Americans, although unfortunately common at the time, are shocking and appalling. The story has few redeeming features and feels like an unfunny animated vaudeville skit. The film does include a black cat with a ‘speaking part’. Sitting in a garbage can, the cat says: ‘That reminds me, I got a date with a cat over on Sixth Street.’ None of Messmer’s films, including Motor Mat and His Fliv, were commercial successes, and none produced a sequel.⁴²

The Tail of Thomas Kat

While Messmer was busy with Ima Knut, Sullivan was working on The Tail of Thomas Kat. Sullivan’s first films, made at the request of Universal, featured an ‘adaptation’ of Marriner’s character Sambo from the comic strip ‘Sambo and His Funny Noises’. With this new film, he likely intended to exploit the popularity of the Krazy Kat comic strip. Sullivan changed the protagonist’s name to avoid infringement claims, calling his character ‘Thomas Kat’, a play on ‘tomcat’. The film was advertised as The Tail of Thomas Cat, but when copyright was registered, the title was changed to The Tail of Thomas Kat,⁴³ which may have been Sullivan’s attempt to ‘fly under the radar’ and avoid claims he copied the Krazy Kat character.

Copyright for The Tail of Thomas Kat was registered just a week before Messmer’s Ima Knut. The film was described as ‘A Cartoon Comedy by Pat Sullivan’. Busy with Ima Knut, Messmer was uninvolved in the project. Sullivan only compensated animators at the Sullivan Studio for the films they produced, and Messmer never mentioned the film during his many interviews. Unfortunately, Thomas Kat is also thought to be lost, so we do not know if Thomas Kat was black like Felix or the extent to which the character was anthropomorphised. Library of Congress records provide the following description:

The cat is rocking in a chair, and his tail is through a knothole in the fence. A chicken grabs it in its beak and pulls it out till it snaps. The cat goes through the fence to settle with the chicken. They fight and the cat leaves the chicken for dead. But he wakes up, comes through the fence, and pulls the cat’s tail right out. The cat cried. Along comes a dog and laughs at the cat. Then a boy tied a tin can to the dog’s tail, and the cat is consoled for it sees that tails are no good, after all.⁴⁴

Thomas Kat focused on Thomas’s tail, later a source of surrealistic gags as Felix used his tail to escape various situations. Many scenarios in Felix films were ‘recycled’, and a nearly identical scenario to that in Thomas Kat is repeated in the 1922 Felix film Felix Makes Good. In the later film, Felix uses his tail to steal a bone from a dog through a fence, and the dog pulls off Felix’s tail. Unperturbed, Felix goes to a ‘re-tailer’ to get a new tail. Felix Makes Good also features live-action footage of Sullivan’s wife, Marjorie, likely on the porch of her family home in Scranton, Pennsylvania, interacting with an animated Felix.⁴⁵ Consistency in the plot, character design and humour provides a clear creative lineage, and Marjorie’s on-screen appearance indicates that Sullivan was very much involved in the production of both films.

Simultaneously handling animation duties and the studio business was likely quite taxing for Sullivan. During a trip back to Australia in 1925, returning as a successful movie producer, he recounted working on ‘the first film of Felix’:

I shall never forget the first film of Felix I made, it took me six months to do, and was a gigantic failure. I was, of course, utterly inexperienced in a new and highly technical art. The result of it was that I had a nervous breakdown, and was in hospital for 5 weeks.⁴⁶

Sullivan did not name the ‘first film of Felix’. Although many consider Feline Follies the first Felix film, based on the claims of Messmer, Sullivan’s description of the ‘first film of Felix’ could not have been that film, which, by all accounts, was a great success, not a ‘gigantic failure’. Only one film featuring a cat was produced by the Sullivan Studio before Feline Follies, and that was The Tail of Thomas Kat.⁴⁷

Sullivan’s statement that he had a ‘nervous breakdown’ and was hospitalised for five weeks is supported by testimony in his June 1917 criminal trial. When asked if Sullivan had any health issues, his doctor, Herbert L. Constable, testified: ‘Heart trouble, yes, sir. Nervous.’ The doctor also said, under oath, that he treated the 32-year-old Sullivan ‘fifty or sixty times, at least’.⁴⁸ In 1925, the term ‘nervous breakdown’ was broadly used to describe a wide range of mental health crises, including anxiety disorders, depression and acute stress reactions. In any event, the failure of The Tail of Thomas Kat deeply affected Sullivan.

Shortly after he was released from hospital, Sullivan was arrested on 29 April 1917 for the heinous crime of having sex with a 14-year-old girl. After a three-day jury trial, and notwithstanding that several witnesses, including his wife Marjorie, provided him with a credible alibi, he was sent to Sing Sing prison for nine months.⁴⁹ Sullivan’s conviction was never reported in the press during his lifetime. Messmer said he was a ‘big shot’ who received favourable treatment in jail,⁵⁰ adding that he was allowed to keep his art materials in prison. Marjorie collected Sullivan’s drawings during prison visits.⁵¹

Amid the drama of Sullivan’s hospitalisation, but before his arrest and incarceration, Messmer quit the Sullivan Studio in April 1917 after a falling out.⁵² He left to work for Hy Mayer, a competitor and someone Messmer had previously worked for and revered.⁵³ After a year with Mayer, Messmer was conscripted to serve as a telegrapher in France and shipped out on 19 June 1918,⁵⁴ forcing him to take a break from the animation industry. Although he kept a diary with a few doodles and film ideas,⁵⁵ Messmer did not practise his craft while he served. After returning from France on 28 May 1919,⁵⁶ Messmer and Sullivan settled their differences, and Messmer was re-hired by the Sullivan Studio.⁵⁷

Feline Follies

With the war ongoing, Sullivan was released from jail in mid-1918. He quickly re-established the Sullivan Studio near New York’s diamond district, announcing his return to ‘cartoon making’ in the 6 July 1918 edition of Motion Picture News.⁵⁸ Before his imprisonment, Sullivan had cultivated a remarkable friendship with Charlie Chaplin, the world’s biggest movie star, and had been developing a film featuring his iconic character, ‘The Tramp’.⁵⁹ Chaplin was reportedly such a fan of Felix that he later told Sullivan: ‘I only have one rival—Felix.’⁶⁰ Sullivan secured permission to create a royalty-free animated version of Chaplin’s character, which ‘delighted’ Chaplin.⁶¹

With Sullivan and Marjorie working tirelessly, How Charlie Captured the Kaiser premiered on 10 September 1918. It was followed by half a dozen Chaplin films and two or three featuring a new character, Hardrock Dome, a ‘peerless detective’.⁶² Although Chaplin had initially agreed to the films featuring his likeness, his celebrity had begun to attract many imitators seeking a ‘free ride’ on his fame, and the movie star began taking those imitators to task. Likely due to justified nervousness from Universal Pictures, Sullivan needed to find a new distributor after the first four films; he also rebranded the series as ‘Charley’ films.⁶³ The films, which included the prominent exclamation points and question marks used in Felix’s films, featured a recurring black cat, named for its love of sausages—‘sausage-hound cat’ or ‘sausage-cat’.⁶⁴

