A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion

Author(s): Nicholas Sammond

Source: Film History , Vol. 23, No. 3, Beyond Vitaphone: The Early Sound Short (2011), pp.
268-284
Published by: Indiana University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/filmhistory.23.3.268

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 Film History, Volume 23, pp. 268–284, 2011. Copyright © 2011 Indiana University Press
ISSN: 0892-2160. Printed in United States of America

A Space Apart: Animation

and the Spatial Politics of
Conversion
A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion

Nicholas Sammond

H
arman and Ising’s 1929 sync-sound cartoon space, the cartoon demonstrates both the fantastic
Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid tidily encapsulates the possibilities of the animate minstrel – his ability to
important racial and spatial dynamics that send up and go beyond his live counterpart – and his
marked the transition to sound film in the near-absolute submission to the animation producer.
United States, and the role of animation in that In this, Bosko The Talk-Ink Kid performs cartoons’ role
change. The short features Rudy Ising and the newly in replacing the combinations of live vaudeville and
minted Bosko in a routine typical both of the silent-era silent cinema popular in the 1920s with all-film pro-
interplay between animator and character, and of a grams featuring sound movies. Even as cartoons
blackface minstrel show’s interlocutor and end man. helped to eliminate live combination shows, they
Ising begins by drawing Bosko on a sketch pad, from performed the struggle between industry and craft
which the character speaks to Ising in the broad that the cinematic replacement of vaudeville enacted.
vernacular of the minstrel, immediately demonstrat- And they did this, not by replacing vaudeville and
ing his racial range by dancing the horah to “Khosn, minstrelsy with a wholly new mode of performance,
Kale Mazl Tov”, a silent-era musical cue for stereo- but by invoking those older forms through new media
typical Yiddishness, then returning to “black” ver- – in this case the new medium of sound film. Cartoon
nacular.1 Turning toward the camera with a puzzled shorts of the late 1920s and early 1930s gradually
expression, Bosko asks Ising, “Who’s all dem folks replaced the singing, dancing live vaudeville per-
out dere in de dark?” Ising explains the audience to former (whether black or white) with a fair copy, one
Bosko and asks whether he can make them (us) which still employed the conventional tropes of
laugh. Provided by Ising with a piano, Bosko sings Al vaudeville – self-reflexive performance, direct ad-
Jolson’s “Sonny Boy”. Yet where Jolson (or any less dress to the audience and interplay with them and
well known minstrel) could only perform “blackness” other performers, and intermedial and intertextual
(and the plantation fantasy of the minstrel as de- references – but did so without need of the actual
scendent of the slave) through makeup and dialect, vaudeville circuits which supported those live per-
Bosko’s body extends this performance by twisting formers.
and contorting in ways impossible for any human What short films like this should also make
actor, demonstrating a monstrous flexibility beyond clear is that the idea that film just replaced vaudeville
the minstrel’s usual loose-limbed dance. Finally, – or that earlier vaudeville had simply replaced its
when Bosko hits a horrible clinker, Ising sucks him antecedents, burlesque and blackface minstrelsy –
off the page with his fountain pen and deposits him
back in an inkwell, reprising a standard animator’s
shtick of the day. (Popping out at the last second, Nicholas Sammond is an Associate Professor of Cin-
Bosko bids us farewell and blows a raspberry at Ising, ema Studies and English at the University of Toronto.
He is currently working on Biting the Invisible Hand:
unbowed.) Clearly operating in the registers of min-
Blackface Minstrelsy and the Industrialization of Ameri-
strelsy and vaudeville, and playing between the flat- can Animation (Duke University Press, forthcoming).
ness of the drawing pad and the depth of animate Correspondence to nic.sammond@utoronto.ca

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 3, 2011 – p. 268

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A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 269

while appealing in its simplicity, occludes the more – cartoons had the ability to make imaginary relations
complicated, interdependent relationships that the literal.3 This essay will therefore approach the role of
different entertainment and media forms had with animation in the transition to sound in motion pictures
each other. The idea that vaudeville was merely the by examining how cartoon shorts were used to re-
descendent of minstrelsy, and both the ancestors of place live performers in the prologues, presenta-
the film industry, overwrites a history in which all three tions, and combination shows that blended live
coexisted, if uneasily. Vaudeville, blackface min- performance with motion picture exhibition in the
strelsy, and the movies shared the same stage for 1920s. Comparing discourse about short subjects
many years, and the transition to sound film that by exhibitors, producers, and critics, it will also con-
“killed” vaudeville was part of a long-term effort to sider the role of race in these operations. Blackface
consolidate near-monopoly power in the hands of minstrelsy is particularly important to this moment,
relatively few movie producers and exhibitors, one not only because it was part of the vaudeville of the
that actually relied on staged performance to suc- 1920s, but because it had already informed the very
ceed. beginnings of American animation. While the rela-
Film did eventually replace vaudeville as the tionship between blackface minstrelsy and anima-
dominant entertainment during the late 1920s and tion has been occluded by time and practice,
1930s; those performers who could cross over did, minstrelsy profoundly influenced the look and per-
and those who couldn’t sometimes fell on hard times. formance aesthetics of early trademark cartoon char-
Yet in the course of that change, not only did vaude- acters such as Ko-Ko, Felix, or Mickey Mouse. As
ville as an economic institution die, but vaudeville as Norman Klein has observed, American animation
part of a larger set of social and material relations from its inception was indebted to minstrelsy, and it
passed on too.2 To a large degree, this history has is no accident that Mickey (to give but one example)
been rehearsed elsewhere. It is one in which labor – is a wily trickster with the white gloves and extremely
of performing or of making films – often disappears. large mouth and eyes of a blackface minstrel.4 In their
And it is one in which the fantasy that the blackface overt or covert expression of racial masquerade,
minstrelsy performed by Bosko represents – of the continuing cartoon characters often expressed (as
(ex-)slave as a “natural” critique of constraining bour- did stage minstrels) a fantasy about the disruptive
geois civilization – is presented in a nostalgic mode, potency of black bodies, their refusal to obey, or to
as a necessary signpost passed on the road to adhere to the dominant social and material order. By
modern material and social relations. Like Jolson’s the time sound film was fully established in the 1930s,
blackface minstrel characters in The Jazz Singer however, that connection was often overshadowed
(1927), The Singing Fool (1928), or Wonderbar by more overt and aggressive racist caricatures that
(1934), or the popular radio minstrels Amos ‘n’ Andy, linked fantastic and grotesque animated black bod-
Bosko and other cartoon minstrels inflected black- ies to jazz music in shorts such as Trader Mickey
face minstrelsy’s inherently nostalgic performance of (Disney, 1932) or Walter Lantz’s Oswald the Rabbit
a failing white supremacy to represent live perform- in Robinson Crusoe Isle (1935). Even more specifi-
ance in general as necessarily giving way to the new cally, those minstrel-inflected characters performed
medium of sound film. a tradition of puncturing the cartoon frame, of strug-
While the minstrel was by no means a central gling with the live animator, and of disrupting the
figure in radio or in live film, American animation had boundaries between the drawn and the cinematic
a long conventional tradition of blending the tropes realms of live and animated film. In this, cartoons
of blackface minstrelsy and vaudeville with a celebra- made before and during the transition have much to
tion of technological innovation. So, a closer look at say about the reorganization of theaters and the
animation’s role in the transition to sound cinema activities within them that the move to sound film
may reinscribe vaudeville’s importance in that pro- would entail.
cess, and allow for an understanding of the racial
dimensions of the shift from live to recorded perform- Bodies in space
ance. As a sub-category of film shorts, cartoons offer The incorporation of sound into cinema occasioned
an important perspective on this transition, because significant changes in social and material relations,
in their conventional and representational develop- not only for animation studios, but also for the way
ment they rendered such struggles in a fantastic form space was depicted in cartoons, and in the uses of

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 3, 2011 – p. 269

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270 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) Nicholas Sammond

that had corollaries in the reorganization and use of

exhibition spaces. Practical discussions during that
transition suggest significant shifts in power relations
between producers, performers, exhibitors, and
audiences.9 Changes to movie houses in the 1920s
and 1930s to accommodate new sound technolo-
gies required not just the addition of new electrical
and electronic equipment; the modifications also
meant the reorganization of social and material rela-
tions for everyone having business in those spaces.
Even before the transition, hybrid performances by
cartoon characters and live performers in combina-
tion shows, and cartoons that encouraged audience
participation, such as those by Max and Dave Fleis-
cher (discussed below), were experiments in reor-
ganizing those relationships. In The Production of
Space (1974), Henri Lefebvre has argued for an
analysis of space as a set of distinct relations be-
Fig. 1. A frame theaters where those cartoons were shown.5 That is, tween practices in social space, representations of
from Finding His technological and aesthetic innovations developed space, and those spaces in which representations
Voice (1929), in in the jockeying for market share in animation during take place.10 Certainly, movie theaters are spaces
which the this period demonstrate shifts in how space was where representations take place, but in contempo-
Fleischer studios represented onscreen, but they also point to rary and retrospective discussions of their layout,
explain the
changes in how the theatrical spaces in which car- they also become representations of space, and in
mechanics of the
Western Electric toons appeared were understood by producers, ex- both instances they figure in arguments about social
sound film hibitors, and audiences. And, as with any other practices in those spaces. Similarly, understanding
system and its moment in the history of American animation, how race has manifested in animation may begin
advantages over changes in the representation of narrative space with a discussion of characters, but it must include
silent movies. were accompanied by changes in production prac- the representational spaces in which their bodies
The cartoon tices, and in understandings by producers, exhibi- were located, as well as the theatrical spaces in
allows for the
tors, and audiences about the social and cultural which cartoons appeared.
embodiment of
sound film, and geographies that those fictional spaces were meant In short, in the transition to sound cinema there
its plot suggests to represent.6 was a change in the relationship between the repre-
that an equally If, for example, cartoons (and other filmed sentation of space and the spaces in which that
embodied silent entertainments) previously had been accompanied representation took place, one in which cartoons
film would be put by sound, now they were to be understood as con- played an important role.11 Throughout the 1920s,
out of work by taining that sound. This meant subtle but important exhibitors had increasingly combined live perform-
talkies.
changes in the understanding of the theatrical expe- ances with cinematic products in order to offer what
rience that had to be promulgated and regulated by was considered a full evening’s entertainment: cine-
exhibitors and learned and practiced by audiences, matic space and onstage performance space
chief of which was that the exclusive focal point of shared the same theater, and the two were often
attention was a space internal to the screen – the linked thematically. The “combination show” wed-
cinematic space of the text, and not the space of a ded live performance and film to create a competitive
stage shared by filmed and live entertainments.7 edge over straight vaudeville houses or movie thea-
Even though silent cartoons had long been accom- ters that featured only films, but at the higher cost
panied by music, with the introduction of synchro- that came with employing live talent.12 From the
nized sound animation became a location for perspective of producers and exhibitors, then, one of
musically driven visual fantasies about how the new the perceived benefits of introducing sound technol-
technology could reorder spatial relations.8 Likewise, ogy to the cinema was the potential to reduce labor
in the conversion to sound cinema, there were costs. The sound short, whether a cartoon, a news-
changes in the representation of cinematic space reel, or a musical or comedy number, could replace

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A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 271

live performers with their less expensive filmic ver-

sions. Animation could even replace filmed live per-
formers with drawn characters: cartoons weren’t just
an alternate form of entertainment; they were also a
device for regulating labor, able to remove entire
companies of live performers from the stage and
eventually from the screen.
Despite this, animated shorts could be every
bit as performative as their live counterparts. Begin-
ning with the likes of J. Stuart Blackton and Winsor
McCay, American animation had a conventional tra-
dition of mixing the live performance of an animator
with that of his cartoon creations. Even after McCay
and Blackton, the performative gesture in animation
remained in the trope of the animator’s hand invading
the screen, and in the onscreen appearances of worked into their stage shows and shorts: their Out Fig. 2. American
animator/producers such as Max Fleischer and Wal- of the Inkwell cartoons (1919–1929) featured the animation has a
ter Lantz. During this development of fantastic and Fleischers’ star, Ko-Ko the Clown, escaping the two- conventional
often antagonistic relationships between live and dimensional world and creating havoc in (cinematic) history of the
animator sparring
drawn performers, animation studios created hybrid reality. For example, in The Ouija Board (1920), Max
with his creation
presentations whose history not only contradicts the sketches Ko-Ko already in motion on a drawing pad onscreen, from
resilient myth of a linear progression from minstrelsy, while Dave and an African American janitor sit the time of
to vaudeville, to screen performance, but which de- nearby, playing with a Ouija Board.13 Watching them, Winsor McCay.
scribes a more fluid set of relations between those Max draws a haunted house and leaves Ko-Ko at the Here Rudy Ising
forms. While different animation houses participated mercy of the “spooks” who inhabit it. (The double argues with
in this trend in varying degrees, the Fleischer broth- Bosko the
entendre seems intentional: later in the short the
Talk-Ink Kid
ers were one of the most enthusiastic participants in janitor turns white with fear and tosses away a pair of (1929).
this hybrid exhibition form. Not only did the Fleischers dice in contrition. Many versions of the cartoon today
often make direct and indirect reference to vaudeville excise this scene.) Harassed by mischievous ghosts,
performance in their cartoons, they also were in- Ko-Ko flees the page for the real world of the studio,
volved in the development of combination shows, hiding under the paddle of the Ouija Board. After
and in innovations that helped usher in sound cin- spelling out an ominous message, he dives under a
ema. In this regard, the Fleischers’ work during the hat that skitters across the floor until Max stomps on
1920s and early 1930s offers a capsule view of the it, and ends up as an ink stain spattered on Max’s
exploration of notions of cinematic space and its white shirt.
relation to exhibition space, and a primer on how This short is representative of the scores of
those experiments captured the changing dynamics cartoons that the Fleischers put out in the 1920s. In
between producers, exhibitors, and audiences at the general, the gag went like this: Max drew Ko-Ko, who
time. The arrival of sound at the end of the decade then escaped the page to wreak havoc on the real
would contribute to significant and long-lasting world until he was finally contained in an inkwell. The
changes in the metaphysics and practical repre- novelty of each cartoon lay in the inventiveness with
sentation of space in cinema; the decade leading up which the Fleischers varied this basic shtick. Utilizing
to that transition offers a glimpse of the working out the standard vaudeville trope of theme and vari-
of those changes. That is, animation generally, but ation/elaboration, the studio put its energy into
particularly as practiced by the Fleischer studios, imagining wild scenarios into which Ko-Ko would
became a site where the changing social and mate- stumble once he entered the real world.14 Yet be-
rial relations occasioned by the introduction of sound neath the repetitiveness, the gag of Ko-Ko’s intrusion
were made manifest. into that world refers to the performative tradition of
From the outset, the Fleischers had continued the animator’s ability to create a living being (one with
the performative tradition of the animator sparring enough “free will” to cause trouble for his creator),
with his creation that McCay and Blackton had whose animation ruptures the boundary between the

