Bessy Mae Kelley Info II

Introduction

Early Life
– Bessie Mae Kelley was born Elizabeth Mae Kelley.
– The date of her birth is unclear, but according to the Minnesota Death Index it is November
10, 1890.
– According to the 1900 United States Census, Kelley and her sister were born in Pennsylvania.
Kelley’s father was Canadian and her mother English. They were residents of Caribou, Maine
where her father was manager of the Caribou Town Farm.

– In the 1910 census, Kelley and her parents continued to live in Caribou. She was a self-
employed artist and her father a farmer. They lived on Riverside Street.

Sometime after the census, Kelley studied at the Walker Institute of Art and Pratt Institute.

The New York Times, December 15, 2022, published an article about animation scholar Mindy
Johnson and her research on Kelley. Johnson said Kelley’s career started in 1917. At the time New
York was the center of American animation. Kelley worked for Bray Productions, Paul Terry
(“Aesop’s Fables”) and Max Fleischer (“Out of the Inkwell”).
In December 1920, production of the “Gasoline Alley” animated cartoons was reported in the
Exhibitors Herald and Motion Picture News. Bray Pictures Corporation was hired to handle the
animation and Kelley directed some of the cartoons.

Around 1924, Kelley left the animation industry and toured as chalk talk artist.

– “Bessie Mae Kelley would travel the country for her vaudeville circuits in the 1920s” She
 –
even billed herself as "the only woman animator" on these tours.
– On July 15, 1932, “Elizabeth M. Kelley” and William A. Hirschy married in Nashua, New
Hampshire, according to the New Hampshire Marriage Record Index at
Ancestry.com. (Descendants of Benjamin Fiddler and Maria Fosbrook Fiddler misspelled
Hirschy as Hirshy.) Her occupation was artist and his machinist. She was “Elizabeth M
Hirschy”
–
– Kelly was studying art at New York’s Pratt Institute, when as a part of the first generation of
cinema, she fell in love with the medium.
– Kelley passed away on October 21, 1981, in Wabasha, Minnesota. She was laid to rest at
Lakewood Cemetery.

On July 15, 1932, “Elizabeth M. Kelley” and William A. Hirschy married in Nashua, New Hampshire,
according to the New Hampshire Marriage Record Index at Ancestry.com. (Descendants of
Benjamin Fiddler and Maria Fosbrook Fiddler misspelled Hirschy as Hirshy.) Her occupation was
artist and his machinist.

https://archive.org/details/twentyfiveyearsi00unse/page/98/mode/2up
The Brattleboro Reformer November 25, 1925

Works
– Kelley both animated and directed shorts that are, thanks to Johnson's research, now
considered the earliest known animated films that were hand-drawn and directed by a
woman.
– There are two surviving films of B.M. Kelly: A 5-minute filmed called “Flower Fairies” which
was released in 1921 and a 3-minute film called “A Merry Christmas” released in 1922.
– Flower Fairies features a technique called composite animation in which hand-drawn
animation is combined with live-action footage.
– The adaptation of Aesop’s fables featuring Milton and Mary featured this
technique also.
– A Merry Christmas features stop-motion animation in addition to composite animation.

Early Career
– “She kind of made a nuisance of herself at the studious and they finally hired her on.” -
Johnson
– Kelly began working in the industry doing menial jobs like washing film cells, but she
worked her way up and Johnson said she was eventually "working elbow to elbow with
Max Fleischer, Paul Terry and Walter Lantz," animators who were household names.

– It is said that she hand-drew a mouse couple, Roderick and Gladys who were later renamed
Milton and Mary, in Paul Terry’s animated adaptation of Aesop’s Fables which inspired Walt
Disney’s Mickey and Minnie Mouse.

○ Later on in the 1920s, she went to vaudeville and was on the circuits traveling across
the country as the only woman animator. That was her billing. And she'd cart her trunk
with her giant easel and paper stock and pens and charcoals and would educate across
the country on how animated cartoons were made. And in many of the write-ups of her
 billing, it's referenced that Walt Disney himself - later in the '20s after Mickey and
Minnie were very popular - that her work had originated years before him, but that he
was influenced by the work that appeared in the "Aesop's Fables."
○ Steamboat Willie was released in 1928, 7 years after appearances of Milton and Mary

– Kelley’s legacy was discovered by Mindy Johnson, and presented in December 2022

– “In the corner of the image stood a lone woman that she suspected was Kelley, despite one of
Johnson's colleagues having written her off as a "cleaning lady" or a "secretary."
– Women's roles have often been avoided or ignored, or reduced down to a single logline
of pretty girls who traced and coloured,"
– But she [Johnson] had a theory that women in the vaudeville era were far more
involved in the early days of animation than was previously known.
– This erasure, Johnson says, is "common in film, it's common in life in general. Women's
stories just are not told." "History is recorded, preserved or written about in archives
from a male perspective, and particularly in the history of animation,

– “Miss Bessie Mae Kelley possesses the unique distinction of being the only woman animated
cartoonist in the motion picture profession, and has had thorough grounding and training in
her art.”
– “She has been associated for seven years with the Bray Productions of New York and
Chicago; has also assisted Max Fliescher [sic] on his famous cartoon stories, “Out of
the Inkwell,” and Paul Terry in animating “Aesop’s Fables.” She has, personally, directed
the series of animated cartoons “Gasoline Alley.”

Information
– Her contribution to animation was almost like a secret being revealed.
– Mindy Johnson is the who discovered the history of Bessy.
 – Mindy Johnson is the who discovered the history of Bessy.
– Bessy’s recognition seems to be posthumously.
– Kelley helped design and animate a mouse couple from Paul Terry’s influential “Aesop’s
Fables” series (1921 to 1933). Johnson noted that Walt Disney spoke about being inspired
by the series.

New York TImes

When you think of pioneering animator, you think of Walt Disney, but his work in part was
inspired by Besse Mae Kelley.
Kelley’s influence has been lost to history, but some has been recovered by Animation Historian
Mindy Johnson. It all began with Johnson’s study of an illustration that depicted animators of the
1920s, all men, when she noticed a woman in the corner of the image. It was speculated that she
was merely a secretary or cleaning lady, but Johnson had a hunch that was simply not the case.

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/24/1145092476/bessie-mae-kelley-first-woman-animator?
utm_term=nprnews&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=npr&utm_medium=social&fbclid=
IwAR2oy8iQhWDZij7IxYfQg3MyRz8UEPDsveRaZ_yUU1J6eOnYEijw3lgFuzw
Article published December 24, 2022 by Jonaki Mehta

Evening Leader (Corning, New York), July 27, 1927, page 5 column 4: