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Don't start with a burp and blow.

You're listening to the dollop on the all things comedy network.

This is an American history podcast recorded under SAG AFTRA union contract.

I'm Dave Anthony, restored from American History to guy who looks, you know, all right.

Strike.

Strike.

I want strike.

Meet us halfway.

Gareth Reynolds has no idea what the topic is going to be about and will not work under these conditions.

What conditions?

This stuff.

This is a sweatshop.

You can't keep talking to me like that.

How many of you?

Is that where your face is glistening?

I can't believe you haven't even...

I don't know how you haven't noticed the elephant in the room.

The tattoo?

No!

The fucking huge cut on my forehead.

Oh, I couldn't see it because your hat was down.

Hello.

That's the idea.

I'm trying to hide it.

How'd you do that, little guy?

Shower.

Okay.

Are you 65 or older?

What are we doing in the shower?

First of all,

this union is under constant arrest from management, and we're not going to take it anymore.

I was shaving in the shower, which is now, by the way, have you started doing that?

The kids are doing that.

Yeah,

I used to do that a lot.

But I use, obviously, I have a beard, but I use.

But you trim here, don't you?

I use an an electric.

Yeah, see, I'm still, I do a combo, but I shave, I give the clean shave to the part here, and I dropped the razor, and I went over and I went down to pick it up, and I hit my head.

I have a sliding glass shower door, sure, and I hit my head on the fucking handle so goddamn hard.

And I was like, oh, no, how bad is this going to be?

And then I was like, oh, actually not that bad.

And

then so I was like washing my, you know, washing my face, my hair and and stuff.

And then all of a sudden it was like rusty.

And I was like, wait a minute.

And I was like, nope, it did dig me.

And I was like, oh, shit.

It was pretty bad.

I mean, I love it.

I do too.

But then also, because I'm all cut up in other way, I definitely look like I got into something.

Yeah, no.

What happened there on your arm?

What's going on with you?

Are you being abused?

Blackberry bush.

Oh, you got blackberries where you live?

You got blackberry bushes?

Yeah.

Dude.

I mean, when I was a a kid, we had blackberry bushes everywhere.

So I was all summer long, I was just full of blackberries.

Yeah.

Boy, there's an album title.

Full of blackberries.

Wait.

Dave, I know you're making fun of me publicly personally, but June 5th, I have a new podcast called Next We Have.

This is the eighth podcast or which podcast?

And we're encouraging people to listen to it.

But if you have to choose between the dollop and that,

you know, we're saying stay here.

We're because we became union.

So that is a chip I'll throw in the negotiating table.

But it's on my YouTube, and you can listen to it wherever you get podcasts.

Say the name of it.

Next, we have.

I said that.

Say the name of the actual podcast.

Next, we have.

No, but what's the next?

We have.

Don't.

Look, I look at it.

You know what I wanted to call it?

What?

Segmental.

I mean, either way, it's bad.

How many friends?

How many really close friends do you have?

And how long?

I feel like every day you're like a pal cicada.

I have, well, I don't have as many as the podcast you have because

I'm actually trying to bond with humans in real life.

I have bonds.

I bonded with my Blackberry Bush.

1885, Year of Our Lord,

Jesus Christo, J-Town.

Sure.

Who.

No, you just

follow the impulse to stop.

Wait, did we even tell people we're on tour?

Got into huffing.

Stop.

Yeah.

Jesus is huffing gas rats.

But it's because he's trying to bring the kids in and he does what he can.

But Jesus is

huffing.

He's getting into the huff.

We're on tour, dollopodcast.com this whole week.

Yeah, this whole week.

Patrick O'Sullivan was born in Sydney, Australia.

Whoa, okay.

I'm going to guess right off the bat.

He's

the BCP.

He's part of the penal colony.

Nope.

We don't know the day he was born because he doesn't have official birth records or didn't.

He's no longer.

Can I make a pitch?

Better time when we didn't have birthdays.