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272 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) Nicholas Sammond

Figs. 3 and 4.
A frame from I’ve
Got Rings on My
Fingers (1929)
and an intertitle
from My Old
Kentucky Home
(1924)
demonstrate the
blending of racial
fantasy and
sentimentality in
the Fleischer
Song Car-Tunes.

real and ideal worlds. Almost every Ko-Ko cartoon and sound effects. Yet viewers of the Song Car-
was about breach and repair: in them, the repre- Tunes were meant to do more than just watch. These
sentation of space was both practical (as in a studio cartoons invited viewers to join with animated char-
that actually employed at least ten people being acters in the performance of music-hall style singing,
represented as occupied by only Dave, Max, and a following lyrics on the screen with the characters’
janitor) and metaphysical, a performed claim to be help. As early as 1924, the Fleischers experimented
able to manipulate and control the boundaries be- with producing some of these with a soundtrack,
tween a cartoon and a real (albeit fictional and cine- using the DeForest Phonofilm process, but this early
matic) world through drawing. Even as the cartoons venture failed when exhibitors refused to spring for
made visual jokes about the relative (un)translatabil- the equipment necessary to screen them.15
ity of two dimensions into three, they also partici-
pated in a larger joke about where one dimension left My Old Kentucky Home: song and
off and another began. Ko-Ko’s gag with the Ouija nostalgia
Board, for example, plays with the notion of anima- The Fleischers issued between thirty and forty Song
tion as charged by forces from another dimension. Car-Tunes between 1924 and 1929.16 Generally sen-
The Fleischers weren’t the only animators to timental and nostalgic, many dealt either with race or
indulge in this conceit. Otto Messmer sometimes ethnicity. Of these, nine (roughly a quarter) were
placed Felix in the real world, Disney blended the real minstrel tunes, including Dixie, Old Black Joe, and
and drawn in the Alice series (1923–1927), and Wal- Swanee River (all 1925). Another six took up ethnic
ter Lantz appeared with Dinky Doodle and Pete the themes, such as My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean
Pup. But the Fleischers made the gag their signature. (1925), The Sidewalks of New York (1925), and Has
Nor was the Inkwell series the only one in which the Anyone Here Seen Kelly? (1926). The rest might best
Fleischers performed disrupting the boundary be- be described as rousing and/or sentimental, from
tween live and drawn worlds; in its Song Car-Tunes, wartime songs such as Pack Up Your Troubles
the studio not only acknowledged its audience, but (1925), to tearjerkers such as Irving Berlin’s When I
asked them to sing along by following an onscreen Leave This World Behind (1926). Approximately half
bouncing ball. Most of the early Out of the Inkwell of the Song Car-Tunes were issued with sound, as
cartoons were silent and accompanied by live music would be all of their 1930s successors, the Screen

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A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 273

Songs, which continued the sing-along gimmick and (which they were) obscures their ability to reinforce
also played on themes of race, ethnicity, and senti- effective (or affective) racial formations when they
mentality.17 (The principal difference between Song were located in sentimental social practices. Put
Car-Tunes and Screen Songs was that the latter often simply, in the interplay with audiences of vaudeville
featured popular musical and vaudeville acts of the and early animation, expressions of race and ethnic-
day, such as the Mills Brothers or Boswell Sisters, in ity in these cartoons were interwoven with the senti-
live interludes.) mentality and the fun of the sing-along, offering an
The Fleischers’ preference for sentimental fa- affectively positive experience of collective and dis-
vorites had a practical as well as social impetus. Their tributed racism.19
song choices were often in the public domain, which The Song Car-Tunes were popular. Film Daily
saved on rights costs, and common knowledge of reviewed them on a regular basis and found some
older material was a must for singing along. But the better than others, but its overall tone was positive –
practical intersected with the social and cultural as was Moving Picture World in its take on Dolly Gray
when the cartoons joined audiences in an act of (1926), of which its reviewer claimed: “There is good
common performance, often as not through words snap to this war song of years ago and the handling
and images that invoked racial and ethnic stereo- of the chorus is a pippin. … Even if your patrons do
types.18 These combinations of film and live enter- not remember the song they will roar at the way the
tainment offered a space in which to participate in a chorus is handled”.20 An anonymous reviewer in the
nostalgic and emotional collective performance that New York Times, describing a Saturday matinee pro-
simultaneously engaged audiences in new technolo- gram, reported that “A charming feature of these
gies, such as an animated bouncing ball or the Saturday mornings are the ‘Ko-Ko-Cartunes’ [sic],
novelty of sound film. The themes of race and ethnic- wherein the words of well-known songs are flashed
ity circulating through many of these films were then upon the screen while the organ plays the air. … The
inflected by that collective expression of nostalgia youngsters join lustily in the singing, showing none
and sentimentality – and almost certainly in a segre- of the shyness that restrains their elders”.21 Accounts
gated theatre. Simply labeling Fleischer texts like My such as these portray younger audiences exuber-
Old Kentucky Home (1924) or I’ve Got Rings on My antly following the onscreen bouncing ball, singing
Fingers (1929) as racist in their lyrics and images along to popular tunes of yesteryear, while older

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274 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) Nicholas Sammond

This was unusual, but not unheard of. Around

1924, joining the presentation trend in film exhibition
(see Phil Wagner’s essay in this issue), several ani-
mation producers borrowed a page from their own
past and began experimenting with new ways to
combine live performance and animation. Where did
this idea come from? This “epilogue”, as the article
called it, was more the exception than the rule. More
common for theaters at the time were “presenta-
tions”, a version of combination shows that mixed
vaudeville and movies in a single evening, and “pro-
logues”, performances that set up the cartoons or
the main attraction. While larger houses could afford
name acts for combination shows, smaller theaters
off the beaten track had to make do with cheaper
vaudeville acts.23 Max Fleischer’s son, Richard,
fondly recalls sumptuous presentations in Manhat-
tan during the 1920s:
There were three movie “palaces” … that hold
a special place in my heart: the Rivoli, the
Rialto, and the Criterion. … Each theater
showed a different major motion picture, which
was preceded by a huge theatrical production:
dozens of elaborately costumed dancers; a full
symphony orchestra; enormous sets. These
productions were based on the theme of the
picture and acted as a sort of mood-setting
Figs. 5 and 6. crowds, initially more reticent, appear to have joined introduction to the feature that was to follow.24
Illustrations from in with some encouragement. Richard Fleischer’s nostalgic reminiscences
Moving Picture Since audience participation was a tradition about presentations were a prelude to describing
World [8 May
well established in vaudeville, it wasn’t a huge leap how his father cooperated with famed impresario
1926): 183 and
24 October 1925: to convince moviegoing audiences to chime in. In at Hugo Riesenfeld to create a prologue for a Song
638] offer tips on least one case, Moving Picture World reported, the Car-Tune, probably in 1925. In 1926, Moving Picture
how to construct Song Car-Tune My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean World detailed the techniques used in creating that
a prologue set for (1925) was so popular that a New Jersey theater prologue, suggesting that the Fleischers’ Red Seal
a Song Car-Tune owner built an entire “epilogue” into the evening’s Studios had intentionally designed their cartoons to
or how a live entertainment: be integrated into stage shows. The scenario, laid out
actor could
imitate Felix the
in the form of detailed instructions for other exhibi-
The introduction to the film itself was played by
Cat. tors, was designed to imply a fluid boundary between
the Mosque orchestra of fifty; suddenly the
stage and screen:
drummer gave his signal … and the film was
on, with the audience joining in the song. At the Two large red seals constructed of compo-
first chorus, a male quartet off-stage joined in board should be … suspended right and left
and sang to the end. … As the Car-Tune over the drapes. … An opening should be
ended, the lights went up on a Scotch moun- prepared in the drape at left so that the face of
tain scene. … [The troupe] played some a singer may be discerned in the center of the
Scotch melodies, while the girls … did the seal. … The routine … merely introduces a
Highland Fling. Several solo songs and character made up as “Ko-Ko” or either a
dances, and then the pipes begin again, to be straight [man?] to lead the audience in the
taken up by the orchestra. The curtain came singing which is bound to result when a Car-
down amidst a veritable tumult of applause.22 tune Song [sic] is presented.25

