Confidence: The Cartoon That Helped America Get Through the Great Depression (1933)

in Animation, History, Music | May 6th, 2026

No more bum­min’, let’s all get to work…

Actu­al­ly, hold up a sec. We’ll all be hap­pi­er and more pro­duc­tive if we take a moment to start our work day with Con­fi­dence, a pep­py musi­cal ani­ma­tion from 1933, star­ring new­ly elect­ed Pres­i­dent Franklin Delano Roo­sevelt and Mick­ey Mouse pre­cur­sor, Oswald the Lucky Rab­bit. 

Few Americans—today we’d refer to them as the 1%—could escape the pri­va­tions of the Great Depres­sion. The movies were one indus­try that con­tin­ued to thrive through this dark peri­od, pre­cise­ly because they offered a few hours of respite. No one went to the pic­tures to see a reflec­tion of their own lives. Gor­geous gowns, glam­orous Man­hat­tan apart­ments and roman­tic trou­ble cer­tain to be resolved in hap­py endings…remember Mia Far­row’s belea­guered wait­ress bask­ing in the Pur­ple Rose of Cairo’s reas­sur­ing glow?

Giv­en the pub­lic’s pref­er­ence for escapist fare, direc­tor Bill Nolan, the Father of Rub­ber Hose Ani­ma­tion, could have played it safe by gloss­ing over the back­sto­ry that leads Oswald to seek out advice from the Com­man­der in Chief. Instead, Nolan deliv­ered his joy­ful car­toon ani­mals into night­mare ter­ri­to­ry, the Depres­sion per­son­i­fied as a cowled Death fig­ure lay­ing waste to the land. It’s weird­ly upset­ting to see those hyper-cheer­ful vin­tage barn­yard ani­mals (and a rogue mon­key) under­go this graph­ic ener­va­tion.

Oh, for some oral history—I’d love to know how mati­nee crowds react­ed as Oswald raced scream­ing before a spin­ning ver­ti­go back­ground, seek­ing a rem­e­dy for a host of non-car­toon prob­lems. Irony is a lux­u­ry they did­n’t have.

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, the can-do spir­it so cen­tral to FDR’s New Deal quick­ly turned Oswald’s frown upside down. As pres­i­den­tial cam­paign promis­es go, this one’s unique­ly tai­lored to the demands of musi­cal com­e­dy. Wit­ness Annie, in which the 32nd pres­i­dent was again called upon to Rex Har­ri­son his way into audi­ence hearts, this time from the wheel­chair the cre­ators of Con­fi­dence did­n’t dare show, some forty years ear­li­er.

The divi­sion between enter­tain­ment and nation-lead­ing is pret­ty per­me­able these days, too.

Accord­ing­ly, what real­ly sets this car­toon apart for me is the use of a Pres­i­den­tial­ly-sanc­tioned giant syringe as a tool to get Depres­sion-era Amer­i­ca back on its feet. A fig­u­ra­tive injec­tion of con­fi­dence is all well and good, but noth­ing gets the barn­yard back on its singing, danc­ing feet like a lib­er­al dose, deliv­ered in the most lit­er­al way.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Sim­ple, Down-to-Earth Christ­mas Card from the Great Depres­sion (1933)

Pri­vate Sna­fu: The World War II Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Cre­at­ed by Dr. Seuss, Frank Capra & Mel Blanc

Yale Presents an Archive of 170,000 Pho­tographs Doc­u­ment­ing the Great Depres­sion

Great Depres­sion Cook­ing: Get Bud­get-Mind­ed Meals from the Online Cook­ing Show Cre­at­ed by 93-Year-Old Clara Can­nuc­cia­ri

When Al Capone Opened a Soup Kitchen Dur­ing the Great Depres­sion: Anoth­er Side of the Leg­endary Mobster’s Oper­a­tion

Ayun Hal­l­i­day can’t get enough of that rub­ber style. 

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Chuck Jones’ The Dot and the Line Celebrates Geometry & Hard Work: An Oscar-Winning Animation (1965)

in Animation, Education, Film, Math | May 4th, 2026

The ani­mat­ed short above, The Dot and the Line, direct­ed by the great Chuck Jones and nar­rat­ed by Eng­lish actor Robert Mor­ley, won an Oscar in 19656 for Best Ani­mat­ed Short Film. Based on a book writ­ten by Nor­ton Juster, “The Dot and the Line” tells the sto­ry of a romance between two geo­met­ric shapes—taking the arche­typ­al nar­ra­tive tra­jec­to­ry of boy meets girl, los­es girl, wins girl in the end (find­ing him­self along the way) and inject­ing it with some fas­ci­nat­ing social com­men­tary that still res­onates almost fifty years lat­er. One way of watch­ing “The Dot and the Line” is as a “tri­umph of the nerd” sto­ry, where an anx­ious square (as in “uncool”) Line has to com­pete with a hip­ster beat­nik Squig­gle of a rival for the affec­tions of a flighty Dot.

The Line begins the film “stiff as a stick… dull, con­ven­tion­al and repressed” (as his love inter­est says of him) in con­trast to the groovy Squig­gle and his groovy bebop sound­track. With the pos­si­ble sug­ges­tion that this love trans­gress­es mid-cen­tu­ry racial bound­aries, the Line’s friends dis­ap­prove and tell him to give it up, since “they all look alike any­way.” But the Line per­sists in his fol­ly, indulging in some Wal­ter Mit­ty-like rever­ies of hero­ic endeav­ors that might win over his Dot. Final­ly, using “great self-con­trol,” he man­ages to bend him­self into an angle, then anoth­er, then a series of sim­ple, then very com­plex, shapes, becom­ing, we might assume, some kind of math­e­mat­i­cal wiz. After refin­ing his tal­ents alone, he goes off to show them to Dot, who is “over­whelmed” and delight­ed and who “gig­gles like a school­girl.”

Here the sub­text of the nerd-gets-the-girl sto­ry­line man­i­fests a fair­ly con­ser­v­a­tive cri­tique of the “anar­chy” of the Squig­gle, whom the Dot comes to see as “undis­ci­plined, grace­less, coarse” and oth­er unflat­ter­ing adjec­tives while the line—who pro­claimed to him­self ear­li­er that “free­dom is not a license for chaos”—is “daz­zling, clever, mys­te­ri­ous, ver­sa­tile, light, elo­quent, pro­found, enig­mat­ic, com­plex, and com­pelling.” I can almost imag­ine that George Will had a hand in the writ­ing, which is to say that it’s enor­mous­ly clever, and enor­mous­ly invest­ed in the val­ues of self-con­trol, hard work, and dis­ci­pline, and dis­trust­ful of spon­tane­ity, free play, and gen­er­al groovi­ness. At the end of the film, our Dot and Line go off to live “if not hap­pi­ly ever after, at least rea­son­ably so” in some cozy sub­urb, no doubt. The moral of the sto­ry? “To the vec­tor belong the spoils.”

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Carl Sagan Explains Evo­lu­tion in an 8‑Minute Ani­ma­tion

Watch “Geom­e­try of Cir­cles,” the Abstract Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion Scored by Philip Glass (1979)

Jour­ney to the Cen­ter of a Tri­an­gle: Watch the 1977 Dig­i­tal Ani­ma­tion That Demys­ti­fies Geom­e­try

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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The Simpsons Present Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven,” and Teachers Now Use It to Teach Kids the Joys of Literature

in Animation, Literature, Television | April 30th, 2026

The Simp­sons has mocked or ref­er­enced lit­er­a­ture over its many sea­sons, usu­al­ly through a book Lisa was read­ing, or with guest appear­ances (e.g., Michael Chabon & Jonathan Franzen, Maya Angelou and Amy Tan). And it has ref­er­enced Edgar Allan Poe in both title (“The Tell-Tale Head” from the first sea­son) and in pass­ing (in “Lisa’s Rival” from 1994, the title char­ac­ter builds a dio­ra­ma based on the same Poe tale.)

But on the first ever “Tree­house of Hor­ror” from 1990—the Simp­sons’ recur­ring Hal­loween episode—they adapt­ed Poe’s “The Raven” more faith­ful­ly than any bit of lit found in any oth­er episode. The poem, read by James Earl Jones, remains intact, more or less, but with Dan Castellaneta’s Homer Simp­son pro­vid­ing the unnamed narrator’s voice. Marge makes an appear­ance as the long depart­ed Lenore, with hair so tall it needs an extra can­vas to con­tain it in por­trait. Mag­gie and Lisa are the censer-swing­ing seraphim, and Bart is the annoy­ing raven that dri­ves Homer insane.

Castel­lan­e­ta does a great job deliv­er­ing Poe’s verse with con­vic­tion and humor, while keep­ing the char­ac­ter true to both Homer and Poe. It’s a bal­anc­ing act hard­er than it sounds.

Suf­fice it to say that this for­ay into Poe was good enough for sev­er­al teach­ers’ guides (includ­ing this one from The New York Times) to sug­gest using the video in class. (We’d love to hear about this if you were a teacher or stu­dent who expe­ri­enced this.) And it’s the first and only time that Poe got co-writ­ing cred­it on a Simp­sons episode.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Watch The Simp­sons’ Hal­loween Par­o­dy of Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Thomas Pyn­chon Edits His Lines on The Simp­sons: “Homer is my role mod­el and I can’t speak ill of him.”

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

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Watch La Linea, the Popular 1970s Italian Animations Drawn with a Single Line

in Animation | April 16th, 2026


Sim­plic­i­ty is not the goal. It is the by-prod­uct of a good idea and mod­est expec­ta­tions.

Thus spake design­er Paul Rand, a man who knew some­thing about mak­ing an impres­sion, hav­ing cre­at­ed icon­ic logos for such imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­able brands as ABC, IBM, and UPS.

An exam­ple of Rand’s obser­va­tion, La Lin­ea, aka Mr. Line, a beloved and decep­tive­ly sim­ple car­toon char­ac­ter drawn with a sin­gle unbro­ken line, began as a shill for an Ital­ian cook­ware com­pa­ny. No mat­ter what he man­ages to get up to in two or three min­utes, it’s deter­mined that he’ll even­tu­al­ly butt up against the lim­i­ta­tions of his lin­eal real­i­ty.

His chat­ter­ing, apoplec­tic response proved such a hit with view­ers that a few episodes in, the cook­ware con­nec­tion was sev­ered. Mr. Line went on to become a glob­al star in his own right, appear­ing in 90 short ani­ma­tions through­out his 15-year his­to­ry, start­ing in 1971. Find many of the episodes on YouTube here.

The for­mu­la does sound rather sim­ple. Ani­ma­tor Osval­do Cavan­doli starts each episode by draw­ing a hor­i­zon­tal line in white grease pen­cil. The line takes on human form. Mr. Line’s a zesty guy, the sort who throws him­self into what­ev­er it is he’s doing, whether ogling girls at the beach, play­ing clas­si­cal piano or ice skat­ing.

When­ev­er he bumps up against an obstacle—an uncross­able gap in his base­line, an inad­ver­tent­ly explod­ed penis—he calls upon the god­like hand of the ani­ma­tor to make things right.

(Bawdy humor is a sta­ple of La Lin­ea, though the visu­al for­mat keeps things fair­ly chaste. Innu­en­do aside, it’s about as graph­ic as a big rig’s sil­hou­et­ted mud­flap girl.)

Voiceover artist Car­lo Bono­mi con­tributes a large part of the charm. Mr. Line may speak with an Ital­ian accent, but his vocal track is 90% impro­vised gib­ber­ish, with a smat­ter­ing of Lom­bard dialect. Watch him chan­nel the char­ac­ter in the record­ing booth, below.

I love hear­ing him take the even-keeled Cavan­doli to task. I don’t speak Ital­ian, but I had the sen­sa­tion I under­stood where both play­ers are com­ing from in the scene below.

Watch a big marathon of La Lin­ea at the top, or the com­plete col­lec­tion here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Dis­ney Car­toon That Intro­duced Mick­ey Mouse & Ani­ma­tion with Sound (1928)

Con­fi­dence: The Car­toon That Helped Amer­i­ca Get Through the Great Depres­sion (1933)

Watch Ani­ma­tions of Two Ita­lo Calvi­no Sto­ries: “The False Grand­moth­er” and “The Dis­tance from the Moon”

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author and illus­tra­tor in NYC.

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Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psychedelic Sesame Street Animation, Featuring Grace Slick, Teaches Kids to Count

in Animation, Music, Television | March 24th, 2026

When asked for their favorite Sesame Street seg­ment, many chil­dren of the 70s and 80s point to Pin­ball Num­ber Count. Psy­che­del­ic ani­ma­tion, the Point­er Sis­ters, odd time signatures—what’s not to love? But for the seri­ous Sesame Street buff, the “Jazz Num­bers” series above deserves the sil­ver medal. It’s got free jazz, Yel­low Sub­ma­rine-style sur­re­al­is­tic ani­ma­tion, and a vocal from Grace Slick of Jef­fer­son Air­plane. How many young par­ents rec­og­nized her dis­tinc­tive voice, I won­der?

Also known as “Jazzy Spies,” this 1969 series of ani­ma­tions was devot­ed to the num­bers 2 through 10 (there was no film for “one” as it is the loneli­est num­ber that you’ll ever do), and was an essen­tial ele­ment in Sesame Street’s first sea­son. High­lights include the dream-like ele­va­tor door sequence of “2,” the Jack­son 5 ref­er­ence in “5,” and the rac­ing fans in “10.”

Slick got involved through her first hus­band, Jer­ry Slick, who pro­duced the seg­ments for San Fran­cis­co-based ani­ma­tion stu­dio Imag­i­na­tion, Inc. Head­ed by ani­ma­tor Jeff Hale, the com­pa­ny also pro­duced the Pin­ball seg­ments, as well as the famous anamor­phic “Type­writer Guy,” the Ring­mas­ter, and the Detec­tive Man. Hale, by the way, has a cameo as Augie “Ben” Dog­gie in the well-loved Lucas par­o­dy Hard­ware Wars.)

The deliri­ous music was com­posed and per­formed by Colum­bia jazz artist Den­ny Zeitlin, who would go on to score the 1979 remake of Inva­sion of the Body Snatch­ers. Zeitlin plays both piano and clavinet; accom­pa­ny­ing him is Bob­by Natan­son on drums and Mel Graves on bass. Accord­ing to Zeitlin, Grace Slick over­dubbed her vocals lat­er.

This wasn’t Slick’s first encounter with Jim Hen­son. In 1968, she and oth­er mem­bers of Jef­fer­son Air­plane were part of a coun­ter­cul­ture doc­u­men­tary called Youth ’68, the trail­er for which you can groove on here.

