94 Facts About Winsor McCay

Winsor McCay is best known for the comic strip Little Nemo and the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur.

From a young age, McCay was a quick, prolific, and technically dextrous artist.

Winsor McCay started his professional career making posters and performing for dime museums, and in 1898 began illustrating newspapers and magazines.

Winsor McCay experimented with the formal elements of the comic strip page, arranging and sizing panels to increase impact and enhance the narrative.

Winsor McCay produced numerous detailed editorial cartoons and was a popular performer of chalk talks on the vaudeville circuit.

Winsor McCay was an early animation pioneer; between 1911 and 1921 he self-financed and animated ten films, some of which survive only as fragments.

The first three served in his vaudeville act; Gertie the Dinosaur was an interactive routine in which Winsor McCay appeared to give orders to a trained dinosaur.

Winsor McCay pioneered inbetweening, the use of registration marks, cycling, and other animation techniques that were to become standard.

Winsor McCay's father, Robert McKay was born in Woodstock, Upper Canada, the third of six children.

Winsor McCay stated in an interview in 1910 that he was born in 1869, and this is the year listed on his grave marker.

Winsor McCay had settled in Edmore, Michigan, and by this point had changed the spelling of his surname from "McKay" to "McCay".

Winsor McCay's father thought little of his son's artistic talents, though, and had him sent to Cleary Business College in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Winsor McCay bragged about how he would catch the train to Detroit to show off his drawing skills at the Wonderland and Eden Musee dime museum.

Winsor McCay thrived on the attention he received, and his talents soon drew wider attention.

Winsor McCay learned how to draw quickly using drills on a blackboard, and gained an appreciation for master artists of the past.

Winsor McCay spent two years in Chicago after making his way there sometime in 1889 with his friend Mort Touvers.

Winsor McCay traded art techniques there with painter Jules Guerin, whom he met at a boarding house in which he lodged, and did artwork for posters and pamphlets at the National Printing and Engraving Company.

In 1891, Winsor McCay moved to Cincinnati, where he did more dime museum work while living in a boarding house near his workplace.

Winsor McCay rushed to his studio to change into a custom-tailored suit, returned, and introduced himself to the fourteen-year-old Maude.

Winsor McCay began working on the side for the Cincinnati Commercial Tribune, where he learned to draw with a dip pen under the tutelage of Commercial Tribune art room manager Joseph Alexander.

In 1900, Winsor McCay accepted a position with a higher salary at The Cincinnati Enquirer.

From January until November 1903, Winsor McCay drew an ongoing proto-comic strip for the Enquirer based on poems written by George Randolph Chester called A Tale of the Jungle Imps by Felix Fiddle.

Winsor McCay worked alongside comic strip pioneer Richard F Outcault, who was doing the Buster Brown strip at the Herald.

Winsor McCay's first continuing comic strip, Mr Goodenough, debuted in the New York Evening Telegram on January 21,1904.

Winsor McCay signed the Rarebit Fiend strips with the pen name "Silas", as his contract required that he not use his real name for Evening Telegram work.

Winsor McCay got "an idea from the Rarebit Fiend to please the little folk", and in October 1905 the full-page Sunday strip Little Nemo in Slumberland debuted in the Herald.

Winsor McCay experimented with formal aspects of the comics page: he made inventive use of timing and pacing, the size and shape of panels, perspective, and architectural and other details.

The Herald was considered to have the highest quality color printing of any newspaper at the time; its printing staff used the Ben Day process for color, and Winsor McCay annotated the Nemo pages with precise color schemes for the printers.

Winsor McCay brought his vaudeville act to each city where Little Nemo played.

In several cities, Winsor McCay brought his son, who as publicity sat on a small throne dressed as Nemo.

Winsor McCay displayed his social awareness in the last strip he created for the Herald, Poor Jake.

Winsor McCay was approached in early 1910 to bring his vaudeville show to Europe.

Winsor McCay requested the Heralds permission, but the plans never materialized.

Winsor McCay's show stayed within the Eastern United States until he ceased performing in 1917.

Winsor McCay said he was most proud of his animation work.

Winsor McCay completed ten animated films between 1911 and 1921, and three more were planned.

Winsor McCay claimed to be "the first man in the world to make animated cartoons", though he was preceded by others such as James Stuart Blackton and Emile Cohl.

Winsor McCay made four thousand drawings on rice paper for his first animated short, which starred his Little Nemo characters.

Little Nemo debuted in movie theatres on April 8,1911, and four days later Winsor McCay began using it as part of his vaudeville act.

Winsor McCay had become frustrated with the Herald, partly over money issues and partly because he perceived a lack of freedom.

Winsor McCay accepted a higher-paying offer in spring 1911 from Hearst at the New York American and took Little Nemos characters with him.

The Herald held the strip's copyright, but Winsor McCay won a lawsuit that allowed him to continue using the characters, which he did under the title In the Land of Wonderful Dreams.

Winsor McCay began work that May on his next animated film, How a Mosquito Operates, based on a Rarebit Fiend episode from June 5,1909, in which a man in bed tries in vain to defend himself from a giant mosquito, which drinks itself so full that it explodes.

The film was completed in January 1912, and Winsor McCay toured with it that spring and summer.

Winsor McCay introduced Gertie as "the only dinosaur in captivity", and commanded the animated beast with a whip.

Gertie seemed to obey Winsor McCay, bowing to the audience, and eating a tree and a boulder, though she had a will of her own and sometimes rebelled.

Winsor McCay pioneered the "Winsor McCay Split System" of inbetweening, in which major poses or positions were drawn first, and the intervening frames drawn after.

