Studio: Pat Sullivan Studio
Distributor: M. J. Winkler
Produced by: Pat Sullivan
Short Synopsis
Felix the Cat and his owner, a failed actor, want to go to Hollywood and have no money, so Felix is sent out to earn the fare. He takes a job at a shoe shop and brings in customers by sticking chewing gum to the pavement so that everyone needs new shoes, earning five hundred dollars. In Hollywood he dumps his owner and goes to Static Studio to try his own luck as an actor, showing the boss joy and sorrow on demand. Outside he finds Douglas Fairbanks attacked by giant mosquitoes, borrows William S. Hart's gun and shoots them, and is signed on the spot by Cecil B. DeMille. Through a keyhole he spots Charlie Chaplin, Will Hays, Snub Pollard, Ben Turpin and Gloria Swanson; he imitates Chaplin's walk, Chaplin catches him and accuses him of stealing his act, and Felix flees, a star at last.
Why It Matters
- The film is a catalogue of 1923 Hollywood seen through a cat's eyes, and the gag of Felix doing Chaplin's walk in front of Chaplin is a sly acknowledgement of where the character came from: Messmer had drawn Chaplin cartoons before Felix, and the cat's pantomime owes everything to the tramp. The chewing-gum scheme and the detachable tail are Felix's method in miniature.
- It was voted number 50 of the 50 Greatest Cartoons in the 1994 poll of animation professionals, the only silent Felix film on the list, and it shows the cat at the height of his fame, when he was the biggest star in animation and his films played in every picture palace. It is in the public domain, as all Felix films of the 1920s are.
Notes and Trivia
- Bill Nolan, who animated with Messmer, later directed Krazy Kat and co-directed the Lantz Oswalds.
- Will Hays, glimpsed through the keyhole, had just become Hollywood's censor-in-chief.
- See also: Feline Follies (1919), Stomach Trouble (1927), Hollywood Steps Out (1941).