Sesame Street, with all its pri­ma­ry col­ors, plas­tic mer­chan­dise, and Elmo infes­ta­tion, may have lost its edge, but these ear­ly works show its rev­o­lu­tion­ary foun­da­tions.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2015.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Philip Glass Com­pos­es Music for a Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion (1979)

Itzhak Perl­man Appears on Sesame Street and Poignant­ly Shows Kids How to Play the Vio­lin and Push Through Life’s Lim­its (1981)

Watch the First Episode of Sesame Street and 140 Oth­er Free Episodes

A Young Jim Hen­son Teach­es You How to Make Pup­pets with Socks, Ten­nis Balls & Oth­er House­hold Goods (1969)

See Ste­vie Won­der Play “Super­sti­tion” and Ban­ter with Grover on Sesame Street in 1973

Thank You, Mask Man: Lenny Bruce’s Lone Ranger Com­e­dy Rou­tine Becomes a NSFW Ani­mat­ed Film (1968)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts.

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The Adventures of Prince Achmed, the Oldest Surviving Animated Feature Film, Is Now in the Public Domain (1926)

in Animation, History | March 3rd, 2026


Die Aben­teuer des Prinzen Achmed, or The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed, lays fair claim to being the ear­li­est ani­mat­ed fea­ture film in exis­tence. If we do grant it that title, it beats the next con­tender by more than a decade. While Prince Achmed came out a cen­tu­ry ago, in 1926, Snow White and the Sev­en Dwarfs, whose pro­duc­tion was presided over by a cer­tain Walt Dis­ney, did­n’t reach the­aters until 1937. The lat­ter pic­ture holds great dis­tinc­tion in the his­to­ry of cin­e­ma, of course, not least that of being the first fea­ture made with cel ani­ma­tion: the dom­i­nant tech­nique through­out most of the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry, and one whose dig­i­tal replace­ment has been lament­ed by clas­sic ani­ma­tion enthu­si­asts. But the quiv­er­ing sil­hou­ettes of Prince Achmed show an alter­na­tive.

The mak­ing of Snow White was, by the stan­dards of the day, a vast under­tak­ing, requir­ing Dis­ney to mar­shal artis­tic and indus­tri­al resources at a scale then unknown in ani­ma­tion. Prince Achmed, by con­trast, owes its exis­tence most­ly to the work of one woman: Lotte Reiniger, who first learned the craft of scheren­schnitte sil­hou­ette-mak­ing as a lit­tle girl in Berlin.

Scheren­schnitte was inspired by what was thought to be ancient Chi­nese arts of paper-cut­ting and pup­petry, but when watched today, Prince Achmed or the oth­er ani­ma­tions Reiniger cre­at­ed bring more read­i­ly to mind tra­di­tion­al Javanese wayang kulit shad­ow pup­pet the­ater: an aes­thet­ic that, in a sense, suits the source mate­r­i­al ide­al­ly.

The episodes that con­sti­tute Prince Achmed’s nar­ra­tive are drawn in large part from One Thou­sand and One Nights, a text whose cen­turies-long evo­lu­tion bears the marks of not just many dis­tinct cul­tures across Asia and the Mid­dle East, but also those of more dra­mat­ic trans­for­ma­tion through its folk­tales’ cul­tur­al trans­po­si­tion into French, then oth­er Euro­pean lan­guages. What Reiniger brings to enchant­i­ng hand­made life isn’t any par­tic­u­lar place at any par­tic­u­lar time, but rather an ele­gant, mys­te­ri­ous, quite lit­er­al­ly arabesque realm that nev­er real­ly exist­ed. In oth­er words, Prince Achmed takes place in what can only be called the Ori­ent — which, now that the film has fall­en into the pub­lic domain, we can all vis­it when­ev­er we like. And if such vis­its hap­pen to inspire a new gen­er­a­tion of Lotte Reinigers in this world of mar­ket-researched mega-bud­get ani­ma­tion, so much the bet­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The First Ani­mat­ed Fea­ture Film: The Adven­tures of Prince Achmed by Lotte Reiniger (1926)

The Ground­break­ing Sil­hou­ette Ani­ma­tions of Lotte Reiniger: Cin­derel­la, Hansel and Gre­tel, and More

Ani­ma­tion Pio­neer Lotte Reiniger Adapts Mozart’s The Mag­ic Flute into an All-Sil­hou­ette Short Film (1935)

