Otto Messmer

A documentary about Felix the Cat from the bonus features of the “Felix the Cat Saves Christmas” DVD.

Cartoon Carnival tells the story of the pioneering early days of the animated art-form and chronicles one film preservationist's quest to rescue pre-sound cartoons from obscurity and screen them to new, appreciative audiences.

Documentary short on cartoonist Otto Messmer, co-creator of Felix the Cat

The 100 year anniversary of the animated character Felix The Cat. His stories is told by three animators who created him: Otto Messmer, Joe Oriolo and Don Oriolo. Along with them, there are interviews with well known animation historians and clips and stills.

Felix walks to England.

Felix and friends go fishing and camping.

A boy skips his piano lesson to go swimming.

Cartoon short.

Felix attempts to trap a mouse.

Felix tries to find food.

Felix and Kitty tangle with a bad cat.

Felix and Willie want to play ball.

Cartoon short.

Felix goes to a burlesque show.

Felix gets a babysitting job.

Felix learns to fight.

Felix pickets his owner's house.

Cartoon short.

After being evicted, Felix sets up two tents in the woods and rents them to bears and a stork.

Felix hunts for food on Friday the 13th.

Felix goes looking for food.

Felix and a dog fight over a bone.

Rats steal Felix's cheese.

Felix tries to commit suicide.

Felix vs. Kentucky bootleggers.

Felix is pulled underwater by a giant fish. He is rescued and brought aboard a ship, but the sailors consider Felix bad luck.

Felix discovers there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Felix tries to catch a fish without getting wet.

Felix goes to the county fair and falls for Marie, the dancing cat.

Felix tries to help run a farm.

Felix is picked up by a rum-running ship.

Felix thinks better of his plan to kill a rival.

Felix has problems with mice.

Felix builds a soapbox derby.

Felix tries to nap dog kennel...

Felix fends for himself.

Cartoon short.

Felix tries to capture an escaped hippopotamus.

Felix goes to Australia.

Cartoon short.

Felix travels to Banana Island.

Cartoon short.

Felix goes on a dangerous treasure hunt to prove his bravery.

Cartoon short.

Cartoon short.

Cartoon short.

Cartoon short.

Felix is sick of hearing banjo music.

Felix steals some sausages

Cartoon short.

Felix helps Willie do his chores.

Cartoon short.

Felix works as an animal doctor in Africa.

Charlie Chaplin cartoon short

Felix the Cat is a rarity--a cartoon character so classic, so beloved, that he's stayed in the public eye for more than seventy-five years. Now Image Entertainment brings you the DVD that's the cat's meow--a collection of sixteen vintage Felix cartoons from 1919-1924, restored to their original projection speed with Dave Wickerham's rich new organ scores. The DVD contains the following cartoons: Paramount Magazine (including Felix's debut in "Feline Follies," as well as Earl Hurd's Bobby Bumps in "Their Master's Voice" and Frank Moser's Bud and Susie in "Down the Mississippi"), "Felix Saves the Day," "Felix in the Swim," "Felix Turns the Tide," "Felix Lends a Hand," "Felix Minds the Kid," "Felix in the Stone Age," "Felix the Ghost Breaker," "Felix Wins Out," "Felix Revolts," "Felix Gets Broadcasted," "Felix in Hollywood," "Felix in Fairyland," "Felix Out of Luck," "Felix Goes A-Hunting," "Felix Finds 'Em Fickle."

Felix stumbles upon a world of toys

Felix's owner's sax playing is driving Felix crazy, so he turns on the radio, but all he hears is more sax playing. After destroying the radio he steals his owner's sax and buries it in the garden, but a mole finds it and starts playing it, driving Felix to even more violence.

Starving, Felix steals a hat pin and pawns it for some money to buy food, but a thieving mouse steals the money from him. Felix must get the money back from the mouse or go hungry.

Trying to rustle up some breakfast, Felix tries to steal milk, chases a chicken to get her eggs and finally winds up fighting such sea creatures as a turtle, an octopus and a shark for food.

A tramp enters stray cat Felix in a local pet show, hoping to win money and buy food.

A starving actor, reduced to trying his luck in the movies, travels to Hollywood. His cat, Felix, poses as a travel bag and comes along.

Night falls on the light daytime sky in viscous, fat drops that darken the world. That's only the first gag, but it sure sets the stage.

Comicalamities' starts with a hand drawing an incomplete Felix the cat. Felix is not satisfied with the result so he goes to a man who can fix him (finish his body and give him his black color).