After a two-year hiatus, including a year with Mayer and a year in France, Messmer rejoined the Sullivan Studio in 1919.⁶⁵ Sullivan’s business approach had changed after jail, and Messmer was hired as a salaried employee. He also seemingly exercised more, not less, control over studio output. After losing the Universal contract, Sullivan needed to secure new distribution. J. R. Bray Studios, run by John Randolph Bray, had been distributing the Hardrock Dome films. When Bray left Paramount to partner with Sam Goldwyn, Sullivan struck a direct deal with Paramount Pictures to supply content for Paramount Magazine.⁶⁶ The magazine-style reels were shown before feature films and featured news, travelogues and animation. With ample time in jail to think about how Thomas Kat could be improved, Sullivan tweaked the protagonist’s name to ‘Master Tom’ and got to work on two films: Feline Follies and Musical Mews.⁶⁷ Messmer may have assisted, but the lettering and style of animation indicate that the films were very much conceived and animated by Sullivan. The failure of Thomas Kat was a cathartic experience for Sullivan, and he wanted to ensure that Master Tom, an updated version of Thomas Kat, was a success. The Australian worked hard to rebuild the studio, and the Paramount deal was key.

Although Musical Mews is presumed lost, Feline Follies is widely available on video-sharing platforms, and is usually promoted as Felix’s first appearance. The film introduces us to the carefree and whimsically suave life of Master Tom, a dapper cat with a penchant for the finer things in life who ‘scalps unwary mice and breaks feline hearts with equal assurance and dispatch’. Tom is bowled over by a local lady cat, Miss Kitty White. They set a date and meet at the ‘back fence’ where Tom serenades Kitty. He sings: ‘I’ve only got nine lives to live, an’ I’ll live them all for you’, but angry neighbours chase them away.⁶⁸ They make another date at the ‘trysting place’—the garbage bin. When they meet, Master Tom serenades his lover with a banjo.⁶⁹ Kitty says to Tom: ‘Shoot something lively!’ Tom begins playing a song, and Kitty dances to the music until Tom makes four musical notes with his banjo. He then grabs the notes out of the air and turns them into scooters for himself and Kitty, and the scene ends with them riding off.

After his ‘date’ with Kitty, Tom goes home to sleep. While he was out, the mice had made a colossal mess, and Tom is kicked out of his house for dereliction of his mousing duties. When he returns to seek solace from Kitty, Tom realises, to his dismay, that she already has a litter of 17 kittens. Unable to provide for or deal with his new family, in a dark twist, he commits suicide. An odd choice for a cartoon, but it reflects Sullivan’s dark Australian and Irish humour, later used to good effect in Felix Baffled by Banjos, another film featuring the dreaded banjo, in which Felix commits suicide to escape the noise of banjo-mad natives in the South Seas.⁷⁰ Unfortunately for Felix, even in heaven, the angels play banjos.

Feline Follies was released on Sunday 9 November 1919 and Musical Mews a week later on 16 November. Following a positive reception, the Master Tom character was renamed Felix, most likely as Master Tom was too close to the Universal-owned Thomas Kat. Sullivan immediately began to work on sequels. On Sunday 14 December 1919 The Adventures of Felix was released. The rest is animation history.⁷¹

A decade of Felix’s silent screen box office dominance ended dramatically on 18 November 1928 when Walt Disney’s Mickey Mouse stepped onto his steamboat in Steamboat Willie, featuring synchronised sound. Just four years later, on 15 February 1933, at the peak of the Great Depression, Sullivan, aged 47, died in New York from ‘chronic alcoholism and … pneumonia’.⁷² Less than a year earlier, Marjorie had tragically fallen to her death from the seventh floor of the Forrest Hotel in New York’s Theatre District (currently operating as The Time New York) while Sullivan was working at the studio. Already an alcoholic, Sullivan, consumed by grief and haunted by her loss, spiralled into a devastating cycle of self-destruction. Soon after his death, Harry Kopp, Sullivan’s executor, ‘attorney, agent and friend’, described him as the ‘well-known cartoonist [and] the creator of the cartoon known as “Felix the Cat”’.⁷³

A cocktail tale

The World Retrospective of Animation Cinema in Montreal, a festival hosted jointly by the Montreal International Film Festival and The Canadian Film Archive, took place from 13 to 18 August 1967. Animation buffs have described it as one of the most significant gatherings of animators in the twentieth century.⁷⁴ The festival featured 250 animated movies and participants from around 15 countries, with 200 animated filmmakers mingling in the ambitious, once-off, industry get-together.⁷⁵

An incredible group of animation artists attended the festival: Walter Lantz, co-creator of Woody Woodpecker; Dave Fleischer, director of Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor films; and Robert Clampett, who developed Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and Porky Pig. Walt Disney had died the year before the festival, but Ub Iwerks, co-creator of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse, attended. The well-known animators and directors stayed with their partners at the Royal Embassy Hotel. The cocktail party, photographed for posterity, was remarkable as animation pioneers reminisced about the golden age of animation, including the wild, early days of silent animated films.⁷⁶

A lesser-known artist, Otto Messmer, was also hosted by organisers at the Royal Embassy Hotel. Messmer, primarily known among his contemporaries for having drawn Sullivan’s Felix comic strips, enjoyed the ‘star treatment’. He was photographed at the cocktail party in the lobby, chatting with the festival’s co-organiser. The 75-year-old Messmer and his wife were delighted by the respectful atmosphere but likely felt inadequate: animators like Fleischer and Lantz had run studios and were responsible for some of the world’s most successful animated characters. A decade later, Messmer told the New York Times that his invitation had been a surprise. ‘Much to my surprise’, he recounted, ‘they said they had been looking for me as one of the pioneers of animation.’ Messmer said: ‘I kind of laughed at that.’⁷⁷

The festival organisers had been shown an animation of Felix by Messmer in the 1955 Disney documentary The Story of Animated Drawing. Walt Disney knew Messmer and had unsuccessfully attempted to hire him away from Sullivan at the height of Felix’s fame. Disney commissioned Messmer to animate Felix’s trademark walk for the documentary while Disney provided his voiceover: ‘Pat Sullivan’s cartoon character Felix the Cat … this characteristic walk, animated by Sullivan’s collaborator Otto Messmer, became [a] laugh provoking trademark.’⁷⁸ The festival organisers commissioned 12 artists to create a folioscope or flipbook—a series of drawings varying gradually from page to page, so the pictures appear to animate when flipped rapidly. Messmer obliged, and his folioscope was titled Felix—by Otto Messmer.⁷⁹

