Historic Animation On Display!!

Historic Animation Restored and On Display at The Kenosha Public Museum.

As part of the gallery show “More Than Funny 2” the museum is pleased to present the first showing in 99 years of “The Stolen Dream” by Andy Hettinger.

100 years ago Chicago was a major center for the invention of animated films. The first series of cartoons to feature a recurring character was not Mickey Mouse or Felix the Cat but a character called “Old Doc Yak”. Based on a Chicago Tribune comic strip by Wisconsin cartoonist Sydney Smith (best known for his other comic strip “The Gumps”) Old Doc Yak was featured in 18 animated films.

Andy Hettinger was a talented cartoonist working in Chicago shortly after the turn of the Twentieth Century who assisted Smith on some of the Doc Yak animations. Hettinger also produced two animations of his own based on his Amos Roach comic – a strip that ran in the McHenry Illinois Plain Dealer.

All of the films were animated on paper, a process that was also being used by New York Animator J.R. Bray. Bray obtained a patent for the process and all other animators were ordered to destroy their films. It is believed that all of the Chicago animations produced before 1915 were destroyed due to this patent fight.

Hettinger died tragically from septicemia in 1916 and, as a result, the drawings for his animation “The Stolen Dream” escaped destruction. The images for 7.5 minutes of this film survived, along with the art for both of his cartoons. All of which were obtained by collector George Hagenauer. George is working to restore both of Hettinger’s films from the existing art and hopes to have them completed by the film’s 100^th anniversary in 2015.