Oct 1892
Release date: 28 Oct 1892 | Running time: 00:15:00
Public domain
Pierrot climbs to Colombine's window at night to serenade her and win her over. Harlequin, his rival, appears and turns the courtship into open conflict, mocking Pierrot's attempt and staking his own claim on Colombine.Apr 1906
Humorous Phases of Funny Faces
Release date: 06 Apr 1906 | Running time: 00:03:00
Public domain
The film opens on a live-action hand drawing on a chalkboard. Blackton sketches the outline of a man's face and then a woman's, and once his hand withdraws the drawings finish themselves and come alive.Aug 1908
Release date: 17 Aug 1908 | Running time: 00:02:00
Public domain
An artist's live-action hand draws a stick-figure clown, and the clown immediately sets off on his own. What follows is less a plot than a chain of transformations, each object turning into the next before the eye has settled on it.Jan 1910
Release date: 01 Jan 1910 | Running time: 00:02:30
Public domain
The film is a circus act in seven short scenes, separated by stretches of black. A clown performs with his donkey: juggling, tumbling and setting up tricks that the animal either completes or spoils. A circus monkey helps out in some of the scenes.Jan 1911
Release date: 01 Jan 1911 | Running time: 00:06:30
Public domain
A small Father Frost figure, the kind that hangs as an ornament on a Russian Christmas tree, comes to life and climbs down into the world outside. He sets off on foot across a snowy plain toward the forest, carrying a little fir tree on his shoulder.Apr 1911
Release date: 08 Apr 1911 | Running time: 00:10:00
Public domain
The on-screen title is Winsor McCay, the Famous Cartoonist of the N.Y. Herald and His Moving Comics. Most of the film is live action. At a club, McCay bets his fellow cartoonists that he can make drawings move.Jan 1912
Release date: 08 Jan 1912 | Running time: 00:06:00
Public domain
A nervous man glances around before going into his room and getting into bed. Behind him, a giant mosquito in a top hat and carrying a little bag flies in through the transom window over the door. It lands on the sleeping man, sharpens its stinger on a grinding wheel, and starts to drink.Jan 1914
Colonel Heeza Liar's African Hunt
Release date: 10 Jan 1914 | Running time: 00:06:00
Public domain
Detailed plot records for this early entry are thin, and what follows is based on the surviving film. The Colonel, a short, round boaster in a pith helmet with a rifle under his arm, marches across a bare African landscape under a blazing cartoon sun, looking for big game to bag.Feb 1914
Release date: 08 Feb 1914 | Running time: 00:12:00
Public domain
In the theatrical version, a live-action prologue shows McCay and fellow cartoonists on an outing to a natural history museum, where McCay bets that he can bring a dinosaur to life. He goes away and draws thousands of pictures, then hosts a dinner to show the result.Feb 1916
Krazy Kat & Ignatz Mouse Discuss the Letter 'G'
Release date: 25 Feb 1916 | Running time: 00:02:00
Public domain
Krazy Kat is the cook in a little restaurant, and Ignatz Mouse is the only customer. Ignatz orders roast duck with gravy. Krazy brings it, adds a whole pie as a gesture of generosity, and starts making conversation: a lot of famous people, Krazy has noticed, have names beginning with "G".
Release date: 29 Feb 1916 | Running time: 00:02:00
Public domain
Krazy Kat sets out from a cottage marked "Krazy Kat's House" in a little car stencilled "Kazook", which bounces along the comic-strip horizon. Night falls; a crescent moon hangs over a tall blank wall with a single window, and Krazy pulls up beneath it.Mar 1916
Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse: A Duet, He Made Me Love Him
Release date: 03 Mar 1916 | Running time:
Public domain
Reliable plot documentation for this short is thin, and the descriptions attached to online copies contradict each other, so this summary sticks to what the surviving film shows.Sep 1916
Release date: 07 Sep 1916 | Running time: 00:06:00
Bobby Bumps Public domain
Detailed plot records for this short are thin; this account follows the surviving 16 mm print. Bobby Bumps, the mischievous small boy of Earl Hurd's series, is preoccupied with the story that babies are delivered by the stork, and he and his bulldog Fido talk it over.Nov 1916
Release date: 11 Nov 1916 | Running time: 00:05:30
Bobby Bumps Public domain
No detailed contemporary synopsis of this Bobby Bumps short has turned up, so this summary is based on the surviving film. Bobby Bumps and his dog Fido get into the circus, behind the scenes of the big top, where a keeper is tending an elephant with buckets beside him.Feb 1917
Colonel Heeza Liar on the Jump
Release date: 04 Feb 1917 | Running time: 00:05:00
Colonel Heeza Liar Public domain
Plot records for this short are thin, and this summary follows the surviving film. The Colonel, Bray's pint-sized, bewhiskered braggart, is out in the bush, a landscape of scrub, rocks and bare trees, when he runs into a kangaroo.Jun 1917
Release date: 01 Jun 1917 | Running time: 00:05:00
Public domain
A self-appointed samurai, more swagger than skill, wants a sword so he can prove himself by attacking passers-by in the street, the practice known as tsujigiri. A merchant sees him coming and sells him a blade that turns out to be blunt.Feb 1918
Release date: 01 Feb 1918 | Running time:
Public domain
The film adapted one of Japan's best-known folk tales. A young fisherman, Urashima Tarō, rescues a turtle from children who are tormenting it.
Release date: 09 Feb 1918 | Running time: 00:12:00
Public domain
A live-action prologue shows McCay and his assistants at work, introducing the film as a record of a crime. The animation then follows the ocean liner Lusitania leaving New York and crossing the Atlantic. Off the coast of Ireland, a German submarine surfaces and fires a torpedo.Oct 1919
Release date: 04 Oct 1919 | Running time: 00:04:00
Out of the Inkwell Public domain
The film opens in a real artist's studio. Max Fleischer sits at his drawing board while a colleague looks on, and the pen draws the clown, still unnamed at this stage of the series, on the paper. Once drawn, the clown comes alive. A fly lands on the page and starts to pester him.Nov 1919
Release date: 09 Nov 1919 | Running time: 00:05:00
Public domain
A black tomcat, called Master Tom here and later renamed Felix, goes courting in Pussyville. He serenades a white cat, and when she responds he declares he will devote all nine of his lives to her. The caterwauling wakes the whole neighbourhood.