Here we have Felix the Cat in Arabia ... so, roll on the usual Arabian clichés. We get gags involving a flying carpet, a hubble-bubble and a camel.

Felix wants to know the future, so he first goes to see a Gypsy who tells him that misfortune is going to happen, Felix doesn't believe her one little bit, so he goes to the local astrologer, Professor Whoozit...

After singing all night, Felix decides to save a fox from hunters.

When Felix's piano-playing causes Kitty's Ming vase to break.

A famished Felix reads an advertisement telling of a large reward for anyone that can give proof for the theory of evolution. He hurries to South Africa via Transatlantic Cable and interacts with the local animals. He angers a troop of monkeys by telling them why he's there (they're offended he would suggest they could be related to humans) and they chase him back through the cable to America.

Felix the Cat is walking along when he is abruptly blindfolded and subjected to an elaborate ordeal which turns out to be (as the title hints) a fraternal initiation.

There's no real plot here: just a string of gags on the theme of sleep, or trying to get to sleep. First, Felix and a quartet of feline Felix clones are yowling while a man is trying to sleep; then Felix encounters various obstacles in his own attempts to tryst with Morpheus.

Oceantics starts with Felix walking while whistling. He sees a monkey playing a harmonica. After finishing, the monkey gets showered with coins. Felix then comes upon a billboard of a player piano.

Felix chases a mouse onto a ship, gets seasick, and eventually finds himself in Holland. He flirts with a local Dutch girl and angers a local man who hits him in the head with a wooden shoe...

Felix's girlfriend decides to stop taking care of him and go to Hollywood to be a movie star. Felix follows her there in order to sabotage her screen tests and make her go back home with him.

The first appearance of Felix the Cat (as Master Tom). Tom falls in love with a lady cat, and while they're out courting at night, the mice ransack the kitchen.

A hungry Felix fails at trying to catch a mouse, a chicken and a jumping bean, so decides to eat a shoe, which gives him weird and scary hallucinations.

After unsuccessfully trying to steal food from a fish market, Felix is promised by a man that if he watches the man's child, he will be fed a great meal. Unfortunately, the baby swallows a balloon and floats out the window, and Felix has to find him and bring him back before the man gets home.

Felix comes upon a caveman and his girlfriend. The girlfriend is crying, and when the caveman asks her what she wants...

Felix the Cat comes home late after a night of drunken revelry at a nightclub. He tells his rolling pin-wielding wife three ludicrous tales to explain himself.

A grateful mouse promises Felix "if there's anything I can do for you, just call on me" after Felix lets him go from a mousetrap. Felix then goes over to Willie Brown's house, whistles for the kid to come down from his bedroom and go "to the 'ole swimming hole" but Willie's mom spots him and tells the boy to go back inside and "practise his piano lessons."

Felix's wife demands he stop his lazing and get a job. Off runs Felix to help a barber, a farmer, and a homeless saxophonist (for a price, of course).

Felix the Cat becomes a soldier when the rats declare war on the cats.

Felix, working in a laboratory, inspects test tubes and finds Golf germs and Love germs, who are annoyed at his interrupting their romantic endeavors.

Trudging through the snow in his hometown, Felix sees a billboard advertising sunny Egypt, and says that he'd give four of his nine lives to be there rather than freezing in the snow. He then hears crying coming from his friend Abdul's carpet shop, and it turns out that Abdul's girlfriend has been kidnapped by an Egyptian sheik. Felix promises to rescue her, and hops on a magic carpet Abdul has lying around the shop, says the magic word and flies off to Egypt to keep his promise.

Boys playing back alley baseball improbably hold their afternoon game at the Polo Grounds. Felix the Cat takes action when his favored team seems poised to lose.

Felix goes to Timbuctoo to win 50,000 buckaroos. Little does he know, his DIY airplane is about to be hi-jacked by terrorist fish. He finds a way out though, as usual. He also undresses an elephant in order to produce a balloon to escape from the hungry Timbuctoo residents. Again, an elephant.

Felix is in love with a fair maiden. When serenading her, his rival spots him and tries anything he can come up with to get his girl back.

Felix and his three kittens sneak into a movie theater to watch "Daddy" on-screen. Upon being kicked out of the show, Felix decides to make his own movies... but the kits film him kissing a bathing beauty, then show the scene to Felix's wife.

Felix is trying to get some sleep in a graveyard, but keeps getting bothered by a ghost. He follows the ghost to the house of an old farmer, and the ghost proceeds to terrorize the old man, and when the farmer calls for help from the police, the ghost terrorizes them, too. Felix, however, suspects something fishy is going on, and with the help of the farmer's donkey, gets to the bottom of things.

