The work of Winsor McCay has always been a source of fascination and delight for me ever
since I first encountered his comic strip Little Nemo in Slumberland in the late 60s
when I first went to college.
I'm aware that he'll be familiar to anyone else with more than a passing interest in
comic strips and animation.
And if your'e among them I apologise for telling you what you probably already know.
But this is mainly for the uninitiated who haven't previously discovered the many visual
wonders he created.
The location and date of McCay's birth aren't certain but it was probably in Michigan, probably
in 1869.
Even he didn't seem to know.
He drew obsessively from the moment he could wield a pencil.
But his father wanted him to get a proper job and sent him to business college in Michigan.
McCay rarely attended classes and sneaked off to draw and sell cartoons to passersby.
With the money he made he took some private art lessons and set off for Chicago in 1889,
where he got a job in a printers.
A couple of years later he moved to Cincinnati and in 1898 he began a full-time job with
the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune.
At the same time he also started freelancing for the humour magazine Life.
By this time he was in his late 20s, and his pen and ink technique was confident and descriptive.
His hatching was highly controlled and he was able to create sophisticated solid monochromes
ideal for newspaper and magazine printing.
Two years later he was appointed head of the art department at the Cincinnati Enquirer,
and in 1903 he drew a comic strip of sorts for the paper based on a series of rhymes
written by George Randolph Chester.
This was A Tale of the Jungle Imps, and despite much of its humour being racist in content
in visual terms it was a remarkably intricate and carefully constructed series of ink and
watercolour images illustrating key moments from the verse's narrative.
But McCay seemed incapable of settling at any particular job and before long he was
on the move again - this time to the New York Herald - where he was employed to produce
illustrations and editorial cartoons.
In addition to his commitment to the editorial work he continued to create more comic strips.
Among them was 1904's Little Sammy Sneeze, which was quite popular and managed a two
year run. The strip gave a clear early indication of McCay's surrealist humorous leanings and
natural sense of the aesthetic.
His longest-running strip from this period, The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend, first appeared
in the rival Evening Telegram in 1904.
For this strip he was compelled to use the alias Silas because of the terms of his contract
with the Herald.
The Rarebit Fiend was aimed at an adult audience and it was unusual in that it didn't feature
a recurring central character.
But what they all had in common were fantastic, frequently terrifying dreams, before waking
up in the last panel, regretting the Welsh rarebit they had eaten the night before.
And The Rarebit Fiend was the first of McCay's creations to be considered popular enough
to be published as a book in 1905.
The premise of the strip was also used to make a short live action comedy film by producer
Edwin Porter, which boasted the best special effects that were technically possible in
1906.
A stage musical version was also planned but it never saw the light of day.
While still churning out a large volume of daily editorial work McCay found the time
to create yet more strips including The Story of Hungry Henrietta, and A Pilgrim's Progress
which was another strip credited to Silas for the Evening Telegram.
But most significantly it was in 1905 that the full-page strip Little Nemo in Slumberland
first appeared in the Sunday edition of the Herald.
Thematically Nemo was obviously derived from the basic narrative of the Rarebit Fiend,
but as the title suggested all episodes concerned the central character of the boy Nemo.
The Welsh rarebit had gone but in every week's instalment when Nemo went to bed he would
experience fabulous, surreal and occasionally disturbing dreams from which he awoke in the
final panel.
And on that most basic narrative thread hung a work which is rightly considered one of
the greatest and most influential comic strip masterpieces.
McCay experimented constantly with the structure of the comics page. The layout was always
different in each episode, and he took chances with the size and shape of panels to enhance
the visual quality of the page as a whole.
The Herald was considered to have the highest quality colour printing of any newspaper at
the time and it used what is known as the Ben Day process with solid and dot screen
areas used carefully to create an illusion of full colour.
McCay would draw the artwork as black and white line only and provide the printer with
precise complicated instructions regarding the colours used.