The Ani­ma­tions That Changed Cin­e­ma: The Ground­break­ing Lega­cies of Prince Achmed, Aki­ra, The Iron Giant & More

Watch the Old­est Japan­ese Ani­me Film, Jun’ichi Kōuchi’s The Dull Sword (1917)

The Beau­ti­ful Anar­chy of the Ear­li­est Ani­mat­ed Car­toons: Explore an Archive with 200+ Ear­ly Ani­ma­tions

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Download 1300 Still Images from the Animated Films of Hayao Miyazaki’s Studio Ghibli

in Animation, Art, Film | December 11th, 2025

You may have seen every sin­gle one of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s ani­mat­ed films, going well beyond the Hayao Miyaza­ki-direct­ed My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away, and Kik­i’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice to the less wide­ly known but also charm­ing­ly craft­ed likes of Ocean Waves, My Neigh­bors the Yamadas, and The Cat Returns. Even so, the ques­tion remains: have you real­ly seen them all? Expe­ri­enc­ing them in the the­ater or on home video is only the first stage of the process. Ide­al­ly, each ele­ment of a Ghi­b­li movie should sub­se­quent­ly be appre­ci­at­ed in iso­la­tion and at length: by lis­ten­ing to the music, for exam­ple, hun­dreds of hours of which, avail­able to stream, we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture.

Still, no mat­ter how cap­ti­vat­ing Joe Hisaishi’s scores may sound on their own, Ghi­b­li’s work is ulti­mate­ly made to be seen. Giv­en that 24 frames of their movies go by each sec­ond, it can be dif­fi­cult to pick up all the details their ani­ma­tors include in each and every one of them.

Hence the val­ue of the free archive of stills that the stu­dio first made avail­able online a few years ago, and that has steadi­ly expand­ed ever since. Though only avail­able in Japan­ese, it does­n’t present a great chal­lenge even to fans with no knowl­edge of the lan­guage to click on the poster of their Ghi­b­li film of choice, then to browse the vari­ety of down­load­able images asso­ci­at­ed with it.

Many of these stills are drawn from high­ly mem­o­rable moments across the Ghi­b­li fil­mog­ra­phy: the chil­dren’s par­ty on the hero of Por­co Rosso’s beloved air­plane; the emer­gence of the kodama in Princess Mononoke; the defeat of the colos­sal Giant War­rior in Nau­si­caä of the Val­ley of the Wind (which pre­dates the stu­dio’s foun­da­tion, but in any case now seems to count hon­orar­i­ly among its pro­duc­tions); the sen­tient flame cook­ing a skil­let of bacon and eggs in Howl’s Mov­ing Cas­tle. Some of them have even been turned into wall­pa­per for video calls, down­load­able from a page of their own. There we have anoth­er way to add a touch of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li’s dis­tinc­tive vision to our every­day lives — and anoth­er source of inspi­ra­tion to watch through the movies them­selves one more time.

Enter the archive of still images here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

De-Stress with 30 Min­utes of Relax­ing Visu­als from Direc­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki

A Vir­tu­al Tour Inside the Hayao Miyazaki’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Muse­um

A Tour of Stu­dio Ghibli’s Brand New Theme Park in Japan, Which Re-Cre­ates the Worlds of Spir­it­ed Away, My Neigh­bor Totoro, and Oth­er Clas­sics

Soft­ware Used by Hayao Miyazaki’s Ani­ma­tion Stu­dio Becomes Open Source & Free to Down­load

Stream Hun­dreds of Hours of Stu­dio Ghi­b­li Movie Music That Will Help You Study, Work, or Sim­ply Relax: My Neigh­bor Totoro, Spir­it­ed Away & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

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Watch Winsor McCay’s The Sinking of the Lusitania, the First Major Animated Propaganda Film (1918)

in Animation, History | November 25th, 2025

You might know Win­sor McCay (1867? ‑1934) for the gor­geous­ly sur­re­al Lit­tle Nemo com­ic strip or for his ear­ly ani­mat­ed short Ger­tie the Dinosaur (1914). But did you know that he also cre­at­ed some of the ear­li­est exam­ples of ani­mat­ed pro­pa­gan­da ever?