On Halloween, Felix is both victim and victor in mischievous and bizarre jokes. A feline witch promises Felix a romance to lure him into a trap.

Felix the Cat discovers that war is only heck; it's marriage that's hell.

Felix tries to get into a snooty nightclub, and is told that only people of "unquestioned lineage" are allowed in. Felix then relates his family history, including how his ancestors taught the Egyptian pharaohs how to do the Charleston and another one who showed Columbus that the world was round. In the end, Felix brings his family tree--literally--into the club to prove his lineage.

Felix learns card tricks, and the cards come to life and chase him into a bizarre land of playing cards.

Felix is reading a book about Fairyland, and decides that it must be a wonderful place to be. Suddenly he hears a cry for help, and finds a fly stuck on a piece of flypaper. He rescues the insect, only to have it turn into a beautiful fairy princess who, in gratitude for his help, grants him one wish. He wishes he were in Fairyland, and is immediately transported there.

Felix winds up walking into a picture and dealing with various armored knights.

Bored with life in town, Felix sees an opportunity for some excitement when a traveling circus passes through, so he joins up. One day he overhears the Skeleton Man propose to the Fat Lady, then change his mind because she's too fat. Felix decides to help her lose weight so the Skeleton Man will marry her, but this results in the ringmaster getting angry with Felix and firing him. Felix comes up with a plan to force the circus to re-hire him.

Felix spots a fisherman on his way to his fishing spot, and figures he can follow the guy and grab a quick lunch by stealing his catch. Although he successfully nabs a few fish, the angler catches on and finally captures Felix. To get his revenge, he sends Felix through the telephone wires ("broadcasted") to Egypt, and Felix finds out that the Egyptians don't want him there, either.

Felix tries to join the circus.

Felix & his friend have fun playing at blowing bubbles. Felix gets inside one and is blown away. The bubble lands on a snowy mountain and turns...

A wife throws her husband out of the house, telling him not to return unless he brings her a fur coat. Deciding that the only way he'll get one is to make his own, he grabs his rifle and goes hunting. All his efforts fail, though, until he meets Felix, who offers to help him shoot rabbits, and impresses the man with his marksmanship skills. However, it turns out that shooting the rabbits isn't quite as easy as they thought it would be.

Felix (as a candidate for 'cat president', apparently) promising to find a better place for cats--and courtesy of his bow and arrow, establishes a rope climb straight to Mars!

Willie, Felix's owner, gets an assignment to find out why the moon shines. Felix decides to help him get the answer, but winds up getting involved with bootleggers who are making "moonshine".

Felix tries to catch Skiddoo.

Felix's owner goes to a golf course and brings along a new "club"--Felix in disguise. While trying to teach his owner how to play golf..

Winter in his hometown is too cold for Felix, especially after having to put up with a bothersome snowball-throwing boy and his dog...

Felix's friend has a big red nose, and it causes him no end of problems, the least of which being with women...

Felix, hungry and looking for a meal, hears that food is plentiful down south, and decides to check it out...

Felix is hungry, but his owner won't feed him until he's finished his crossword puzzle! Only one word left -- a 7-letter "chiefly found in Russia." Felix goes all the way to Russia to find the answer, but he's immediately accused of spying and has to run for his life.

Felix’s girlfriend desires a particular flower and wants Felix to get it for her. The only problem is that it’s on top of a 40,000-foot mountain.

Felix the Cat enters the Old West and battles cruel gunmen and savage Indians.

Felix's master, a magician, plays tricks on Felix with magic. Felix tricks him into transforming into a mouse, then knocks him out and steals his book of magic. After practicing some tricks, Felix winds up being transported into a painting, where he fights a lion, a stork and a hippo.

Felix the Cat is fishing, but has not caught anything. He goes into a restaurant and tries to steal a fish, but the owner sees him and throws a can at him. Felix looks at the can, which says that Alaska is rich in fish, so Felix treks to the great white north to feed himself.

Felix is homeless so he has to provide for himself if he wants to eat. He finds some milk sitting out on someone's doorstep, when he decides to snatch it. When he does, he encounters a group of mice who are after the same thing.

Felix builds a submarine.

Felix the Cat is driving to his wedding with a broken headlamp and narrowly avoids a collision. He replaces them with regular lights that soon burn out. When he reaches the church someone else has run off with his bride. He then replaces them with Mazda lights and is able to track down and reclaim his bride.

Felix strikes up a friendship with a small boy, but the boy's father won't let him keep Felix as a pet. Every time Felix tries to sneak into the house, the father throws him out, finally chasing him out with a shotgun. To get his revenge, Felix plants some very old cheese in the house, then waits for all the mice to smell it and swarm into the house.

Seeing a man about to eat a roast chicken, Felix uses pepper to make him sneeze it out of the house--but it's then grabbed by a snake. A kindly barber feeds Felix, though, and in gratitude Felix promises to replace the man's stolen barber pole. And he knows just where to get one--the North Pole.

After becoming hypnotised Felix decides to try hypnotism himself. After he is successful a couple of times he decides to hypnotise his wife. The plan backfires and Felix is kicked out of his house again. Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2010.

Otto Messmer [Felix The Cat] animation that was originally shown as animated lights in Times Square.

Animated Charlie Chaplin encounters several obstacles on the way to rescuing a distressed damsel held as captive by indigenous Indians.

Felix Frolics at the Circus is an American animated short film featuring Felix the Cat and released on September 26, 1920.

Felix Frolics at the Circus is an American animated short film featuring Felix the Cat and released on September 26, 1920.

Felix gets into trouble with a tribe of Indians out west, and is chased by a bear.

Felix attempts to procure a meal for a pup in need, but ends up in a kerfuffle with a shape-shifting witch.

Felix goes after a butcher's sausages and captures them, but the butcher catches him and sends him to the Arctic to get rid of him.

Felix sees a smoke ring rising from a cigar, and wonders where they go. He finds out that they wind up in the clouds, home to a race of giants. He steals a giant bottle of milk and is chased back to Earth by the giants.

One of Otto Messmer's most unusual Felix cartoons. It portrays Felix as an inebriated feline being chased by all kinds of demons only to be welcomed by the greatest demon of all, the angry wife.

Felix the Cat Short

Felix lands a job as a mascot for an umbrella salesman, and travels to the Arabian desert. They have a hard time selling umbrellas in the desert, until Felix makes a deal with a bird concerning a cloud above a convention of desert sheiks.

Felix the Cat can't find anything to eat, so he bribes Father Time to send him back to when life was easier. However, the Stone Age turns out to have its own problems.

Felix's owner, a hunter, gets lost in the jungle and the animals capture him and his supplies. A nosy ostrich swallows the hunter's rifle. Complications ensue.

Newsreel segment on the popularity of cartoon character Felix the Cat.

A cop gives Felix directions to Wonderland. Felix follows Alice, but misses the exit and instead winds up in Blunderland, where he manages to irritate Old King Cole and fails to find Little Bo Peep's sheep.

Lulu goes to a department store to exchange her doll for something else. While looking for a new item Lulu manages to terrorize the section manager, ski down the escalators, and cause a noahic flood in the store.

Felix The Cat gets a job protecting a cheese shop from three industrious mice. When he foils their plans, they head off for Switzerland in search of bigger and better cheeses - but Felix is in pursuit.

Felix disappoints his kittens because he promised to take them on a picnic but couldn't because of bad weather. He flies to the clouds to see Jupiter Pluvius' weather-making machine, which he blames for his predicament. He manages to get the machine to work for his advantage while getting back at Jupiter in the process.

An old man is smoking a pipe. His wife hates the smoke and throws the pipe away. Felix fills the gramophone horn with coal so that he can smoke that instead. Smelling the fumes, his wife goes into a mad rage and throws the new pipe away. The old man falls asleep. The sun shines on his spectacles and starts a fire in his beard. The smoke alerts his wife who angrily fights with him for smoking again. Felix empties the goldfish bowl on him to douse the flames.

Felix feels lonely, seeing all the other animals finding love. At last, he spots the perfect mate ... unfortunately, she's on Mars.

Felix can't afford to get in to the theatre so he makes a hole in the wall to peep through. There are two wrestlers. A small Japanese mans overthrows an enormous opponent. Inspired, Felix ties a know in a lamppost and is chased by a policeman. He tries to karate a goat who head butts him. He lands in a Japanese garden where two Geishas are kneeling. Inside a hut another Geisha kneels.

It's snowing and the thermometer is dropping well below freezing. Felix is cold. In his house a statue puts on a blanket, an alarm clock puts gloves on its hands, and a man in a painting puts on a hat and scarf. Another cat is shivering in the bath - the water has turned to an ice block. There's no wood for the stove. Felix tries to cut a tree trunk but it turns out to be an elephants trunk.