Joe Oriolo, creator of the 1950s Felix the Cat television show, encouraged Messmer’s recognition at the festival: ‘He got calls to go to that World Fair in Canada because of me building him up.’⁸⁰ At that time, Oriolo co-owned Felix the Cat Productions, Inc. with Sullivan’s nephew, but he would eventually wrest control of the company from the Sullivans. Downplaying Sullivan’s legacy suited Oriolo and, as a result of his efforts, Messmer received a co-creator credit at the Eats Are West screening during the session’s ‘Homage to the Pioneers’, giving him instant credibility with animation fans. However, even while ‘building up’ Messmer, Oriolo questioned his abilities:

He’s always got plans to do something, which never happens. [Messmer] always says, ‘Tomorrow I’m going to really do a character. I got an idea for a character. It’ll be better than Felix.’⁸¹

Although he ‘laughed’ at the idea of being an animation pioneer, Messmer enjoyed the recognition. He had little to show for a lifetime as a salaried illustrator. And so, at 75 years of age, at that cocktail party in Montreal, Messmer told anyone who would listen, in his thick Hoboken accent, that he was the one who created Felix, not Sullivan.⁸² Messmer used nearly 14 years of experience assisting with the animation of Felix and illustrating Felix’s comic strips to provide entertaining and credible details to back up his story. The festival became an excellent platform for him to spread this new narrative.

Messmer claims Feline Follies

Fast-forward a decade to when the ex-actor turned filmmaker and animation historian John Cannizzaro Jr, who used the name John Canemaker,⁸³ was looking for projects: ‘Everybody I met in those early days said that you have to meet Otto Messmer, as he really created Felix the Cat.’ Canemaker was familiar with Felix, as created by Pat Sullivan, but the animation pioneers he spoke with said: ‘No, it was really Otto.’⁸⁴ The 34-year-old Canemaker, who had given up on acting to complete a liberal arts degree at Marymount College a few years earlier, had found a ‘scoop’ early in his career as an animation historian.⁸⁵ Canemaker got a film camera and captured Messmer describing how he, rather than Sullivan, had created Felix for the short documentary Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat.⁸⁶

The documentary was shown at a retrospective of Felix films at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, after which Messmer was ‘swamped’ with media attention.⁸⁷ Among other shows, Messmer appeared on To Tell the Truth as Felix’s ‘real’ creator, alongside two other contestants falsely claiming to be the character’s creator. Four panellists were tasked with separating the ‘real’ individual from the imposters by asking questions. Messmer provided the producers with a signed ‘affidavit’, read on air, which stated:

I, Otto Messmer, was the creator of the animated cartoon Felix the Cat. The character was born in 1919 and was one of the first cartoon characters to become an international star. Felix ranked alongside Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd as one of the most dynamic comic personalities on the silent screen. Though Felix was drawn with simple, short lines, he created long lines at the box office. This often truculent, always resourceful man-cat was the most popular animated star of the Twenties. Yet my name never appeared on the more than 200 cartoon shorts. Now, however, more than fifty-five years later, Felix the Cat and I have been honoured with special showings at the Whitney Museum and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. I think Felix would be proud, and I know I am.⁸⁸

Messmer recounted ‘how Felix came to be’ for Canemaker’s documentary. According to Messmer, Paramount approached Sullivan to fill in for a ‘tardy animator’:

Well, the Sullivan Studio was very busy, and Paramount needed, uh, they were falling behind their schedule, and they needed one extra to fill in. And Sullivan, being very busy, said: ‘If you want to do it on the side, you can do any little thing to satisfy them’. So, I figured a cat would be about the simplest. Make him all black, you know. You wouldn’t need to worry about outlines. And a little chasing a mouse around, but one gag after the other, you know. Cute. And they all got laughs, so Paramount liked it, so they ordered a series.⁸⁹

Messmer elaborated on the story for Leonard Maltin’s 1980 book Of Mice and Magic a few years later. Messmer clarified that by ‘on the side’ he meant he did the drawings at home, not at the Sullivan Studio. Messmer would have been 27 years old at the time and living with his parents in West New York.⁹⁰ He explained:

The studio being busy, Sullivan asked me to do one in my spare time, at home. I did a quick one showing a black cat being outwitted by a mouse. I used plenty of picture gags. Paramount liked it and signed it up for their Paramount Screen Magazine. It made a hit with the public. I wrote and animated it alone with studio assistants. It grew in popularity, and as the demand became more urgent, Sullivan took on more animators, at various times, to help.⁹¹

In 1982, the Associated Press distributed a story celebrating Messmer’s ninetieth birthday. The ageing animator told the reporter that he remembered ‘the day 63 years ago when his boss ordered him to create an animated cartoon to be shown before a silent movie’. Messmer said he ‘went home to the drawing board in his attic and brought Felix the Cat to life’.⁹² Messmer died less than a year later.

Canemaker released The Twisted Tale of Felix the Cat in 1991. The heavily researched book accepted Messmer’s claim, based partly on interviews with Messmer and studio staffers Al Eugster and Hal Walker. A few years later, Canemaker became a tenured professor, heading the animation program at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. In 1989, he generously made his research public in the John Canemaker Animation Collection, housed in a special collection at the Fales Library at New York University.

Felix and the ‘big lie’

Although Messmer started telling his story at the Montreal festival in 1967, it was not until Canemaker’s 1977 documentary that his claim that he created Felix became known to the public. The US media enthusiastically accepted and republished Messmer’s claims.

Enjoying the newfound attention, Messmer also contributed to Donald Crafton’s 1982 book Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928, published by MIT Press. That book, republished in 1993 by the University of Chicago, features Felix on the cover and a Foreword by Messmer, in which he takes full credit for the creation of Felix:

In 1919 I created a character which Paramount named ‘Felix the Cat’. I used the style of Charlie Chaplin and kept him alone in his antics, unhampered by supporting characters. Being a loner, he could roam to various locations, without being limited to any fixed place.⁹³

As Sullivan had died in 1933 with no children, there were no close family members to question Messmer’s claims. Sullivan’s nephew had returned to Australia and passed away in 1974. Emboldened by the lack of pushback, Messmer embellished his story and, with newfound confidence, claimed credit for ‘ushering in a new age of animation’, remarking that Felix opened the door ‘on a road that led to a new field of visual arts’.⁹⁴ Messmer took complete credit not only for the creation of Felix but also for Felix’s personality and mannerisms, even though many animators worked on Felix over the years, including Bill Nolan, the creator of Krazy Kat, who is credited with creating the ‘rounder’ and friendlier version of Felix that is popular today, and Raoul Barré, the talented artist who animated some of the best Felix films. Instead, Messmer described how, with a ‘new angle’, he gave Felix a personality that allowed him to solve ‘many seemingly impossible problems with ingenious picture gags and always leaving a happy ending’. This is a curious statement, given that Felix commits suicide in Feline Follies. Messmer said that he made the character to ‘influence young children by exemplifying kindness and lending a helping hand to others’.⁹⁵