By this point, with Nemo riding high and other strips doing well he was approached in 1906
to perform what were called chalk talks for the vaudeville circuit.
For 500 dollars a week - which is over 14000 dollars in current value - he drew lightning
sketches in a fifteen minute act in front of live audiences, as the theatre band played
a tune called Dream of the Rarebit Fiend.
He toured with this act for over a year, during which time he continued to create artwork
backstage and in his hotel for the weekly instalments of Nemo.
In 1907, a stage musical version of Little Nemo in Slumberland was created and produced,
and it played to sold out crowds first in New York and then two seasons as a touring
production.
Unfortunately it proved to be too expensive to produce so it failed to make a profit and
closed in 1910.
In 1911 McCay was lured away from the Herald by the Hearst publishing empire, to create
editorial cartoons and illustrations for their newspapers for a higher salary and a promise
of more artistic freedom.
His departure led to a legal dispute over the ownership of copyright of Little Nemo,
and it was eventually judged that the Herald held the rights to the title but McCay owned
the characters.
So all McCay had to do was to change the strip's title to In the Land of Wonderful Dreams,
and that's how it continued to appear in Hearst's New York American paper.
The Herald meanwhile did nothing with their ownership of the name, which without McCay
was worthless.
It was around this time McCay became increasingly fascinated with the possibilities of drawn
animation. He wasn't the first, although he was frequently billed as such on posters and
handouts.
But although there had been several others before him he was singlehandedly responsible
for establishing many of the practices which would become standard in later years.
Between 1911 and 1921 he animated ten self-financed films, but unfortunately only a few sequences
have survived.
Undoubtedly his biggest success was with Gertie the Dinosaur, which he made in 1914.
This animation was presented as an an interactive theatre routine in which McCay appeared to
give orders to Gertie, who would carry them out - or not - with comical outcomes.
And McCay toured with his creation across America, playing to packed houses wherever
he went. The public were suitably amazed and entertained and Gertie made him a lot of money.
He and the assistants he had hired took just under 2 years to produce his most technically
ambitious film, The Sinking of the Lusitania which was released in 1918.
Despite its animated qualities it didn't fare too well. The actual sinking by German U boats
had taken place almost 3 years previously and few wanted to be reminded of the incident.
By this time his boss, William Randolph Hearst, had discovered just how little time McCay
was devoting to his job at the New York American.
In addition to being paid a generous salary for his editorial work McCay was also earning
yet more for his own extramural activities.
So in 1917, McCay reluctantly agreed to give up entirely on his live performances and all
other paid work outside the Hearst empire, although he was occasionally granted permission
for one or two shows.
And such was McCay's popularity with the readers of Hearst's papers he managed to negotiate
an increase in salary to cover the loss of his other income.
In 1924 McCay's contract with the Hearst empire expired and despite the fact he had been treated
exceptionally well by his employer, he refused to renew, claiming he had not been paid a
promised bonus.
He returned once more to the Herald Tribune, where he was able to bring Little Nemo back
to life with its original title, but it had lost momentum and become yesterday's big thing.
Consequently it ground to a halt in 1926.
Despite the fact McCay had been so difficult to deal with Hearst instructed his minions
to entice him back to his empire yet again, and McCay accepted in 1927.
So now there was no more Nemo and no more animation, and McCay reluctantly settled back
into life as a satirical editorial and political cartoonist.
And although this aspect of his career gets the least attention from his admirers he was
remarkably good at it, creating many potent images expressing popular concerns about the
social issues of the day.
And that's how it continued for McCay until 1934, when he suffered a stroke and died almost
immediately.
A few years after his death most of the original artwork he had stored at his home was destroyed
in a fire, and only a few original drawings survived.
But we still have what's left of his animation and fortunately a large amount of printed
work.
And with a bit of luck McCay's remarkable achievements will continue to inspire and
fascinate, just like it did -and still does - with me.
Thanks as ever for watching, and I hope you'll come back for the next one.