A Yeti in the snow. Felix with knapsack journeying through the snow. He arrives amongst sunny fields of sunflowers. Uncle Tom is playing the banjo and his child is dancing. Felix joins in. The music wakes an angry man (dressed like a ring master). He uses his whip to break the banjo and threaten uncle Tom. Mammy is cooking pancakes. Felix turns her frying pan into a banjo using his whiskers as strings. The family dance again. The angry man chases them and Felix turns the banjo into a unicycle to escape.

Romantic fantasies of a man who wants his girlfriend to be thinner.

Casper struggles to find friends who won't run away scared when they meet him.

Felix tricks his father into thinking that he's practicing the piano, then escapes to play golf with Skidoo the mouse. After raising the ire of the local fire department, he's shot overseas on a jet of water and lands in Africa, where jungle cannibals try to devour him.

Olive Oyl, a regular Rosie the Riveter, receives a blow to the head from a swinging grappling hook, sending her into a sleepwalking state. Popeye and Bluto, two rival factory workers, fight each other for privilege of saving her life.

Little Lulu fantasizes about a birthday party in a candy land.

Bluto disguises himself as Superman in order to impress the comic book hero's biggest fan, Olive Oyl. A jealous Popeye becomes a real superhero by eating his spinach.

Snuffy Smith, a returning war veteran, wants peace and quiet. He settles in the mountains, only to have his peace shattered by two violently feuding families.

An animated "follow-the-bouncing-ball" audience participation sing-along with Farmer MacDonald having his hands full with the barnyard population. It ends with the animals in a Conga line singing their animated hearts out.

Lulu is put on trial by talking musical instruments for neglecting her violin.

Felix flies to Germany.

After enduring various indignities by the human population in town, including getting beaten up by the fish market owner and forced to eat hot mustard by a customer in a restaurant, Felix finally breaks when he hears the mayor give a speech vowing to drive all cats out of town. Felix gathers his feline friends and stages a revolution to restore cats to their rightful place in society.

A starving actor, reduced to trying his luck in the movies, travels to Hollywood. His cat, Felix, poses as a travel bag and comes along.

A starving actor, reduced to trying his luck in the movies, travels to Hollywood. His cat, Felix, poses as a travel bag and comes along.

Felix helps the police catch a bank robber by hiding inside a money sack and leading the robber on a chase. He next helps nab a thief stealing sponges from a store by the imaginative use of a friendly elephant.

A persnickety chicken steals the master's jewels (by eating them). Framed for the theft, Felix decides to find them himself. Felix takes after the bird and ends up striking oil!

While serenading Kitty, Felix is knocked off the fence by a lamp that is thrown at him. It turns out to be a magic lamp, and when the genie of the lamp appears and grants Felix a wish, he decides to make a trip to Africa, which he believes will make Kitty love him even more.

Felix’s girlfriend desires a particular flower and wants Felix to get it for her. The only problem is that it’s on top of a 40,000-foot mountain.

Felix and his pal go on an adventure.

After partying at the local nightclub, Felix heads home, but falls asleep along the way. He dreams that he meets a doctor who has a new youth tonic. Felix tries it, and soon believes that he's capable of doing anything, so he heads for the African jungle to capture a lion.

While stealing some bones, Felix loses his tail. However, he goes to the tail shop to get a new one. He is then adopted by a rich woman who gives him as a mouser. The mice, though, have their own plans for Felix, which include framing him as a food thief in order to get the owner to kick him out.

Felix and his friend little Sammy Johnson are playing baseball when they discover a map that leads to the undersea treasure of Lizzie the Pirate Queen. Building their own submarine, they slip beneath the waves in search of the treasure, and meet up with a variety of undersea creatures, including the most dangerous of all--the loan shark.

Felix organizes a dance contest for hens, but runs afoul of the chicken farmer because the hens aren't meeting their egg quotas. The farmer captures Felix and makes him dig his own grave.

An early trickfilm created by Otto Messmer.

Olive has a map to a sunken treasure, but Bluto stowed away and is determined to beat Popeye to it.

Popeye and Olive are touring a museum when they accidentally launch a rocketship to Mars. Olive escapes, but Popeye gets to Mars, where he is attacked (by a group led by Bluto) that was preparing to invade Earth. Fortunately, Popeye has a can of spinach handy, so he can save the Earth (turning most of the Martian war apparatus into amusement park rides).

Animated Charlie Chaplin encounters several obstacles on the way to rescuing a distressed damsel held as captive by indigenous Indians.

Felix steals eggs from a hen's nest.