1001 Animations: Gertie the Dinosaur

Show: N/A
Episode: N/A
Year: 1914

Writer(s): Winsor McCay


103 years… it's been 103 years since Gertie the Dinosaur made her debut in a vaudeville act that gave the world of animation a major wake-up call! Gertie herself may be one of the most important cartoon characters to ever exist because while she doesn't have a strong personality being what amounts to a circus animal for Mr. McCay to "control", she was the first animated character ever given a truly distinctive personality. While Windsor McCay may not have been the first person to ever make use of photographed images to create the illusion of animation, he certainly brought it into the public eye with this massive undertaking (both in Gertie's size and the process of making this cartoon).


Mr. McCay drew all of this by himself by hand, before the invention of animation cels! Both his previous projects of Little Nemo and How a Mosquito Operates were good, but nothing beforehand in the realms of animation from him or anybody else ever had this level of detail. Just watching this magnificent beast dance around, eat a tree and even toss a mammoth into the sea (which is still really funny) is a breathtaking sight even today. In fact, her creation gave paleontologists a better insight into the real behavior of actual sauropods, that they weren't in fact giant lummoxes who wasted their lives wallowing in the swamp! Hell, they even swallowed rocks whole like Gertie!


Even after over a century, this is a true work of beauty, a labor of love and a true testament to animation as art. At #6 of The 50 Greatest Cartoons and having a proud preservation in the Library of Congress and the National Film Registry, Gertie the Dinosaur proved herself an invaluable reference to animation fans young and old alike. In fact, a year later, Bray Studios even attempted their own knockoff of Gertie which, while good for such an underappreciated animation studio which would spawn many of the greats like Max Fleischer and Paul Terry, doesn't quite match the majesty of the original. Hell, Walt Disney World has a life-sized ice cream parlor replica of the old girl in her honor! From the very bottom of my heart, Mr. McCay, I thank you!


Gertie the Dinosaur is in the Public Domain.

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