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A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 275

To reinforce the bond between audience and

stage, the article further suggested a life-sized “Ko-
Ko Quartette” made of figures with an oval cut out of
“the face of each poster so that the singer’s face may
be seen. … The arms should be attached to the body
so that … the singer … may operate them in a
‘mechanical gesture’ during the song”. In addition to
a singer in the wings, then, four large cartoon char-
acters would also accompany the film, moving “me-
chanically”, as if they were less than human, more
like (poorly) animated characters. Moving Picture
World assured readers that “Every subject is a live
one, [and] the song-cartunes [sic] are the best song
films we know of”.26
Given his connection to the Song Car-Tunes,
Ko-Ko may have been a natural for the stage, but he
wasn’t the only cartoon character to tread the
boards. In October of 1925, Moving Picture World
offered a two-page primer on how to stage a pro-
logue for Felix cartoons, building them around an
actor in a Felix costume doing one of three scripted
pantomimes. To make sure that the actor playing
Felix could pull it off, the article offered visual instruc-
tions for how to perform Felix’s trademark gestures.
It also guaranteed that “Prologues and presentations
for short subjects … have become a striking reality
to showmen, as will be illustrated by the suggested
novelty along this line now available to exhibitors
presenting ‘Felix, the Cat Cartoons’ [sic]. … With
prologues rapidly being devised for all manner of
lengthy features, it was merely a matter of time before
the little features would be accorded a pre-screening
presentation”.27 Yet in spite of this popularity, by the
end of the 1920s combination shows were largely est presentations and prologues, and, with limited
being replaced by all-film programs. Even in the early resources, to hire lesser talent.30
1920s, before the major studios began to adopt So this tension between live and film perform-
sound film technologies, combination shows were ance wasn’t merely aesthetic, it was also practical
altering the exhibition landscape, creating hybrid fu- and economic. As veteran slapstick producer Jack
sions of vaudeville and cinema that provided new life White put it, “In the first place, take the millions of
for some vaudeville circuits, yet hastened the demise dollars which [sound short subjects] will save for
of others.28 As Douglas Gomery has pointed out, exhibitors all over the country. No more red tape and
major exhibition chains such as Paramount-Publix or no more trouble with unions. … The day of the act is
Loew’s developed their own touring circuits, in which over, both on and off the screen.”31 For White, talking
traveling presentation troupes worked different shorts were both cost-cutting measures and a
movie houses in a territory in succession.29 This means of eliminating labor strife, particularly with
necessarily altered the access of regional vaudeville musicians’ unions. Of course, as a producer of short
performers to those major venues, intensified com- talking comedies, he had a vested interest in describ-
petition for audiences, and encouraged the migra- ing vaudeville acts – both live and filmed – as passé;
tion of vaudeville talent to major cities, especially they were the competition. Yet for large distributors
New York and Los Angeles. For a time it pushed and exhibitors, filmed vaudeville shorts nonetheless
independent theaters to mount their own more mod- served a purpose: even as they helped to consoli-

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276 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) Nicholas Sammond

which film shorts from A Natural Born Gambler (Bio-

graph, 1916) to Devil’s Parade (Warner Bros., 1930)
would only standardize further in the performances
of nationally recognized black stars (in this case, Bert
Williams and Eddie Green, respectively). Still, it’s
important to note the ways in which this onstage/on-
screen racial imaginary refracted the lived racial
geography of segregation: even staged repre-
sentations of blackness (with or without blackface)
conventionally located black bodies in the imagined
landscapes of Africa, the plantation, or the uptown
jungle/underworld of the ghetto. Cartoons, in turn,
with their more fluid and metamorphic understanding
of space, could render each of these fantastic locales
as contiguous with the others, with characters mov-
ing fluidly between different black worlds. From the
Fleischers’ Swing, You Sinners (1930) to Columbia’s
Swing, Monkey, Swing (1937), to Warner Bros.’ Tin
Pan Alley Cats (1943) and beyond, there operated an
Fig. 7. The black date industry control over local labor, they created a assumption that black culture and performance op-
blackface continuity between live performance, the presenta- erated in a fluid space that traversed these regions.
minstrels Glenn tion of vaudeville performance on screen, and its At the same time, then, as filmed varieties
and Jenkins in eventual representation within narrative films. replaced combination shows, in the process limiting
the 1928
work for all vaudeville performers and changing audi-
Paramount Publix
touring act ences’ relationship to the stage, the screen, and to
“Steps and The transition in color each other, the racial imaginary that had found itself
Steppers”, That these changes in the labor of performance also expressed locally by live performers became, with
demonstrating had a significant racial component, and that cartoons sound, located in a cinematic imaginary understood
both the limit- in their nostalgic invocation of both minstrelsy and as inherently elsewhere. Within this shift, there was a
ations placed on vaudeville could render that racial element in fantas- relationship between changes to the representation
black performers
tic visual terms, is one indication of the increasing of space, to representational space, and to the social
and the avenues
for work that the importance of black cultural production in the popu- space generated in, around, and through those rep-
combination lar culture of early twentieth century America. The resentations. The phase-out of combination shows
shows provided. combination shows of the 1920s and early 1930s closed down a significant venue for many perform-
From Publix were usually built thematically around the feature, or ers, including those black entertainers already lim-
Opinion (18 played off what was topical at the time – and one ited by the color line to perform a narrowly defined
February 1928):
thing that was increasingly in style was jazz, and on and painfully stereotyped blackness. More well-
2. [Courtesy
Academy of Broadway the all-black revues popular after the 1921 established black stars, such as Nina Mae McKinney
Motion Picture hit Shuffle Along.32 From these followed “black-and- or Mantan Moreland, successfully made the transi-
Arts and tan” revues and all-black musicals, from which pre- tion to film, yet still performed in a largely segregated
Sciences.] sentation producers could pluck the best talent for imaginary. The other major medium for underem-
appropriate shows. In the live acts that framed a ployed vaudeville performers at the time, radio, had
feature film, black and white performers could some- much less use for African American performers.
times share the same stage (though not necessarily While popular jazz bands were featured on air, black
with equal billing), further complicating the segre- (read, “minstrel”) spoken voices could be covered
gated world that operated inside and outside the by white performers – the most famous example
theater doors.33 Or, blacked-up white performers being Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll’s Amos
could take to the stage, reproducing a plantation ‘n’ Andy, which premiered in 1928 – and of course
imaginary – as did blacked-up African Americans, radio had little use for dance or novelty acts featuring
too.34 Combination shows could also provide a com- black performers.
mon venue for stereotypical concepts of blackness, Yet tracing the relationship between these

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A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 277

Fig. 8. A 1929
distribution
schedule for
MGM Movietone
shorts displays
the blending of
explicitly racial or
ethnic shorts with
seemingly more
generic ones.
[Courtesy
Academy of
Motion Picture
Arts and
Sciences.]

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278 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) Nicholas Sammond

contested geographies and the disappearance of appeared in local venues or on national platforms,
local vaudevillians, let alone those of color, is like African Americans were expected to conform to
trying to prove a negative. While excellent histories stereotype. But with the coming of sync sound, those
exist for African-American entertainers who worked stereotypes consigned black performers to a nostal-
nationally or internationally on the stage and screen, gic space of time in which they were portrayed as
entertainers working local circuits and theaters, and evolutionarily previous to their white counterparts. In
who quit the industry for other employment or mar- terms of the social Darwinism still fairly popular at the
riage, or fell from “big-time” to “small-time” vaude- time, they were at least savages and at best planta-
ville, left at best traces of their work in ads and listings tion darkies or ghetto bumpkins like Amos and Andy.
in local media.35 Those performers who made it into Such stereotypes predated the film industry, of
the Paramount Publix circuits, for instance, in shows course, but the transition to sound and its attendant
with names like “Carolina Capers”, “Flapperettes”, or changes in performance, labor, and viewing prac-
“Cheer Up”, likely found only a few years of relatively tices, served to intensify them. For with the passing
anonymous work before the company closed down of local performance venues, only African American
its combination acts in favor of all-film programs. By entertainers with national recognition, performing in
1930, Paramount Publix had already determined that ways acceptable to an emergent national audience,
the circuits of live performance it had helped foster were likely to find steady work in shorts and the fading
were more easily and cheaply covered by talent in combination shows. The Jazz Singer aside, although
front of cameras in New York or Los Angeles. the coming of sound was not necessarily described
Even name acts who found work on the Publix in racial terms, and while vaudeville performance was
circuit, such as the black blackface minstrels Glenn not primarily about black/white relations, the rise of
and Jenkins, faded into obscurity as the larger chains sound film and the fading of vaudeville were still
moved to all-film programs. Sometimes mentioned inextricably entangled in the racial politics of the time.
in the same breath as the more famous duo of Miller A glance at a short-subject distribution schedule
and Lyles, this pair of eccentric dancers was well from the MGM Distributor from 1929 gives another
enough known in 1928 to garner a headline in Publix snapshot of those politics.39 The schedule leads off
Opinion, even though they were only one part of the with the white singer Cliff Edwards (later the voice of
larger Publix circuit show “Steps and Steppers”.36 Jim Crow in Dumbo [1941]) appearing in blackface,
Glenn and Jenkins performed in blackface well into two weeks later features the dialect comedians Van
the 1940s – though with the coming of sound film, and Schenck, two weeks after that offers the African
like their white counterpart Eddie Leonard, they be- American singer George Dewey Washington in a
came more curiosities than headliners. Miller and tenement setting, and two weeks after that closes its
Lyles, in contrast, lasted slightly longer because in offerings with the black blackface minstrels Miller and
their move to film they performed to stereotype so Lyles. On the one hand, this slate is balanced be-
successfully that they even sued Gosden and Correll tween seemingly generic acts and those that play on
for borrowing so much from their act for Amos ‘n’ race and ethnicity; on the other, all of the latter play
Andy.37 As eccentric dancers, Glenn and Jenkins on stereotype, and associate it with vaudeville, hence
were perhaps a poorer fit than the indefinite talkers with a time that is passing.40
Miller and Lyles for the nostalgic image of the minstrel What was also being worked out in these in-
as wisecracking darky that burgeoned alongside stances was the ongoing regulation of visual and
racist caricatures of blacks as savages in the 1930s. auditory signs for the proper relationship between
As Donald Crafton points out, while talkies encour- blackness and whiteness. In May 1928, Publix Opin-
aged a brief fascination with jazz-era black culture, ion, the in-house paper for Paramount Publix (pro-
that culture only appeared in caricature, and only in ducer/distributor for the Fleischers) announced to
material that did not appear to offend white, middle- affiliated exhibitors that it was getting into talking
class sensibilities.38 films, but warned that “films made by ‘Yankee’ voices
The shift to sound was thus not simply an may not be natural in Dixie, and vice versa. At any
abstract change in the technologies of making and rate, the universality of films is apparently at an end,
projecting motion pictures; it was, in addition, very or else they will make the whole world learn to speak
much a contest in spatial and labor practices, often the same language”.41 In spite of this claim that
with a racial dimension. Regardless of whether they sound would end the universality of film, its notion of

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 3, 2011 – p. 278

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A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 279

an impending single language implied an equally

undifferentiated geography – it suggests a more
spatially contiguous world in which regional differ-
ences might succumb to (or bridle against) uniform
national standards, a world which would require
careful negotiation by producers and exhibitors.
That this work was done around the question
of sound, and apparently required a careful rethink-
ing of space, provides a case wherein industrial
practice and aesthetic choices were deeply inter-
woven. As such, they were important in the gradual
alignment of localized formations of space and place
with a more uniform popular geography, and in inte-
grating local performance networks into national ex-
hibition and distribution systems. In that this required
the negotiation of standards of racial performance
and interaction, short subjects in general and car-
toons in particular offer a window onto how Depres-
sion-era popular media aided in the regulation of
racialized space. Both onscreen and off, there were
practices that produced a segregated racial imagi-
nary that was both spatially contiguous – in that it
used jazz or “jungle music” to join Africa, the planta-
tion, and Harlem – and undifferentiated, in that it
worked to maintain the line between that world and
one that was all-white.
In the “black vaudeville” live-action musical
short Pie, Pie, Blackbird (Warner Bros., 1932), for
instance, Nina Mae McKinney plays a mammy in a
kitchen, preparing a pie for “massah”; Eubie Blake,
Noble Sissle, and a small band appear in chef’s grant, so these troubled gestures around imagining Fig. 9. A
costumes, the “blackbirds” baked into that pie; and a national system of sound film distribution suggest distribution
famed child tap dancers Fayard and Howard Nicho- the working out on the ground of the meaning of, schedule for
Paramount Publix
las dance in their own miniature chef’s costumes. among other things, the racial binary in day-to-day
Theaters for May
Although the idiom and its stars signal jazz, the practice.43 of 1928 shows
inflection is the Old South. It was this sort of imagery While of a piece with other live shorts, cartoons the prevalence of
that linked the Deep South with Harlem in a fantastic necessarily took the stereotypical further.44 In addi- touring vaudeville
geography – the same geography that animators tion to replacing live acts by performers of different and prologue
such as the Fleischers would reproduce in shorts races and ethnicities – whether local or employed by companies, as
such as Snow White (1933), which extended that one of the regional circuits – early sound cartoons well as a range of
themes.
landscape into a chthonic underworld.42 Another ani- also promulgated and stabilized fantasies of the
[Courtesy
mate corollary would be Walter Lantz’s Voodoo in nonwhite body in ways that live performance, how- Academy of
Harlem (1938), in which spilled ink in an animation ever stereotypical, never could. Even as cartoons Motion Picture
studio comes to life as African natives singing about performed the representation of vaudeville and min- Arts and
(Haitian) voodoo in Harlem jazz nightclubs. On the strelsy in a nostalgic register, hence temporally con- Sciences.]
black side of the color line, the geography was more tained, animators also moved away from silent-era
fluid than on the white; just a step or two divided the conventions that had played across the boundaries
ghetto from the plantation from the jungle. Just as between the real and drawn worlds, and that allowed
the sentimental ballads of yesteryear framed the animators and the animated to struggle for control of
racial formations present in many of the Fleischer space, whether onscreen or off. That is, as the tran-
Song Car-Tunes in terms of the minstrel and immi- sition to sound progressed, so did the organization