It is in Crafton’s book that Messmer’s story unravels rather dramatically and spectacularly. Messmer claims in the Foreword that Felix was ‘unhampered by supporting characters’. This is inconsistent with the plot of Feline Follies, which revolves around Felix and his beau, Miss Kitty White, a recurring character in at least a dozen Felix films. A clip featuring Kitty was shown on To Tell the Truth. When asked Kitty’s name, Messmer said that the character had no name, following up with: ‘Well, it’s just a gag, you know.’⁹⁶

More problematically, after recounting how Sullivan told him to create the character at home, Messmer, in Crafton’s book, described Feline Follies:

I made a little film for them about a cat. He was chasing some mice around and it was full of gags like a mouse running up a grandfather clock, taking the minute hand off, throwing it like a spear and nailing the cat’s tail to the floor. The title was Feline Follies. Paramount said, ‘Make us another’, so I did a second one called Musical Mews.⁹⁷

This description is virtually identical to Messmer’s previously unpublished account in 1979, in response to Canemaker’s request to ‘tell me about the birth of Felix’:⁹⁸

Well, I did little gags like, there’s a grandfather clock there, for instance, and a cute little mouse, you know. He’d run, and the cat almost had him, but he was always tricked. He’d run up to the grandfather clock and take the hour hand, throw it, and pin the tail of Felix. Stuff like that. Always with his tail, he’d get him. He’d bore a hole in the floor, and when the tail of Felix went down, he’d tie a knot in so he couldn’t get up. And it had one laugh after the other. I did it at home in my spare time, you know.⁹⁹

Whatever film Messmer was describing, it was not Feline Follies. As described above, that film is about Tom and Kitty and their ultimately tragic romance. In the film, a group of mice invade Tom’s owner’s house, but they never outwit Tom, and the ‘gags’ Messmer described simply do not occur. Indeed, none of the actions described by Messmer happen in Feline Follies, which is available to the public to view.

Confoundingly, Messmer described plot scenarios and ‘gags’ that did not appear in the film he claimed to have created in his parent’s attic, involving up to 1,000 drawings. His description of Feline Follies had nothing to do with the film and was also very much ‘off-brand’. Instead, Messmer described a Tom & Jerry–like cartoon, with Felix, a hapless cat, being outwitted by the mice he was chasing. However, unlike Tom from Tom & Jerry, Felix was a ‘cool’ cat; the film’s entire premise was that he was too busy wooing Miss Kitty White to fulfil his feline duties—he did not have time to chase mice around.

It is difficult to understand how Messmer could get it so wrong. Yet, while the film is now available for everyone to see, the internet did not exist when Messmer was interviewed in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He could not have foreseen that technology would allow such easy access to the film; he likely assumed that it was relegated to an eternity in dusty archives. It is likely that he himself had not seen Feline Follies since it was first shown in theatres about 60 years earlier. The embarrassing truth is that, as Messmer did not create the character or the film, he had forgotten what it was about.

From a business standpoint, Messmer’s account is unconvincing. Sullivan was a shrewd businessman and he would not have allowed Messmer, a salaried illustrator, to create new characters ‘on the side’, as Sullivan would not then have owned the film and its characters. Messmer later said: ‘Pat and I … received an offer from Paramount to do work for them. Pat gave me permission to work for them, but only in my spare time.’¹⁰⁰ This makes little sense. If Sullivan allowed Messmer to work independently, he would have had no ownership interest in Felix. It also makes no sense that a salaried illustrator would have invested his own time, working weekends and evenings, to develop a character that Sullivan would ultimately own.

After the Universal contract ended, Sullivan needed the Paramount deal to replace it. Contrary to Messmer’s assertions, Sullivan was not so busy that he could not pay attention to the content for Paramount. Further, the claim that Sullivan, a shrewd businessman and extraordinary networker, asked Messmer to do ‘any little thing … to satisfy [Paramount]’ simply does not ring true.¹⁰¹ Sullivan understood that his business relied on distributors to survive and desperately needed the Paramount business.

Then there are the production issues associated with Messmer’s story. Messmer claimed that Feline Follies was originally a ‘one-off’ for Paramount but that they ‘liked it and signed it up for their Paramount Screen Magazine’ presumably because the film was popular with audiences.¹⁰²Feline Follies was released on 9 November 1919, and the follow-up film, Musical Mews, also featuring Master Tom, was released only seven days later, on 16 November 1919.¹⁰³ Messmer’s version of the story would require Paramount to screen Feline Follies, negotiate with Sullivan for a series, have Messmer conceive the new film, sketch, ink and photograph around 1,000 drawings and then pass the developed film to be printed and distributed as part of the Paramount Magazine, all in a short period of time. Even when the studio was fully staffed, they could only commit to a Felix film every two weeks, and it was the case that each film took longer than that.

The invented description of Feline Follies, the lack of a business rationale and the seemingly impossible production timelines should be sufficient evidence to discredit Messmer’s claim. Added to this, the Australian animator Gerald Carr demonstrates that the lettering in the film is Sullivan’s by comparing it to his Marriner strips and illustrations made when visiting Australia.¹⁰⁴ Carr highlights Sullivan’s ‘art mannerisms’ in the film, including his dotting technique. The lettering in the Chaplin films drawn by Sullivan also matches the lettering in Feline Follies, indicating that the film was drawn by Sullivan, even if it was inked and filled in by Messmer and his animation team. Feline Follies also uses the Australian spelling of ‘mum’ instead of the American spelling ‘mom’. The aphaeresis used by one of Miss Kitty White’s kittens to exclaim ‘‘Lo Mum’ encourages pronunciation with a strong Australian accent. The seemingly inevitable conclusion is that Sullivan was drawing and lettering Feline Follies, rendering Messmer’s claim to have made the film at home, along with his claim that ‘Sullivan didn’t do a damn thing’, untruthful.¹⁰⁵

The coup de grâce of Messmer’s credibility is that, when Feline Follies was created, Messmer lived with his parents on 50th Street in West New York, which the Hudson County Genealogical and Historical Society has confirmed was originally known as Sixth Street, as referenced in Messmer’s Ima Knut. Messmer claimed to have created Felix ‘on the drawing board in his attic’, yet the two-storey house once owned by his parents sits in a row of identical houses built in 1914, unchanged since construction. The house has a decorative gable roof, but, unfortunately for Messmer, there is no attic.¹⁰⁶

A complete lack of evidence

The repeated and glaring inconsistencies in Messmer’s story highlight the need for corroborating evidence, but there is no physical evidence nor any corroborating witnesses. Canemaker visited Messmer and his wife at their home and was apparently shown the animator’s files, but he did not publish any physical evidence.¹⁰⁷ Canemaker offered the following to corroborate Messmer’s story:

There are two eyewitnesses who worked at the studio as animators, who I interviewed, who tell me, both of them, that Messmer was the brains behind Felix. He came up with the stories, he directed the films, he handed out the work to the animators and he picked up the payroll on Friday.¹⁰⁸

The two animators were Hal Walker and Al Eugster. Messmer hired Walker in 1920¹⁰⁹ and Eugster joined the studio in 1925.¹¹⁰ Hence, they both joined after Felix was already successful. Since neither animator was present when Felix was created, they could not be ‘eyewitnesses’ to Felix’s creation. In his documentary, Canemaker stated that ‘the truth about Otto Messmer’s contributions’ resulted from ‘the reassessment of animation as an art form by film scholars and historians’.

In 2005, the State Library of New South Wales held an exhibition entitled Reclaiming Felix that featured a range of Felix artefacts. The exhibition catalogue referenced Sullivan’s registration of the copyright for The Tail of Thomas Kat before Feline Follies to support the claim that Sullivan, not Messmer, created Felix.¹¹¹ Producers of the Australian television program Rewind, broadcast shortly before the exhibition opened, confirmed that they had contacted Canemaker and that he had agreed to review his position after seeing the evidence presented regarding the copyright registration for The Tail of Thomas Kat.¹¹² However, Judy Nelson, curator of the Reclaiming Felix exhibition, told attendees at the exhibition’s opening that Canemaker ‘hasn’t gotten back to us’.¹¹³

Apart from the inconsistencies in Messmer’s story and lack of corroborating evidence, it is worth noting that Messmer had a history of making dubious claims to benefit himself. On 25 February 1933, only a few days after Sullivan died, Messmer wrote to Harry Kopp stating that he ‘had been promised by Mr Sullivan that the copyright to “Felix”, as well as the trademark, would be left to him up on his death’. Kopp said:

while [Messmer] did not make any particular legal claim to [the intellectual property], he threatened to take a position with Walt Disney in California or elsewhere unless an immediate adjustment was made with King Features Syndicate, Inc. whereby he could continue to draw this cartoon as before.¹¹⁴

Subsequently, Kopp agreed to transfer exclusive worldwide newspaper publication rights for the Felix daily comic strip in perpetuity to King Features Syndicate, Inc. for US$2,000.

In 1975, Messmer again claimed that Sullivan, on his deathbed, had promised ownership of Felix to him. He claimed that Sullivan ‘showed [him] a will [when] he knew he was going’ and that, in the will, Sullivan ‘left copyright of Felix to [Messmer] in return for creatin’ it for him’.¹¹⁵ Harry Kopp testified that he had searched Sullivan’s bachelor apartment in the Mayflower Hotel for days after his passing, and that no alternative will was found.¹¹⁶ Messmer further claimed that the document granting him the Felix copyright was replaced with ‘one of them dinky, printed wills, nothing, just overall “to my next of kin”’. Messmer continued: ‘somebody had ‘em do that’.¹¹⁷ This is patently false. Probate files at the Surrogate’s Court in New York include Sullivan’s probated will and valid last testament dated 25 April 1932. Sullivan prepared the will about a month after the tragic death of his wife, just one year before his unfortunate passing.¹¹⁸ In recognition of ‘the uncertainty of this life’, Sullivan left his estate to his ‘beloved father’ and ‘beloved brother’. There was no ‘dinky printed will’. His lawyer and a family friend properly witnessed Sullivan’s probated will.¹¹⁹

On Sullivan’s death in 1933, his Australian relatives, the rightful heirs to the Felix business, took ownership and control of that business. Messmer had effectively overseen the daily operations at the Sullivan Studio since 1929 when Sullivan’s alcoholism had begun to worsen, and he resented that he lost control. He believed that he knew better. Messmer later said the Felix business was mishandled: ‘the market was there’ and the Felix business was ‘itching to go like Disney’. During the same conversation, the ‘humble’ Messmer referred to Sullivan’s nephew, who was tasked with running the business, as ‘the idiot in Australia’.¹²⁰

The role of the media

The US media enthusiastically promoted Messmer’s claims, even though he apparently failed to produce a scrap of corroborating evidence and could not remember the plot of the film he claimed to have made. At the New York Times, Messmer’s story was handled by arts and entertainment reporters. Although respected in their field, such reporters are not necessarily bound by the canons of conventional news reporting, including proper use of sources and reporting single eyewitness events with attribution. Messmer’s deception likely flew under the radar because he lied about a cartoon character, not a ‘hard news’ story for which rigorous journalistic standards would have applied. Misinformation flourished, bolstered by headlines such as ‘The Real Star of Felix the Cat’ in the New York Times.¹²¹ Later, in Messmer’s obituary, the respected paper stated that the nonagenarian had ‘created Felix the Cat and developed the character in over 300 short films in the 1920s and 30s’.¹²²

The media-friendly story of the ‘painfully self-effacing animator from New Jersey named Otto Messmer who slaved for years in anonymity’ was an invention of the press. Sullivan had treated Messmer as his protégé, and the young animator had been given full credit for his animation work, but Messmer’s films were unsuccessful. Messmer abandoned Sullivan during his darkest hour. Following WWI, he was re-hired by his ex-boss, but this time as a salaried illustrator. Jealous of Sullivan’s success, Messmer waited until after his death to change the narrative and claim ownership of Felix. With the help of the US media, the myth grew, embellished with each retelling, while Sullivan, the genuine creator of Felix, a convicted criminal, was cast as a ‘cartoon villain’.

In 1976, Variety named Messmer one of the five most important animation pioneers. In 1979, he received the Winsor McCay trophy from the International Animation Film Society for his ‘long and distinguished service to the art of animation’.¹²³ Messmer, who likely received those accolades because of his claim to have created Felix, happily ‘dined out’ on this charade until his death on 28 October 1983, aged 91.¹²⁴

In his book, Canemaker highlighted that Messmer’s New York Times obituary was ‘more than double the length of Pat Sullivan’s’—as if it was a competition.¹²⁵ The obituary featured a photograph of Messmer with a Felix toy, captioned ‘Otto Messmer and his creation, Felix the Cat’.¹²⁶ Meanwhile, Pat Sullivan, the true creator of Felix, the world’s first animated superstar, has been largely forgotten, his body lying in an unmarked grave in Scranton, Pennsylvania.¹²⁷

Drawing a conclusion

Over the last 50 years, countless newspaper articles, books, television programs and, latterly, social media posts have enthusiastically supported Otto Messmer’s claim to have created Felix the Cat. Messmer presented no evidence to support his claim, and his narrative contained repeated and outrageous inconsistencies. It makes no sense that Messmer created an entire animated feature at home, copying Sullivan’s handwriting and artistic techniques, and using Australian spelling. It also makes no sense that Messmer would forget the film’s plot, which he claimed to have created in an attic that does not exist.

