Winsor McCay

Winsor McCay
Born	Winsor Zenic McCay (1869-09-26)September 26, 1869 Spring Lake, Michigan
Died	July 26, 1934(1934-07-26) (aged 64) Brooklyn, New York
Occupation(s)	Animator, cartoonist
Children	Bob McCay
Parent(s)	Robert McKay and Janet Murray McKay

Winsor Zenic McCay (September 26, 1869 – July 26, 1934) was an American cartoonist and animator, best known for the comic strip Little Nemo (begun 1905) and the animated cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur (1914). For legal reasons, he worked under the pen name Silas on the comic strip Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.

McCay was a prolific artist and his pioneering early animated films far outshone the work of his contemporaries, and set a standard followed by Walt Disney and others in later decades. His comic strip work has influenced generations of artists, including creators such as William Joyce, André LeBlanc, Moebius, Maurice Sendak, Chris Ware and Bill Watterson.

Early life

Little Sammy Sneeze

Winsor Zenic McCay was born in Spring Lake, Michigan, on 26 September 1869 (this date, found on his tombstone, is debated—his New York Times obituary states 1871). He was the son of Robert McKay (later changed to McCay) and Janet Murray McKay; Robert at various times worked as a teamster, a grocer, and a real estate agent. Winsor's exact place and year of birth are uncertain — he claimed to have been born in Spring Lake, Michigan in 1871, but his gravestone says 1869, and census reports state that he was born in Canada in 1867. He was originally named Zenas Winsor McKay, in honor of his father's employer, Zenas G. Winsor. He later dropped the name Zenas.

In 1886, McCay's parents sent him to Cleary's Business College in Ypsilanti, Michigan to learn to be a businessman. While in Ypsilanti, he also received his only formal art training, from John Goodison of Michigan State Normal College (now known as Eastern Michigan University). Goodison taught him the strict application of the fundamentals of perspective, which he put to significant use later in his career.

Career

In 1889, McCay moved to Chicago, intending to study at the Art Institute of Chicago, but due to lack of money had to find employment instead. He worked for the National Printing and Engraving Company, producing woodcuts for circus and theatrical posters. Two years later, he moved to Cincinnati, Ohio and went to work as an artist for Kohl and Middleton's Vine Street Dime Museum. While in Cincinnati he married Maude Leonore Dufour. McCay began doing vaudeville chalk talks in 1906. In his The Seven Ages of Man vaudeville act, he drew two faces and progressively aged them.

Little Nemo in Slumberland

McCay's first major comic strip series was A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle with 43 installments published from January to November 1903 in the Cincinnati Enquirer. The strip was based on poems by George Randolph Chester, then a reporter and editor at the Enquirer. The stories concerned jungle creatures and the ways that they adapted to a hostile world, with individual titles such as How the Elephant Got His Trunk and How the Ostrich Got So Tall.

His strips Little Nemo and Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, published under the pseudonym "Silas", were both set in the dreams of their characters and featured fantasy art that attempted to capture the look and feel of dreams. McCay's cartoons were never overwhelmingly popular, but always had a strong following because of his expressive graphic style. Newspaper pages were physically much larger in that time and McCay usually had a half a page to work with. For fantasy art in comics, his only rival was Lyonel Feininger, who went on to have a career in the fine arts after his comics days were over.

McCay also created a number of animated short films, in which every single frame of each cartoon (with each film requiring thousands of frames) was hand-drawn by McCay and occasionally his assistants. McCay went on vaudeville tours with his films. He presented lectures and did drawings; then he interacted with his animated films, performing such tricks as holding his hand out to "pet" his animated creations.

Gertie the Dinosaur

The star of McCay's groundbreaking animated film Gertie the Dinosaur is classified by film and animation historians as the first cartoon character created especially for film to display a unique, realistic personality. In the film, Gertie causes trouble and cries when she is scolded, and finally she gives McCay himself a ride on her back as he steps into the movie picture.

In addition to a series of cartoons based on his popular "rarebit" gags, McCay also created The Sinking of the Lusitania, a depiction of the attack on the maritime ship. The propaganda cartoon contained a message that was meant to inspire America to enter World War I.

Death and legacy

McCay died on July 26, 1934 of a cerebral embolism, and was buried at the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn.

In 1966, Woody Gelman discovered many of the original Little Nemo strips at a cartoon studio where Bob McCay, Winsor's son, had worked. Many of the original drawings that Gelman recovered were displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art under the direction of curator A. Hyatt Mayor. In 1973, Gelman would publish a collection of Little Nemo strips in Italy.

On October 15th, 2012, Google showed an animated Doodle for the 107th anniversary of Winsor McCay's Little Nemo in Slumberland. The Google doodle was the first of its kind to feature an interactive, motion picture comic strip.

Comic strips

• A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle (1903)
• Little Sammy Sneeze (1904–1906)
• Dream of the Rarebit Fiend (1904–13)
• The Story of Hungry Henrietta (1905)
• A Pilgrim's Progress (1905 to 1910)
• Little Nemo in Slumberland (1905–1914, 1924–1927) (1911–1914 under the title In the Land of Wonderful Dreams)
• Poor Jake (1909–1911)

Filmography

Winsor McCay sketching at the 1908 Actors Benefit for Crippled Children.

• Little Nemo (1911) also titled Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics
• How a Mosquito Operates (1912) also titled The Story Of A Mosquito
• Gertie the Dinosaur (1914)
• The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918)
• Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville (1921)>123
• Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Pet (1921)
• Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: The Flying House (1921)
• The Centaurs (1921)
• Gertie on Tour (1921)
• Flip's Circus (1921)
• The Barnyard Performance (1922–27?) also titled Performing Animals and A Midsummer's Nightmare

Sources

• John Canemaker (2005). Winsor McCay: His Life and Art. Harry N. Abrams, Inc. ISBN 0-8109-5941-0.
• Ohio State University (1 June 2006). "Cartoon Library Acquires McCay Collection" (PDF). University Libraries New Notes.
• Leonard Maltin (1987). Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons; Revised and Updated. Plume Books. ISBN 0-452-25993-2.
• "The Cartoonist Group: Background About Winsor McCay;".
• Haverstock, Mary Sayre; Vance, Jeannette Mahoney; Meggitt, Brian L. (2000). "McCay, Winsor Zenic (1869–1934)". Artists in Ohio, 1787–1900: A Biographical Dictionary. Kent State University Press. p. 549. ISBN 978-0-87338-616-6. Retrieved 2012-07-03.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)

Further reading

• Bukatman, Scott (2012). The Poetics of Slumberland: Animated Spirits and the Animating Spirit. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-95150-1. Retrieved 2012-06-28. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Donald Crafton (1993). Before Mickey: The Animated Cartoon, 1898–1928. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226116679.

External links

• Spring Lake District Library "The Talented Winsor McCay"
• The Fales Library of NYU's guide to the David C. Bohnett Collection of Winsor McCay Drawings
• Meeting McCay
• Winsor McCay at IMDb on Internet Movie Database
• Template:Fr icon Little Nemo in Slumberland Anniversary Special
• Winsor McCay's The Centaurs.
• Comic Strip Library has a complete collection of out-of-copyright Little Nemo pages
• Winsor McCay, Comic Artist
• Winsor McCay at Britannica
• Winsor McCay's Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend Dover, ISBN 0-486-21347-1