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280 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) Nicholas Sammond

of cinematic space described by cartoons. As min- number is surprising now only because most of these
strel figures, trademark characters of the 1920s had cartoons were withdrawn from general circulation
frequently punctured the bounds between animate and don’t inform the nostalgic canon that we nor-
space and the putative “real” space of the animator mally associate with cartooning’s “Golden Age”.
as an act of rebellion; in turn, like interlocutors in They seem to exist as exceptions.
minstrel shows, animators repressed that rebellion The availability of many of these formerly
(which they had actually created) by inserting a hand banned cartoons on YouTube has changed this situ-
into the frame to control the character. With the ation somewhat – although given the comments that
coming of sound, that violence became internal to accompany the more racist of these cartoons, not
the cinematic space of the cartoon. This trend was always clearly to the better. And their absence in
evident in the Fleischer studio’s Talkartoons and its higher resolution formats and as parts of curated
Betty Boop cartoons that featured jazz greats such collections limits the range of readings and uses to
as Louis Armstrong, Cab Calloway, or Don Redman. which they can be put. In those cases where some
The latter did away with the sing-along conceit en- of these cartoons have been released commercially,
tirely, embedding performers in the narrative in both attempts to frame their meaning are equally problem-
live and caricature form.45 At the same time, Max atic. These re-releases often feature warnings about
Fleischer, who had once sparred with Ko-Ko regu- changing standards of racial decorum, such as
larly, now vanished from the screen, appearing with Leonard Maltin’s introductions on Disney compila-
Betty only once, in Betty Boop’s Rise to Fame (1934), tion DVDs. These well-meaning interludes stop short
which incorporated older material within an enclosed of implicating early animators and producers in the
retrospective and nostalgic frame.46 Elsewhere, the structural processes of racism.
same was true: with the exception of public relations, This elision has also helped occlude the debt
by the late 1930s the convention of the performing cartoons owed to vaudeville and to blackface min-
animator was largely finished, and animate space strelsy. The elimination of racially insensitive car-
was foreclosed to its makers in favor of a fantasy of toons from the canon creates an historical
a coherent and continuous cinematic space. For discontinuity, glossing over the ways in which car-
example, Bosko the Talk-Ink Kid is the only one of the toons were integral elements in a complex web of
Bosko shorts that features Rudy Ising and the conceit popular cultural texts and practices that included
of the lightning sketch; the rest of almost forty car- movies, radio, and live performance. And it also
toons in the Bosko series locate him in a cinematic contributes to a mythic history in which feature films
reality that seals off the screen from the stage. In simply replaced vaudeville and its filmed versions
addition to fraying the associative links between the overnight. Because with the racist cartoons went
trademark character and the blackface minstrel, many of their marginal brethren, the sing-alongs, jazz
then, the coming of sound altered the circuits of ritual celebrations, and other oddities that imagined a
violence that those conventions had permitted. Less more free and vibrant world apart from everyday life
often tormented by the animator, continuing cartoon and coded it as closely aligned with (an imagined)
characters turned inward, toward each other. It is in African American culture.
this moment of enclosure that the extremely violent African American stereotypes in cartoons also
racist caricatures of the swing era – in titles such as expressed through black bodies and their environs
Trader Mickey or Swing Wedding (Harman and Ising, fantasies about the power of blackness to disrupt
MGM, 1937) – emerge as figures of an incredible norms of civilized behavior. Evoking the plantation,
libidinal force seemingly punished for its relative so- the jungle, and the ghetto, cartoon shorts such as
cial and cultural freedom, but within the space itself Swing You Sinners (Fleischer, 1930), Snow White
and not by the animator. (1933), Little Black Sambo (Ub Iwerks/Comicolor,
1935), or Sunday Go to Meetin’ Time (Merrie Melo-
Space is the place dies, 1936) employed stereotypical blackness to de-
Obviously, not every cartoon indulged in this sort of pict the threat of primitive savagery, the innocence of
racist stereotyping – nor did every studio contribute the barely civilized, the allure and danger of the jazz
in equal measure – but a surprising number did, underworld, black cupidity, and the irresistible ef-
especially those that participated in the swing music fects of rhythm on the black body. In grotesque
craze of the late 1920s through early 1940s.47 This fashion they depicted black bodies with enormous

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A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 281

Fig. 10. A frame

from Trader
Mickey (1932)
illustrates the
difference
between the
animate minstrel
(Mickey) and the
emerging racist
caricature of the
swing era (the
cannibals). Note
the shackles on
the natives’ legs,
as well as
Mickey’s gloves
and the different
ways in which his
mouth and those
of the natives are
rendered.

lips and eyes, mouths big enough to engulf whole imity of living white and non-white bodies – even if
watermelons, and bodies jointed so loosely that a the representational thrust of the acts reinforced
single person could express a whole complex of segregation. Cartoon shorts such as Van Beuren’s
syncopation. Locating these grossly caricatured Dixie Days (1930) or Plane Dumb (1932), on the other
bodies in jungles, plantations, and urban under- hand, formed a segregated whole, distinct and sepa-
worlds made substantial the complex of white fear rate from the other elements on the bill, if not from
and desire surrounding African American bodies and real life itself. They presented African American life
culture in more detail than a live short could hope to as existing in a physical and metaphysical realm in
suggest. In this way, the economic imperatives of the which the stereotypical markers of fear and desire,
transitional use of shorts as a rational tactic designed of love and theft (to put it in Eric Lott’s terms), tagged
to replace live performers with film products inter- not only the body, but actually delineated the geog-
sected with racial formations that subjugated African raphy of day-to-day existence. Complicity in the
Americans. In spatial terms, this was Jim Crow ren- American apartheid of the 1930s didn’t always re-
dered at the level of the fantastic. quire an explicitly articulated racial ideology to sup-
Cartoons and related public-relations prac- port the maintenance of the color line, nor did it
tices that linked this fantastic geography with senti- require self-avowed racial separatists or race baiters.
ment and nostalgia, such as the Fleischer Song Instead, it could be realized through discourses and
Car-Tunes or the first iteration of Disney’s Mickey practices that produced links between the repre-
Mouse Club (1929–1935), reinforced dominant racial sentational world of filmed entertainment, its fantastic
formations by locating representations in a shared idealization in the cartoon, its public celebration in
public performance of sentimentality. And, while marketing, and finally, at the end of the chain of
vaudeville shorts shared with their live-act forebears signification, in the experience of segregated thea-
the limited space of racial representation (i.e. the ters, their lobbies, and the streets into which they led.
stereotype), the live act at least had the advantage From the cotton fields in a lobby display for King
of spontaneous performance and the relative prox- Vidor’s Hallelujah! (1929) touted in Publix Opinion, to

