“Felix the cat the wonderful wonderful cat… whenever he gets in a fix, he reaches into his bag of tricks.”
Felix the Cat is widely considered the world’s first animated film star. He first appeared as ‘Master Tom’ in an animated short titled Feline Follies, released by Paramount Studios on 9 November 1919, a full nine years before Mickey Mouse’s debut in Disney’s Steamboat Willie (1928).
Feline Follies was produced by Pat Sullivan Studios in New York. Sullivan was an Australian-born animator who started his career as a cartoonist before setting up his own animation studio in 1916.
There is still much debate over who originally created Felix the Cat. Many animation scholars attribute the character to Otto Messmer, one of Sullivan’s animators. However, Sullivan’s supporters claim Felix evolved from an earlier character of his who appeared in a short film titled The Tale of Thomas Kat (1917), two years before Feline Follies.
But one fact that is not in dispute is Felix’s enduring fame and status as a pop culture icon.
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