A convicted criminal, Sullivan was not a suitable hero figure. The US media’s insatiable need to find and promote such a figure involved projecting idealised qualities onto Messmer, even in the face of his demonstrable dishonesty. The motivation for Messmer’s false claims is not difficult to discover. Messmer worked on Felix for most of his career and resented that he received none of the limelight and few of the financial rewards associated with the animated superstar. Much more can, and likely will, be said about Pat Sullivan and his controversial life. He was a deeply troubled man. Even if you disapprove of the man, it remains the case that the Australian Pat Sullivan, not the American Otto Messmer, created Felix the Cat. Felix is a cat with two tales, but only one is true.

---

1. 1 Harold Walker, interview by John Canemaker, 1978, John Canemaker Animation Collection, MSS.040, Box V.3, Media ID: 040.0025, Fales Library and Special Collections, New York University (NYU).

2. 2 ‘“Felix”, in Toy Form, to Be Sold to Public’, Motion Picture News, 1 April 1922.

3. 3 Felix was ‘not only the first cartoon character to attain the celebrity of a human star but also was the first to be as an image on packaging in 1924’. See Guinness World Records, ‘First Cartoon Merchandise’, accessed 19 March 2025, guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/first-cartoon-merchandise.

4. 4 Reid Mitenbuler, Wild Minds: The Artists and Rivalries That Inspired the Golden Age of Animation (New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2020), 27.

5. 5 Christian Hoffer, ‘5 Most Classic Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons’, ComicBook.com, 5 September 2017, comicbook.com/news/5-most-classic-macys-thanksgiving-day-parade-balloons/.

6. 6 David Shedden, ‘Today in Media History: In 1928 Felix the Cat Began Testing a New Tech Called Television’, Poynter, 7 November 2014, poynter.org/news/today-media-history-1928-felix-cat-began-testing-new-tech-called-television. As of the date this article was prepared, the famous doll used in the broadcast can be found at the MZTV Museum of Television, Toronto, Canada.

7. 7 ‘RAAF’s 11 Squadron Prepares for Change of Planes, but Felix the Cat isn’t Going Anywhere’, ABC News, 23 May 2015, abc.net.au/news/2015-05-23/raaf-prepares-for-generation-change/6491084.

8. 8 In 2018, a Grumman F4F-3 ‘Wildcat’ with Felix the Cat insignia was found in the wreckage of the USS Lexington. See Sam Lagrone, ‘Billionaire Paul Allen Finds Lost World War II Carrier USS Lexington’, USNI News, 5 March 2018, news.usni.org/2018/03/05/video-billionaire-paul-allen-finds-lost-world-war-ii-carrier-uss-lexington.

9. 9 Abigail Wilkinson, ‘Viewing the History of Japanese and U.S. Relations through Animation’, Chênière 6 (2022), www.nicholls.edu/cheniere/2022/09/02/viewing-the-history-of-japanese-and-u-s-relations-through-animation/.

10. 10 Pat Sullivan’s Felix the Cat, produced by Joe Oriolo, Trans-Lux, 1958–62, television series.

11. 11 Amid Amidi, ‘DreamWorks Buys 95-Year-Old Felix the Cat to Make Him a “Fashion Brand”’, Cartoon Brew, 18 June 2014, www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/dreamworks-buys-95-year-old-felix-the-cat-to-make-him-a-fashion-brand-100564.html. In recent years, Felix has been licensed to well-known fashion brands Levi’s, Coach, Skechers and Fyodor Golan. Even though the earlier versions of Felix have fallen into the public domain, the character remains a prominent part of the Universal Products & Experiences character franchise portfolio operated by NBC Universal Media, LLC.

12. 12 Aldous Huxley, ‘Where Are the Movies Moving?’ Vanity Fair, July 1925, 39.

13. 13 Mr Milo, ‘Before Mickey, before Oswald, There Was Julius the Cat’, Pirates & Princesses, 28 November 2023, piratesandprincesses.net/before-mickey-before-oswald-there-was-julius-the-cat/.

14. 14 Correspondence with Sullivan and Gallagher family members, in possession of the author.

15. 15 Russell Merritt, ‘The Irrepressible Felix the Cat: 1924–1928’, San Francisco Silent Film Festival, 2012, silentfilm.org/the-irrepressible-felix-the-cat-1924-1928/.

16. 16 Messmer was featured, among other appearances, on the television game show To Tell the Truth. See To Tell the Truth, directed by Lloyd Gross, episode 2,735, taped on 11 May 1976 and aired on 24 September 1976.

17. 17 Walker, interview by Canemaker, 1978.

18. 18 David Chute, Chaplin Animated: Silent Cartoons ([independently published], 2019), 27. According to Chute, Sullivan negotiated to retain the copyright in the films he produced under his Universal output deal, but it seems Universal registered copyright.

19. 19 Kerwin Maegraith, ‘The Romantic Story of Pat Sullivan, a Sydney Art Genius’, Sydney Mail, 1 July 1936, 18.

20. 20 Probation officer’s investigation in the case of The People of the State of New York v. Patrick Sullivan, 1917, Court of General Sessions case file #115342, New York Municipal Archives.

21. 21 Bob Coar, ‘New York Animation: Felix the Cash Cow’, Cartoon Research, 4 July 2022, cartoonresearch.com/index.php/new-york-animation-felix-the-cash-cow/.

22. 22 Chrystopher J. Spicer, Great Australian World Firsts: The Wonderful, Wonderful Cat, Pat Sullivan and Felix (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2012), 11–12.

23. 23 Reports that Sullivan was engaged in the business of touring a bioscope with his brother are supported by advertisements appearing in regional Australian newspapers in 1907 for ‘The Parisian Bioscope Company’, exhibiting Pathé films, operated ‘Under the Direction of W. O’Sullivan’, the name of Sullivan’s brother. One such advertisement appeared in the 19 April 1907 edition of the Evening Mail in Fremantle, Western Australia.

24. 24 Coar, ‘New York Animation’.

25. 25 Otto Messmer, interview by John Canemaker, 29 January 1979, John Canemaker Animation Collection, MSS.040, Box V.3, Media ID: 040.0013, NYU.

26. 26 ‘Blackeners’ would ink the pencil lines drawn by the animators and fill in or ‘blacken’ the outlined figures. One of the ‘blackeners’ was Marjorie, who subsequently became Sullivan’s wife.

27. 27 ‘The Pre-Felix Pat Sullivan Studio Filmography’, Internet Animation Database – International Animated Film Association.

