The National Cartoonists Society (NCS) is an organization of professional cartoonists in the United States. It presents the National Cartoonists Society Awards. The Society was born in 1946 when groups of cartoonists got together to entertain the troops. They enjoyed each other's company and decided to meet on a regular basis.
Silly Symphony is an American animated series of 75 musical short films produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939. As the series name implies, the Silly Symphonies were originally intended as whimsical accompaniments to pieces of music. As such, the films usually did not feature continuing characters, unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts produced by Disney at the same time. The series is notable for its innovation with Technicolor and the multiplane motion picture camera, as well as its introduction of the character Donald Duck making his first appearance in the Silly Symphony cartoon The Wise Little Hen in 1934. Seven shorts won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
Felix the Cat is a cartoon character created in 1919 by Pat Sullivan and Otto Messmer during the silent film era. An anthropomorphic young black cat with white eyes, a black body, and a giant grin, he is often considered one of the most recognized cartoon characters in film history. Felix was the first fully realized animal character in the history of American film animation.
Frank Tashlin, also known as Tish Tash and Frank Tash, was an American animator and filmmaker. He was best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of animated shorts for Warner Bros., as well as his work as a director of live-action comedy films.
Mutt and Jeff was a long-running and widely popular American newspaper comic strip created by cartoonist Bud Fisher in 1907 about "two mismatched tinhorns". It is commonly regarded as the first daily comic strip. The concept of a newspaper strip featuring recurring characters in multiple panels on a six-day-a-week schedule had previously been pioneered through the short-lived A. Piker Clerk by Clare Briggs, but it was Mutt and Jeff as the first successful daily comic strip that staked out the direction of the future trend.
Toonerville Folks was a popular newspaper cartoon feature by Fontaine Fox, which ran from 1908 to 1955. It began in 1908 in the Chicago Post, and by 1913, it was syndicated nationally by the Wheeler Syndicate. From the 1930s on, it was distributed by the McNaught Syndicate.
King Features Syndicate, Inc. is an American content distribution and animation studio, consumer product licensing and print syndication company owned by Hearst Communications that distributes about 150 comic strips, newspaper columns, editorial cartoons, puzzles, and games to nearly 5,000 newspapers worldwide. King Features Syndicate also produces intellectual properties, develops new content and franchises, like The Cuphead Show!, which it produced with Netflix, and licenses its classic characters and properties.
Barney Google and Snuffy Smith, originally Take Barney Google, for Instance, is an American comic strip created by cartoonist Billy DeBeck. Since its debut on June 17, 1919, the strip has gained a large international readership, appearing in 900 newspapers in 21 countries. The initial appeal of the strip led to its adaptation to film, animation, popular song, and television. It added several terms and phrases to the English language and inspired the 1923 hit tune "Barney Google " with lyrics by Billy Rose, as well as the 1923 record "Come On, Spark Plug!"
James Edward Murphy Jr. was a self-taught American cartoonist who is best known for his long-run family comic strip, Toots and Casper. His earliest strips, signed J.E. Murphy, had a crude awkward look, but as his cartooning improved, his full signature of Jimmy Murphy appeared.
The Van Beuren Corporation was a New York City-based animation studio that produced theatrical cartoons as well as live-action short-subjects from the 1920s to 1936.
Henry is a comic strip created in 1932 by Carl Thomas Anderson. The title character is a young bald boy who is mute. Except a few early episodes, the comic strip character communicates largely but not entirely through pantomime, a situation which changed when Henry moved into comic books. Henry has spoken in at least one Betty Boop cartoon from 1935. In the feature, Betty Boop has a pet shop and Henry speaks to a dog in the window.
Burton F. Gillett was a director of animated films. He is noted for his Silly Symphonies work for Disney, particularly the 1932 short film Flowers and Trees and the 1933 short film Three Little Pigs, both of which were awarded the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film and both of which were selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry.
Aesop's Fables is a series of animated short subjects, created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. Produced from 1921 to 1933, the series includes The Window Washers (1925), Scrambled Eggs (1926), Small Town Sheriff (1927), Dinner Time (1928), and Gypped in Egypt (1930). Dinner Time is the first cartoon with a synchronized soundtrack ever released to the public. The series provided inspiration to Walt Disney to found the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri, where he created Mickey Mouse.
Farmer Al Falfa, also known as Farmer Alfalfa, is an animated cartoon character created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. He first appeared in Down On the Phoney Farm (1915), a short Terry cartoon distributed by the Thanhouser Company. Next came a series of shorts produced by Terry for Bray Studios, starting with Farmer Al Falfa's Cat-Tastrophe (1916).
Otto Soglow was an American cartoonist best known for his comic strip The Little King.
Betty Boop and the Little King is a 1936 Fleischer Studio animated short film, starring Betty Boop and featuring Otto Soglow's Little King.
Happy Hooligan is an American comic strip, the first major strip by the already celebrated cartoonist Frederick Burr Opper. It debuted with a Sunday strip on March 11, 1900 in the William Randolph Hearst newspapers, and was one of the first popular comics with King Features Syndicate. The strip ran for three decades, ending on August 14, 1932.
Dolly Dimples was a syndicated comic strip character created by early American female cartoonist Grace Drayton which appeared in various William Randolph Hearst/King Features Syndicate publications. Over the period 1903 to 1933 the strip's main character was known by the various names "Toodles" (1903–1904), "Dottie Dimple" (1908–1911), "Dimples" (1914–1918), and finally "Dolly Dimples" (1928–1933).
The Ambassador was a short-lived newspaper comic strip created by Otto Soglow, which ran from May 28, 1933, to September 2, 1934.
Popeye the Sailor is a fictional cartoon character created by Elzie Crisler Segar. The character first appeared on January 17, 1929, in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre. The strip was in its tenth year when Popeye made his debut, but the one-eyed sailor quickly became the lead character, and Thimble Theatre became one of King Features' most popular properties during the 1930s. Following Segar's death in 1938, Thimble Theatre was continued by several writers and artists, most notably Segar's assistant Bud Sagendorf. It was formally renamed Popeye. The strip continues to appear in first-run installments on Sundays, written and drawn by R.K. Milholland. The daily strips are reprints of old Sagendorf stories.