In February 1917, Hearst had Winsor McCay give up entirely on vaudeville and all other paid work outside the Hearst empire, though he was occasionally granted permission for particular shows.

Winsor McCay was expected to report daily to the American building, where he shared a ninth-floor office with humorist Arthur "Bugs" Baer and sports cartoonist Joe McGurk.

Winsor McCay did not believe the allegations, and gave testimony at the Lambkins' divorce trial.

Winsor McCay was initially listed as one of them, but the studio never produced anything either by his hands or featuring his creations.

Winsor McCay gave birth to McCay's first grandchild, Ray Winsor Moniz, on July 16,1918.

Winsor McCay bought them a nearby house as a wedding gift.

In 1922, Winsor McCay resumed doing vaudeville shows for the Keith circuit.

Winsor McCay had a cameo in a newspaper office scene in the boxing film The Great White Way in early 1924.

Winsor McCay left Hearst upon the expiration of his contract in May 1924, bitter over not having received a promised $5,000 bonus.

In 1927, Winsor McCay attended a dinner in his honor in New York.

In 1932, Winsor McCay found himself in what he recalled as "the wildest ride" in his life when Hearst's son "Young Bill" drove him at 85 miles per hour to the scene of the kidnapping of the Lindbergh baby.

Winsor McCay sketched the scene, the staff, and the ladders the kidnappers used, which he was allowed to see up close.

Winsor McCay lost consciousness and was pronounced dead later that afternoon, with his wife, children, and son-in-law by his side.

Winsor McCay had died of a cerebral embolism, and was buried at the Cemetery of the Evergreens in Brooklyn in a family plot.

Winsor McCay had a Masonic funeral in his home, attended by his newspaper colleagues, Hearst and his son, and the Society of Illustrators, among others.

Self-conscious and introverted in private, Winsor McCay was nevertheless a charismatic showman and self-promoter, and maintained several lifelong friendships.

Winsor McCay was a light but frequent drinker; he drank for camaraderie rather than for a love of drinking.

Winsor McCay was self-taught at the piano, and was an avid reader of poetry, plays and novels; he admired W B Yeats, knew the works of Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats, and could quote the Bible and Shakespeare.

Winsor McCay stood barely five feet tall, and felt dominated by his wife, who was nearly as tall as he was.

Winsor McCay married Maude Leonore Dufour, the youngest of three daughters of French-Canadian carriage painter John Dufour.

The McCays took on the traditional roles of a married couple of the time, in that Winsor was the breadwinner and Maude the homemaker.

The couple had two children: Robert Winsor McCay, born June 21,1896; and Marion Elizabeth, born August 22,1897.

Winsor McCay was said to be easy-going with the children, and left discipline to their stern mother.

Winsor McCay was proud to have served as the model for Little Nemo.

Winsor McCay disliked driving, so kept a chauffeur who served as bodyguard, as the editorial cartoons Winsor McCay drew for Hearst sometimes attracted threatening letters.

Winsor McCay's politics are unclear, and it is disputed whether he sympathized with the views displayed in his editorial cartoons.

Winsor McCay's father had been a Freemason, and was buried in 1915 with full Masonic rites, with funerals arranged by his Masonic lodges in both Woodstock, Ontario, and Edmore, Michigan.

Winsor McCay never let his children know about his brother, nor did they know about the existence of his sister Mae, who died in 1910.

Winsor McCay insisted on having his originals returned to him, and a large collection that survived him was destroyed in a fire in the late 1930s.

Winsor McCay's wife was unsure how to handle the surviving pieces, so his son took on the responsibility and moved the collection to his own house.

Winsor McCay destroyed many of his original cans of film to create more storage space.

Winsor McCay's work, grounded solidly in his understanding of realistic perspective, presaged the techniques featured in Walt Disney's feature films.

The episode, "The Story of Animated Drawing", gave a history of animation, and dramatized Winsor McCay's vaudeville act with Gertie.

Animator and McCay biographer John Canemaker produced a film in 1974 called Remembering Winsor McCay, narrated by McCay's animation assistant John Fitzsimmons.

Heer wrote that Winsor McCay's strength was in his visuals, but that his writing and characters were weak.

Harvey said that Winsor McCay's contemporaries lacked the skill to continue with his innovations, so that they were left for future generations to rediscover and build upon.

Winsor McCay's work has inspired cartoonists from Carl Barks to Art Spiegelman.

Kim Deitch and Simon Deitch's graphic novel The Boulevard of Broken Dreams revolved around a character named Winsor Newton, based on an aged McCay.

The Winsor McCay Award was established in 1972 to recognize individuals for lifetime or career contributions in animation, and is presented as part of the Annie Awards.

Winsor McCay Park is the modern-day location of where Union School once stood, wherein McCay "illustrated his first 'commercial' for-sale illustration" in 1880.

Virtually from the beginning, Winsor McCay innovated with the forms of his chosen media.

Winsor McCay's detailed hatching mastery of perspective enhanced the illusions in his drawings, particularly in Little Nemo.

Fantastic grotesqueries such as what Winsor McCay witnessed during his time at the Wonderland and Eden Musee appeared often in Winsor McCay's work.

Winsor McCay was noted for the speed and accuracy with which he could draw; crowds of people would gather around to watch him paint billboards.

Winsor McCay used metafictional techniques such as self-referentiality in his work.

Winsor McCay seemed to show little regard for the dialogue balloons, their content, and their placement in the visual composition.

Winsor McCay depicted blacks as savages, or wishing they could be white.