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282 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) Nicholas Sammond

the all-black heaven in Jolson’s Wonder Bar (1934) raphy all the more possible, and useful: the movies
or in the cartoon Clean Pastures (Merrie Melodies, didn’t kill vaudeville or blackface minstrelsy, but they
1937), the color line found its origin in bodies, but did inflect them in a nostalgic tone, placing them, and
extended from this world into the next.48 The transi- the spatial organization through which they became
tion to sound, with its radical reorganization of both manifest, in a space of time past.
spatial and labor relations, made that fantastic geog-

Notes
1. See Daniel Goldmark, Tunes for ‘Toons: Music and 8. See, for example, Van Beuren Studio’s Makin’ Em
the Hollywood Cartoon (Berkeley: University of Cali- Move (1931) or Columbia’s Birth of Jazz (1932).
fornia Press, 2005), 32.
9. Compare Gomery, The Coming of Sound, with
2. As Robert M. Lewis points out, the consolidation of Crafton, The Talkies, for conflicting descriptions of
cinema in the 1920s did spell the demise of many the American film industry’s transition to sound as
small independent vaudeville houses. Yet at the rational and strategic vs. chaotic and unstable.
same time, larger houses that included movies pros- 10. See Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Donald
pered, as did movie palaces that incorporated live Nicholson-Smith (trans.) (Malden, Mass.: Blackwell,
performance. Robert M. Lewis, “Introduction: From 1991 [1974]), 36–37. Space does not permit a dis-
Celebration to Show Business”, in Robert M. Lewis cussion of Lefebvre’s arguments with Lacan,
(ed.), From Traveling Show to Vaudeville: Theatrical Althusser, or Foucault; as an analytic his formulation
Spectacle in America, 1830–1910 (Baltimore: Johns is useful in spite of the limitations a strictly structuralist
Hopkins University Press, 2003), 20. See also Donald approach might entail. For a rethinking of the utility
Crafton, The Talkies: American Cinema’s Transition of Lefebvre, see Jason Edwards, “The Materialism
to Sound, 1926–1931 (Berkeley: University of Cali- of Historical Materialism”, in Diana Coole and
fornia Press, 1997); Douglas Gomery, The Coming Samantha Frost (eds.), New Materialisms: Ontology,
of Sound (New York: Routledge, 2003); Edwin M. Agency, and Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University
Bradley, The First Hollywood Sound Shorts, Press, 2010), 281–298.
1926–1931 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2005).
11. Of course, these changes in spatial dynamics also
3. For a discussion of this metaphysical quality of took place in the conventions of live-action cinema.
animation, see Sergei M. Eisenstein, On Disney, Jay See Mary Ann Doane, “The Voice in the Cinema: The
Leyda (trans.) (London: Methuen, 1988). Articulation of Body and Space”, Yale French Studies
60 (1980): 33–50. For a discussion of the different
4. See Norman Klein, 7 Minutes (London: Verso, 1993),
problems that animation poses for on- and offscreen
186–199. Although he is in whiteface, his behaviors,
spatial dynamics, see Erwin Feyersinger, “Diegetic
physical plasticity, and challenge to the frame bound-
Short Circuits: Metalepsis in Animation”, Animation
ary clearly make Ko-Ko a candidate for minstrelsy
5.3 (Winter 2010): 279–294.
too.
12. Gomery has argued that this was true both of chains
5. For a discussion of the relationship of political-eco-
owned by or associated with the major studios, and
nomic, technological, and aesthetic considerations
for smaller independents trying to compete with
in modeling media transitions, see Brian Winston,
those majors. Gomery, The Coming of Sound, 11–12.
“How Are Media Born?” in Michele Hilmes (ed.),
Connections: a Broadcast History Reader (Belmont, 13. Ko-Ko was often a rotoscope of Dave Fleischer in a
Cal.: Wadsworth, 2003), 3–18. For one discussion clown costume.
of this transition in relation to animation, see Hank 14. See Henry Jenkins, What Made Pistachio Nuts? Early
Sartin, “From Vaudeville to Hollywood, from Silence Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic (New
to Sound: Warner Bros. Cartoons of the Early Sound York: Columbia University Press, 1992); and Lewis,
Era”, in Kevin Sandler (ed.), Reading The Rabbit: From Traveling Show to Vaudeville.
Explorations In Warner Bros. Animation (New York:
Routledge, 1998), 67–85. 15. See Crafton, The Talkies, 395–400; and Richard
Fleischer, Out of the Inkwell: Max Fleischer and the
6. See Donald Crafton, Before Mickey: The Animated Animation Revolution (Lexington: University Press of
Film, 1898–1928 (Chicago: University of Chicago Kentucky, 2005), 43. The first of these was My Old
Press, 1982); Klein, 7 Minutes; and Paul Wells, Un- Kentucky Home (1924), a classic minstrel tune
derstanding Animation (New York: Routledge, 1998). penned by Stephen Foster, originally titled “Poor
Uncle Tom, Goodnight”.
7. On the role of music in the development of American
animation, see Goldmark, Tunes for ‘Toons. 16. Only approximate numbers are given because of

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A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) 283

disagreement over release dates, and because ing of Sound, 11–12) suggests that up until the
some shorts were issued as Song Car-Tunes, then 1925–1926 season first-run theaters offered vaude-
re-released as Screen Songs. See Leonard Maltin, ville combinations, but not full presentations. How-
Of Mice and Magic: a History of American Animated ever, a survey of Wid’s and Film Daily from 1920 on
Cartoons (New York: Plume, 1980); and Leslie Car- suggests that Broadway houses were offering pres-
baga, The Fleischer Story (Cambridge, Mass.: Da entations much earlier. Both Wid’s and its successor
Capo Press, 1988). Film Daily, featured regular and thorough reviews of
17. The exact numbering of the Song Car-Tunes and the biggest of these presentation shows, under the
Screen Songs is complicated in that some of the heading “At Broadway Theaters”. See, for example,
former were re-released as the latter. “At Broadway Theaters”, Wid’s Daily (15 September
1920): 4.
18. As Michael Rogin (among others) has argued, race,
ethnicity, and sentimentality met in early twentieth 25. Fleischer, Out of the Inkwell, 40–45; “Ko-Ko a ‘Pres-
century American performance practices, and black- entation Knockout’”, Moving Picture World (8 May
face in particular was a means by which Jewish 1926): 183.
writers, performers, and producers (such as the 26. “Ko-Ko a ‘Presentation Knockout’”, 184.
Fleischers) could ease themselves out of ethnicity
and into a whiteness legible and acceptable to 27. “‘Felix the Cat’ Cartoon Prologues to Be a Feature
middle-class Christian elites. Michael Rogin, Black- of Short Subject Month”, Moving Picture World (24
face, White Noise: Jewish Immigrants in the Holly- October 1925): 637–638.
wood Melting Pot (Berkeley: University of California 28. See Lewis, From Traveling Show to Vaudeville, 17–21.
Press, 1996), 121–156. Saidiya Hartman might reply
that this recourse to sentimentality predated that 29. Gomery, The Coming of Sound, 12–13.
racial formation, and was an essential means by 30. Small exhibitors’ needs to compete against the ma-
which those who (were) identified as white main- jors also allowed Warner Bros. to position their one-
tained a fantasy of a subjectivity superior to the object reel Vitaphone Varieties as a way to take advantage
status of the black bodies they either owned, com- of that same unstable market. As Variety put it in
peted with, or wanted to rescue. Saidiya Hartman, 1926, in “the smaller cities of the United States,
Scenes of Subjection: Terror, Slavery, and Self-Mak- Vitaphone must come as a boon. The little theatre
ing in Nineteenth-Century America (New York: Oxford owner has never been in position [sic] to compete
University Press, 1997). See also Hortense J. Spillers, with the big fellow when it came to any sort of
“Mama’s Baby, Papa’s Maybe: An American Gram- entertainment beyond the pictures. Only the very
mar Book”, Diacritics 17.2 (Summer 1987): 65–81. large theatres were enabled to present elaborate
19. For a discussion of the importance of this interactivity musical programs and divertissements. The little
to vaudeville-inflected events, see Jenkins, What man has had to be content … using a small orchestra
Made Pistachio Nuts?, 59–95. or a vocalist now and then. … The majority of the
smaller theatres don’t even make any pretense at an
20. C.S. Sewell, “Dolly Gray”, Moving Picture World (6
orchestra, employing only an organist or pianist”
February 1926): 565. Compare Maltin, Of Mice and
(“New Presentation Idea Big Boon to Exhibitors”,
Magic, 358.
Variety (7 August 1926): 3.) See also Crafton, The
21. “‘The Children’s Hour’ at the Plaza Theatre”, New Talkies, 76.
York Times (26 December 1926): X7. In one instance,
Film Daily reported that projectionists at a test screen- 31. Quoted in “Audien Shorts Will Kill Presentations,
ing sang along without musical accompaniment. “My Declares Jack White”, Exhibitors Herald-World (27
Bonnie”, Film Daily (20 September 1925): 32. April 1929): 36.