On May 7, 1915, the RMS Lusi­ta­nia was just off the coast of Ire­land, head­ing towards its des­ti­na­tion of Liv­er­pool, when a Ger­man U‑boat attacked the ship with­out warn­ing. Eigh­teen min­utes after two tor­pe­does slammed into the ship, it was under water. 1,198 died. The furor over the inci­dent even­tu­al­ly led to the Unit­ed States enter­ing WWI.

At the time of the sink­ing, McCay was employed by William Ran­dolph Hearst as an edi­to­r­i­al car­toon­ist. Though McCay was incensed by the attack, Hearst was an iso­la­tion­ist and demand­ed that he draw anti-war car­toons. This grat­ed on the artist more and more until final­ly he decid­ed to fol­low up on his huge­ly suc­cess­ful Ger­tie the Dinosaur by mak­ing The Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia (1918), which you can see above.

The movie took two years of painstak­ing effort to make and con­sist­ed of over 25,000 drawings—all done by hand and most done by McCay him­self dur­ing his free time after work.

Com­pared to oth­er ani­ma­tion done around this time, the film is both stark and seri­ous, lend­ing it the air of a doc­u­men­tary. The piece, which isn’t much short­er than the actu­al time it took for the Lusi­ta­nia to sink, gives a blow-by-blow account of the attack. Though the inci­dent is depict­ed large­ly from afar, as if from a cam­era on anoth­er ship, McCay doesn’t shy away from show­ing some real­ly gut-wrench­ing moments of the tragedy up close. At one point, there is a shot of a des­per­ate moth­er try­ing to keep her baby above the waves. At anoth­er point, dozens of peo­ple are seen bob­bing in the chop­py seas like drift­wood.

And, just in case you haven’t quite grasped the thrust of the film, McCay includes some inter­ti­tles, which are, even by the stan­dards of war pro­pa­gan­da, pret­ty heavy-hand­ed.

The babe that clung to his mother’s breast cried out to the world – TO AVENGE the most vio­lent cru­el­ty that was ever per­pe­trat­ed upon an unsus­pect­ing and inno­cent peo­ple.

And

The man who fired the shot was dec­o­rat­ed for it by the Kaiser! – AND YET THEY TELL US NOT TO HATE THE HUN.

The curi­ous thing about the movie, con­sid­er­ing its sub­ject mat­ter, is how beau­ti­ful it is. Just look at the styl­ized lines of the ocean, the baroque arabesques of the smoke com­ing off the ship’s smoke­stacks, the ele­gant use of neg­a­tive space. Each and every cel of the movie is wor­thy of get­ting framed. How many war pro­pa­gan­da movies can you say that about?

You can find The Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia in the Ani­ma­tion sec­tion of our col­lec­tion of Free Movies Online: Great Clas­sics, Indies, Noir, West­erns.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2014.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Sink­ing of the Lusi­ta­nia Ani­mat­ed in Real Time (1915)

Watch Win­sor McCay’s Lit­tle Nemo and Ger­tie the Dinosaur, and Wit­ness the Birth of Mod­ern Ani­ma­tion (1911–1914)

How Dis­ney Fought Fas­cism with Pro­pa­gan­da Car­toons Dur­ing World War II & Avert­ed Finan­cial Col­lapse

Watch Dzi­ga Vertov’s Sovi­et Toys: The First Sovi­et Ani­mat­ed Movie Ever (1924)

Jonathan Crow is a writer and film­mak­er whose work has appeared in Yahoo!, The Hol­ly­wood Reporter, and oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. 

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