28. 28 According to Messmer, ‘2 exposures for walks and normal movements’. See Otto Messmer, interview by Mark Newgarden and John Mariano, 1980, John Canemaker Animation Collection, MSS.040, Box 18, Folder 203, NYU.

29. 29 ‘Evidence of Patrick Sullivan’, Court of General Sessions of the Peace, City and County of New York, Part III, before the Hon. Thomas C. T. Crain, 19 June 1917, 132. Other sources indicate between 3,000 and 5,000 drawings per 10-minute feature. See ‘Felix Will Remain in Paramount Films’, Exhibitor’s Herald, 3 April 1920.

30. 30 ‘Evidence of Patrick Sullivan’, 127.

31. 31 ‘Felix Will Remain in Paramount Films’.

32. 32 Walter Lantz, ‘Film Cartoons and How They are Made’, Everyone’s, 18 August 1926.

33. 33 ‘Felix Will Remain in Paramount Films’.

34. 34 ‘Notable Worker Contributions’, Australian Worker (Sydney, NSW), 4 February 1942, 18.

35. 35 ‘Evidence of Patrick Sullivan’, 126.

36. 36 ‘Life of a Poet’, Wireless Weekly, 26 May 1933, 11.

37. 37 ‘Evidence of Patrick Sullivan’, 132.

38. 38 Universal Film Manufacturing Company, Motor Mat and His Fliv, 1916, Library of Congress.

39. 39 Cartoon Roots: Otto Messmer’s Feline Follies, produced by Tommy José Stathes (New York: Cartoons on Film, 2021).

40. 40 Universal Film Manufacturing Company, The Love Affair of Ima Knut, 1917, Library of Congress.

41. 41 Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 29 January 1979.

42. 42 ‘The Pre-Felix Pat Sullivan Studio Filmography’.

43. 43 Universal Film Manufacturing Company, The Tail of Thomas Kat, 1917, Library of Congress.

44. 44 Universal Film Manufacturing Company, The Tail of Thomas Kat.

45. 45 Cartoon Roots: Otto Messmer’s Feline Follies.

46. 46 ‘Origin of “Felix the Cat”’, Argus, 1 December 1925, 17.

47. 47 ‘The Pre-Felix Pat Sullivan Studio Filmography’.

48. 48 ‘Evidence of Dr. Herbert L. Constable’, Court of General Sessions of the Peace, City and County of New York, Part III, before the Hon. Thomas C. T. Crain, 19 June 1917, 284.

49. 49 Sullivan was convicted of the crime of statutory rape by a jury of his peers and sentenced accordingly. See John Jay College of Criminal Justice Digital Collections, People of the State of New York v Patrick Sullivan (Trial #2323), dc.lib.jjay.cuny.edu/index.php/Detail/Object/Show/object_id/6067.

50. 50 Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 29 January 1979.

51. 51 Chute, Chaplin Animated, 30.

52. 52 Donald Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), 162.

53. 53 Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 29 January 1979.

54. 54 Passenger List of Organizations and Casuals, Company ‘C’ 104 Field Signal Battalion, Headquarters Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, New Jersey, Date of Sailing, 19 June 1918. Courtesy of The Hudson County Genealogical and Historical Society.

55. 55 Messmer’s diary from 1918 to 1919 includes a ‘movie scenario’ for a film called ‘Fearless Freddy’, about a man who ‘digs for gold’. There is no physical evidence that Messmer was developing a Felix-like character. See Otto Messmer, Diary, 1918–1919, John Canemaker Animation Collection, MSS.040, Box 18, Folder 205, NYU.

56. 56 Passenger List of Organizations and Casuals Returning to the United States, Company ‘C’ 104 Field Signal Battalion, Headquarters Port of Embarkation, Hoboken, New Jersey, Date of Sailing, 8 May 1919. Courtesy of The Hudson County Genealogical and Historical Society.

57. 57 Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 29 January 1979.

58. 58 Chute, Chaplin Animated, 30.

59. 59 Chute, Chaplin Animated, 42.

60. 60 Kerwin Maegraith, ‘Fortune and Felix the Cat’, Sydney Morning Herald, 15 April 1954, 9.

61. 61 Messmer recalled that Chaplin sent photographs of himself in various poses to use as a reference for the animation. Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 29 January 1979. A photograph of Sullivan and Marjorie in Sullivan’s office features a signed picture of Chaplin, posing as The Tramp, displayed on his wall. See ‘Untitled’, State Library of New South Wales FL1138732, digital.sl.nsw.gov.au/delivery/DeliveryManagerServlet?dps_pid=FL1138732.

62. 62 ‘The Pre-Felix Pat Sullivan Studio Filmography’.

63. 63 Chaplin’s lawyers brought a landmark lawsuit against an egregious imitator named ‘Charlie Aplin’. Chaplin successfully argued in Chaplin v. Amador that the unauthorised imitation of his distinctive persona by that performer constituted unfair competition and infringement of Chaplin’s rights. See Chaplin v. Amador, 93 Cal. App. 358 (Ct. App. 1928).

64. 64 Examples are available on popular video sharing websites. See also Cartoon Roots: Otto Messmer’s Feline Follies.

65. 65 Messmer was paid US$100 weekly when Walker joined in 1920. See Walker, interview by Canemaker, 1978. Probate records also indicate that Messmer received US$400 for two weeks’ unpaid wages from the Sullivan estate after Sullivan died in 1933.

66. 66 Coar, ‘New York Animation’.

67. 67 This was likely to avoid an infringement claim by Universal, the copyright owner in the Tail of Thomas Kat.

68. 68 The same scenario, featuring the almost identical lyrics ‘I’ve only got nine lives to live an’ I’ll give them to you’, appears in Charley on the Farm, released in October 1919. The lettering in Feline Follies has been inked more clearly, but the handwriting seems to be the same.

69. 69 During his criminal trial, Sullivan gave evidence that he played the mandolin, not the banjo, for visitors he entertained in his apartment, including his accuser. See ‘Evidence of Patrick Sullivan’, 142.

70. 70 David Gerstein, The Classic Felix Encyclopedia, 2007.

71. 71 ‘The Pre-Felix Pat Sullivan Studio Filmography’; ‘Felix the Cat Classic Films’, Internet Animation Database.

72. 72 Department of Health, New York City, Certificate of Death of Patrick Sullivan, dated 15 February 1933.

73. 73 Harry Kopp, ‘Affidavit’, 14 June 1934, In the Matter of the Judicial Settlement of the Account of Proceedings of Harry Kopp as Executor of the Estate of Pat Sullivan, Deceased, Surrogate’s Court, New York County.

74. 74 Marco de Blois, ‘Rediscovered Photos from the Greatest Animation Cocktail of the 20th Century’, Cartoon Brew, 1 August 2016, www.cartoonbrew.com/classic/rediscovered-photos-greatest-animation-cocktail-20th-century-142001.html.

