Gertie The Dinosaur

[Stuckasaurus (Dino Dad Reviews)]

Apparently there is no dedicated thread to "Gertie the Dinosaur" yet, so I figure I'll take the liberty of making one here!
First the basics:

Created by Winsor McCay, who also created the comic strip character "Little Nemo", Gertie is considered by many to be a foundational achievement in the history of animated film. While there are short animated clips that predate Gertie, including some Little Nemo shorts by McCay himself, most of these could be thought of as little more than "tech demos" as we might use the term today. Gertie's cartoon was the longest animated film yet when it was released, and is often hailed as the first "true" cartoon short that transcends the level of a mere tech demo.

The film print that survives today has a live action framing narrative where McCay bets some friends that he can bring a dinosaur to life, but this was a version intended for later distribution. McCay originally presented the Gertie short as part of a vaudeville act, wherein he interacted with Gertie live on stage. The framing narrative of the later film replaced this live stage presentation.

[Stuckasaurus (Dino Dad Reviews)]

Full disclosure, I actually created this thread because I wanted to talk about a really cool event I went to...



Winsor & Gertie is a revival/reimagining of the Gertie short that puts it back on the live theatre stage. Professor Donald Crafton, David L. Nathan, M.D. and Marco de Blois created "The Gertie Project" a while ago in order to restore the animated Gertie footage, isolated from the silent film print that most people have seen. This print obscures several frames of animation whenever the intertitles (the technical term for silent film subtitles) appear on screen, and an entire encore where Gertie walks back onto screen for another bow with Winsor still on her back is complete absent from the silent film version. The three succeeded at their goal, and Prof. Crafton took it upon himself to write a little "playlet" about Winsor's life during Gertie's production as a replacement for the original vaudeville act. The climax has the actor playing Winsor interacting with Gertie just as the man himself would have done, to great effect. The already enjoyable short becomes absolutely adorable when Gertie gets to "act" off of a live actor, and feels so much more alive, herself.

If you'd like to read more about it, you can check out my review at my blog, Dino Dad Reviews!

[Newt]

That sounds like a cool event! I'm a big fan of McCay and early comics and animation generally. I hope I get to see the restored version of Gertie; I have the old version on a DVD with many of McCay's other films and it's a lot of fun.

[Over9K]

Ok... all those things I've said I'd do for a Klondike bar... this. I want THIS.

[BlueKrono]

I'll never forget going to the Guillermo del Toro exhibit At Home With Monsters, a showcasing of del Toro's personal collection of classic monsters and horror paraphernalia. One of the things I found coolest was an original frame of Gertie the Dinosaur. It was small and placed off in a corner, but I recognized it for important piece of dinosauriana that it was. Guillermo has good taste.

[Stuckasaurus (Dino Dad Reviews)]

I'll never forget going to the Guillermo del Toro exhibit At Home With Monsters, a showcasing of del Toro's personal collection of classic monsters and horror paraphernalia. One of the things I found coolest was an original frame of Gertie the Dinosaur. It was small and placed off in a corner, but I recognized it for important piece of dinosauriana that it was. Guillermo has good taste.

It's possible they used that very frame you saw in order to restore the footage! The restoration project individually scanned as many of Winsor's original drawings as they could find, and only had to replace a small amount with an artist's recreation (redrawn frames are noted with a small watermark). Winsor actually completely redrew every single frame of the film, as the practice of simply animating a cutout character on a static background was a later innovation.

[BlueKrono]

I'll never forget going to the Guillermo del Toro exhibit At Home With Monsters, a showcasing of del Toro's personal collection of classic monsters and horror paraphernalia. One of the things I found coolest was an original frame of Gertie the Dinosaur. It was small and placed off in a corner, but I recognized it for important piece of dinosauriana that it was. Guillermo has good taste.

It's possible they used that very frame you saw in order to restore the footage! The restoration project individually scanned as many of Winsor's original drawings as they could find, and only had to replace a small amount with an artist's recreation (redrawn frames are noted with a small watermark). Winsor actually completely redrew every single frame of the film, as the practice of simply animating a cutout character on a static background was a later innovation.

They very well might have! I have no doubt del Toro would have allowed them to, and his would have been one of the easier ones to track down, having been on public display. I wonder if he owned more than one?

[Carnoking]

Now that's all kinds of awesome!

[Stuckasaurus (Dino Dad Reviews)]

YouTuber Dino Diego recently released a very well researched video about a fascinating ripoff of Gertie, which may be one of the first cases of a "bargain bin knockoff" of a popular cartoon! Dino Diego relates some interesting historical info I hadn't heard elsewhere, and points out that the knockoff actually achieved some animation innovations in its own right.

[Funk]

Disney made a reconstruction of how it may have looked when McCay presented the film:

[DinoToyForum]

What I want to know is: is the sea serpent that appears briefly in the cartoon meant to be a plesiosaur. I can't decide whether or not to add it to my plesiosaurs in fiction page: https://plesiosauria.com/pop-culture/fiction/ If I do it will be the first depiction of a plesiosaur in a 'movie'.

[Funk]

What I want to know is: is the sea serpent that appears briefly in the cartoon meant to be a plesiosaur. I can't decide whether or not to add it to my plesiosaurs in fiction page: https://plesiosauria.com/pop-culture/fiction/ If I do it will be the first depiction of a plesiosaur in a 'movie'.

At 2:11 in the video above, the McCay actor just calls it "sea monster", not sure how close the script is based on the actual performance, though...

[DinoToyForum]

What I want to know is: is the sea serpent that appears briefly in the cartoon meant to be a plesiosaur. I can't decide whether or not to add it to my plesiosaurs in fiction page: https://plesiosauria.com/pop-culture/fiction/ If I do it will be the first depiction of a plesiosaur in a 'movie'.

At 2:11 in the video above, the McCay actor just calls it "sea monster", not sure how close the script is based on the actual performance, though...

Yeah, it's ambiguous what they were going for. It doesn't look like a plesiosaur, even by the standards of the day, so I'm inclined to consider it a 'monster' as per the script.