Felix in Hollywood

A clever black and white Felix the Cat cartoon from 1923. While things are minimalist, the drawing is excellent. Felix is a versatile character. He is able to adapt to anything. He is with a movie director who is broke. Felix uses his wit to help ad depressed shoe store owner get his shop back. Later, in Hollywood, he works like crazy to get a role in the movies. We meet some of the stars of the silent screen at the time. Felix generally finds himself in a world that is unfair. When he tries to do good, he isn't respected. Here, he does battle with mosquitos. Once again, his ingenuity and self reliance reign supreme. I think the pen and ink drawing here is really startlingly bright and works quite well. Being a black and white cat helps Felix pull it off.

When Leonard Maltin's book, "Of Mice and Magic" which was about the production of theatrical movie cartoons from the silent era to around the '60s, came out, during the chapter on silent cartoons, he especially wrote about the first animated star, Felix the Cat, and especially about this very short I'm reviewing right now. In this one, he helps an actor friend to go to Hollywood by trying to make money selling shoes for a bankrupt proprietor of such a store. Once they're there, Felix goes on his own encountering caricatures of various Hollywood celebs of which one of whom is Charlie Chaplin who says something amusing to Felix. I'll just now say that Felix in Hollywood is quite a funny cartoon that I recommend to any animation fans out there.

A so-so Felix the Cat cartoon which is primarily of interest for the parodies of stars of the day such as Charlie Chaplin and Ben Turpin rather than its humour.

Felix in Hollywood is a great film. The version I viewed was very well restored, which is sometimes a problem with these silent era animated films. It has some of Hollywood's most famous stars making cameo animated appearances. A must for any silent film or animation enthusiast.

Felix is watching an actor rehearse his lines: "A ham, A ham! My kingdom for a ham sandwich!!!" The dramatic guy that tells Felix he'll "have to sacrifice my art and go into the movies." He's in tears. Felix just looks at him like he's nuts, and shrugs his shoulders. The old guy tells Felix to "go ye forth" and find money to finance a trip to Hollywood. Felix thinks, "How does he expect me to get the money?"

In minutes, of course (this is a cartoon), he spots a shoe business owner putting up a "bankrupt" sale on his store. Felix comes up with a plan to bail him out and the man promises the cat $500 if it works.

Well, it does but the man wants to go alone and leave Felix at home. In an outrageous scene, Felix transforms himself into a briefcase and that's how he gets to Hollywood, transforming himself back to cat when they get there.

We then witness Felix's attempts at getting into show business. His audition scenes are very funny, especially with his imitation of Charlie Chaplin. In addition there are caricatures of some famous silent film stars and executives. In all, quite a bit of material is in this 9.5- minute cartoon. It's amazing how much more you can get in an extra 2.5 minutes, assuming most animated shorts are seven minutes in length.

At any rate, there were a number of laughs in here and more zany things you could only see in a cartoon, like Felix have a sword duel with giant mosquitoes! Crazy stuff.