75. 75 Rétrospective Mondiale de Cinéma d’Animation, complete program (Montreal, 13–18 August 1967).

76. 76 ‘Rétrospective Mondiale du Cinéma d’Animation, Montréal, août 1967’, Cinémathèque Québécoise, accessed 19 March 2025, www.cinematheque.qc.ca/en/works/retrospective-mondiale-du-cinema-danimation-montreal-aout-1967/.

77. 77 Jennifer Dunning, ‘The Real Star of Felix the Cat’, New York Times, 16 May 1976, nytimes.com/1976/05/16/archives/new-jersey-weekly-the-real-star-of-felix-the-cat-star-of-felix-the.html.

78. 78 The Story of Animated Drawing (Burbank: Walt Disney Productions, 1955), documentary film.

79. 79 Otto Messmer, Felix – by Otto Messmer (Montreal: La Cinémathèque, Canadienne, 1967).

80. 80 Joe Oriolo, interview by John Canemaker, 21 May 1975, John Canemaker Animation Collection, MSS.040, Box V.4, Media: ID: 040.0076, NYU.

81. 81 Oriolo, interview by Canemaker.

82. 82 Canemaker stated that the animation pioneers he spoke with indicated that Messmer was Felix’s creator. NYU maintains a collection of Canemaker interviews with pioneering animators, including some who attended the Rétrospective Mondiale de Cinéma d’Animation. See John Canemaker Animation Collection.

83. 83 Margarita Landazuri, ‘John Canemaker: The Pied Piper of Animation’, Silent Film Festival, 2013, silentfilm.org/john-canemaker-the-pied-piper-of-animation/.

84. 84 Ira Gallen, ‘Interview with John Canemaker’, in Biograph Days, Biograph Nights (New York City: Public Access Television, 1991).

85. 85 Joe Strike, ‘John Canemaker Interview—Part 1’, Animation World Network, 3 June 2005, www.awn.com/animationworld/john-canemaker-interview-part-1.

86. 86 John Canemaker, Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat (Phoenix Films: 1977).

87. 87 John Canemaker, The Twisted Tales of Felix the Cat (New York: Pantheon Books, 1991), 159.

88. 88 To Tell the Truth.

89. 89 Messmer, interview by Canemaker, in Otto Messmer and Felix the Cat.

90. 90 Census and military records indicate that Messmer lived at his parents’ address before and after he left for the war.

91. 91 Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1980), 22.

92. 92 ‘“Felix the Cat” Tale Had Many Twists over Years’, Central New Jersey Home News, 16 August 1982, 20.

93. 93 Otto Messmer, ‘Foreword’, in D. Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898–1928 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993).

94. 94 Messmer, ‘Foreword’.

95. 95 Messmer, ‘Foreword’.

96. 96 Otto Messmer in To Tell the Truth.

97. 97 Crafton, Before Mickey, 163.

98. 98 The story was repeated a third time to two students who interviewed Messmer at his home. Messmer, interview by Newgarden and Mariano, 1980.

99. 99 Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 29 January 1979.

100. 100 Peace Demmick, ‘The Father of Felix the Cat’, Jersey Journal, 15 October 1981, 17.

101. 101 During his criminal trial, Sullivan received many letters of support from his previous employers and business associates, including senior executives from several renowned film studios, such as Universal and MGM.

102. 102 Maltin, Of Mice and Magic, 22.

103. 103 ‘Felix the Cat Classic Films’.

104. 104 ‘Pat Sullivan: I Made the Cat and the Cat Made Me’, Vixen Magazine, accessed 5 November 2024.

105. 105 Messmer, interview by Newgarden and Mariano, 1980.

106. 106 The date of construction is available on popular real estate websites and the house and neighbouring houses can be seen on Google Maps, accessed 5 November 2024, maps.app.goo.gl/ipekr3BakhJJsfzy5.

107. 107 John Canemaker was shown Messmer’s files during his final interview. Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 29 January 1979.

108. 108 Gallen, ‘Interview with John Canemaker’.

109. 109 Canemaker, The Twisted Tales, 57.

110. 110 Canemaker, The Twisted Tales, 104.

111. 111 Reclaiming Felix featured materials from the State Library of New South Wales’ collection. The program stated: ‘Unknown to his opponents, in March 1917 Pat Sullivan had submitted a cartoon film, The Tail of Thomas Kat (the precursor to Felix), to the Copyright Office of the Library of Congress’. The program continues: ‘Since Sullivan’s death, claims have been made that Felix was not Sullivan’s creation … Messmer’s claim—made many years later in the absence of any defence from Sullivan—needs to be treated with caution’. State Library of New South Wales, Reclaiming Felix the Cat—in the Picture Gallery (Sydney, State Library of New South Wales, 2005).

112. 112 Rewind, presented by Christopher Zinn, produced by Alan Hall and researched by Daniel Reisinger, broadcast on ABC on 31 October 2004. The program transcript is available at: web.archive.org/web/20141008233531/http://www.abc.net.au/tv/rewind/txt/s1229985.htm.

113. 113 State Library of New South Wales, Series 07: Recordings of Talks Presented at the State Library of New South Wales, 24 May 2004 – 8 February 2006.

114. 114 Kopp, ‘Affidavit’.

115. 115 Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 5 March 1975, John Canemaker Animation Collection, MSS.040, Box 18, Folder 203, NYU.

116. 116 Kopp, ‘Affidavit’.

117. 117 Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 5 March 1975.

118. 118 Kopp, ‘Affidavit’.

119. 119 Estate of Pat Sullivan, ‘Proof of Sullivan Will’, filed for probate, New York County Surrogate’s Court, 1933. Sullivan’s will was also witnessed by Isidor B. Funt, a diamond importer and wholesaler and almost certainly an acquaintance of Sullivan’s from when his studio was located in the diamond district.

120. 120 Messmer, interview by Canemaker, 5 March 1975.

121. 121 Dunning, ‘The Real Star of Felix the Cat’.

122. 122 Douglas C. McGill, ‘Otto Messmer Is Dead at 91: Created “Felix the Cat” Films’, New York Times, 29 October 1983, nytimes.com/1983/10/29/obituaries/otto-messmer-is-dead-at-91-created-felix-the-cat-flims.html.

123. 123 Canemaker, The Twisted Tales, 160; ‘The Winsor McCay Award’, accessed 19 March 2025, annieawards.org/juried-awards/winsor-mccay.

124. 124 Messmer regaled two students who interviewed him in 1980 with stories of his four television appearances and invitations to travel overseas, ‘all expenses paid, treated like kings!’: Messmer, interview by Newgarden and Mariano, 1980.

125. 125 Canemaker, The Twisted Tales, 155.

126. 126 McGill, ‘Otto Messmer Is Dead’.

127. 127 Correspondence with Diocese of Scranton, Cathedral Cemetery, 6 March 2024, in possession of the author.