22. “Stages Epilogue with 40 People for Song Car-Tune 32. Early work by groundbreaking performers such as
‘My Bonnie’”, Moving Picture World (17 October Bert Williams and George Walker also played a role.
1925): 574. See Louis Chude-Sokei, The Last “Darky”: Bert Wil-
liams, Black-on-Black Minstrelsy, and the African
23. See Gomery, The Coming of Sound, 11–12. For Diaspora (Durham, NC: Duke University Press,
discussions of localized mixing of vaudeville and 2006); Jayna Brown, Babylon Girls: Black Women
movies, see Calvin Pryluck, “The Itinerant Movie Performers and the Shaping of the Modern (Durham,
Show and the Development of the Film Industry” and NC: Duke University Press, 2008); or Daphne Brooks,
Anne Morey, “Early Film Exhibition in Wilmington, Bodies in Dissent: Spectacular Performances of Race
North Carolina”, in Kathryn H. Fuller-Seely (ed.), and Freedom, 1850–1910 (Durham, NC: Duke Uni-
Hollywood in the Neighborhood: Historical Case versity Press, 2006). For film, see, for instance, Arthur
Studies of Local Moviegoing (Berkeley: University of Knight, Disintegrating the Musical: Black Perform-
California Press, 2008), 37–74. ance and American Musical Film (Durham, NC: Duke
24. Fleischer, Out of the Inkwell, 39. Gomery (The Com- University Press, 2002).

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 3, 2011 – p. 283

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284 FILM HISTORY Vol. 23 Issue 3 (2011) Nicholas Sammond

33. Linda Williams points out that in New York, for in- at play in live-action film and animation. All of the
stance, Broadway live theaters integrated gradually animation studios of the period depicted wily China-
in the 1920s because of the popularity of these men, simpering Jews, drunken Irishmen, etc., either
shows, while movie theaters remained segregated. in human or thinly veiled animal form. And, while the
Linda Williams, Playing the Race Card: Melodramas vaudeville stage of the early twentieth century offered
of Black and White from Uncle Tom to O.J. Simpson no shortage of ethnic stereotypes, an early surge in
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001), ethnic acts in live-action sound shorts gave way to
182–184. For a more detailed discussion of some of vaudeville shorts with generically white comedians,
the complexities of describing race and space in dancers, musicians, and novelty acts. Crafton sug-
exhibition, see Robert C. Allen, “Reimagining the gests that in early sound film, after an initial fascina-
History of the Experience of Cinema” and Arthur tion with accents, the major studios moved away
Knight, “Searching for the Apollo: Black Moviegoing from ethnicity when the economic dictates of the
and Its Contexts in the Small-town US South”, in Depression demanded a broader appeal (The Talk-
Richard Maltby, Daniel Bilteryst, and Philippe Meers ies, 417).
(eds) Explorations in New Cinema History: Ap-
43. The major studios’ designs on the international mar-
proaches and Case Studies (Malden, Mass.: Wiley
ket are beyond the scope of this essay. See Crafton,
Blackwell, 2011), 41–57 and 226–242.
The Talkies, 418–441.
34. The best white minstrels, such as Al Jolson, Eddie
Cantor, or the “coon shouter” Sophie Tucker (who 44. Cf. Klein, 7 Minutes, 68–80 and Goldmark, Tunes for
eschewed blackface in the early 1900s, but kept the Toons, 77–99.
dialect) went on to perform on screen.
45. There were subtle differences between the Fleischer
35. See, for instance, Brooks, Bodies in Dissent, or Song Car-Tunes and its Screen Songs. The Song
Brown, Babylon Girls. Car-Tunes were much more likely to scant plot and
36. “Sweeping Fools”, Publix Opinion (18 February narrative, with screens that appeared as flat as
1928): 2. Although they played janitors, both men intertitles and a bouncing ball or minimally sketched
were college educated. character leading the audience in song. The Screen
Songs, on the other hand, were more likely to use a
37. Bill Egan, “Miller, Flournoy”, in Cary D. Wintz and framing narrative and to incorporate musical star
Paul Finkleman (eds) Encyclopedia of the Harlem talent into that narrative, eschewing the flatter aes-
Renaissance (New York: Routledge, 2004), 792. thetics of the Song Car-Tunes.
Aubrey Lyles died in 1932; he was replaced in the
act by Johnnie Lee. 46. Another exception is More Pep (1936), which features
an animator’s hand, a voice actor playing “Uncle
38. Crafton, The Talkies, 412.
Max”, and inkwell gags.
39. “Metro Movietone Acts”, MGM Distributor (19 Janu-
ary 1929), n.p., Margaret Herrick Library, Academy 47. Nor did every cartoon of the 1920s feature characters
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. who resisted the animator or who performed a re-
ductive racial or ethnic stereotype. Rather, what is
40. The notion of “generic” depends, of course, on the described here is a trend in conventions that move
assumption that acts that feature whites are not from an interpenetration of animated and “real”
racial, while those that feature non-whites are. space, and away from the performing animator.
41. “200 Publix Houses Get ‘Talkies’”, Publix Opinion (21
48. For discussion of the Hallelujah! promotion, see
May 1928): 2.
“Sales Slant Correct!” Publix Opinion 3:23 (2 May
42. Less binary formations of racial difference were also 1930): 9.

Abstract: A Space Apart: Animation and the Spatial Politics of Conversion,

by Nicholas Sammond

Reading cartoons and associated exhibition practices in the silent and early sound eras, this essay
examines the expression of the black/white racial binary in American animation of the 1920s and 1930s.
It treats cartoons as a case study in the visual representation of the intersection of spatial practice,
aesthetics, and labor/management relations in the reorganization of the American film industry during the
transition to sound film..

Key words: Animation, blackface, labor, nostalgia, theatrical prologues, performance space, vaudeville.

FILM HISTORY: Volume 23, Number 3, 2011 – p. 284

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