We should go back to that.

we should go back i agree but then everyone just makes up like they did with uh jesus

we don't know when he was born he was born on christmas day

under a tree

his parents uh saying it was a mushroom

this is breaking news

jake tapper started following me on instagram oh my god

oh he would follow me for literally eight minutes

i I know.

I've got a nice thing where it's like,

if you don't dig too deep, it seems palatable.

Once you start digging, you're like, oh, God, all right.

This guy's calling for violence in the streets.

Just

put up a post about Bloodthirsty Jig Tapper.

I know.

I know.

All right.

So Patrick O'Sullivan's parents were Irish.

His dad, Patrick O'Sullivan Sr., was known around town as Sydney's oldest cab driver.

Oh, wow.

Cab driver?

What year?

Well, but

you're thinking of a cab.

I thought it was a

motor vehicle, but horse-drawn cab.

Pat didn't stay in school very long.

As a teenager, he sometimes earned money by singing outside hotels with his friends.

I like that.

Well, that seems like something you would have done.

If you were born at this time, that's what you would have done in high school.

Well, that was TikTok.

That was what it was.

You and your buddies just went and like got like, I would have, if you're, if you're, if you're saying basically, I'm a tension mosquito.

Yeah.

And I would have found anywhere to suck blood out of to fill my little butt sack.

You know what?

You should start a podcast about that.

At 22, he left

Australia for London.

where he tried drawing comics to sell to newspapers and doing a song and dance act at a music hall.

I don't like that you said this is very me because now I'm picturing that I would do everything he's doing and I bet this goes south.

Yep.

He had mid-success, mild, not very much.

How many podcasts?

Not enough to make a living.

Okay.

He then dropped the O from O'Sullivan.

That's helpful.

Yeah, fuck yeah.

Get rid of that Irish nonsense, especially in London.

It could have been

helpful.

He got a job as a debt.

And we only say that because the

English are horrifically oppressive people who murdered the Irish for generations and oppressed them.

And so when they came to London to get a job, they would oppress them further.

That's the only reason I'm saying that.

He got a job as a deckhand on a commercial ship going back and forth between London and the United States of America.

Oh, yeah, finally to a non-colonizing zone.

Great people.

People very welcoming, always looking to break bread with the land they stole.

It's, you're just,

you're trying too hard.

Yeah, I'm not.

Worst genociders, U.S., U.K.

I know the answer.

Keep going.

UK.

Keep going.

The ship transported mules.

Pat took care of the mules.

Asked ships.

He did that.

Did that for a whole year.

Yeah.

And then one day the boat was docked in New York Harbor and he jumped ship and swam to shore.

Okay.

Okay.

Is that

an

I mean, you're not supposed to jump ship.

I assume he had a contract and was supposed to work.

That's how you get out of it.

Yeah.

I like that.

Just jump overboard.

And now we have rocket money.

Well, that's an employee.

Had rocket money.

That's an employee we don't have anymore.

What's happening to these mules?

All right.

So he's swaying.

So that's how he becomes an American.

That's it.

See, that, by the way, that's how Trump views America right now.

They're jumping.

Oh, I don't do Trump anymore.

So they, so he needs a job.

So he got a job as a boxer.

He's like, well, that'll, I can hit people.

Very, very short time because he ended up with a cauliflower ear and a flat nose.

By the way, that is an Irish meal.

Love it with a cauliflower air.

You know, we don't eat right now, is the English talking shit about the Irish.

I'm not English at that.

I'm saying it's nice to have a bit of a cauliflower air, eh?

A bit of a cauliflower air and a flat face.

One of those things.

Bloody hell, that's nice.

With a bit of gravy upon it.

Oh, that's nice.

That goes nice.

Well, Irish, hey, is it?

You know what?

The problem with your accent right now is his accent, because he was born in Sydney and raised by Irish parents, it is a crazy amalgamation, I'm sure, of Austria Irish.

It's Austria Irish.

Yes, I'm sure.

May I attempt it?

Yes.

Oh, fuck.

All right.

Well, I was telling him the other day that I dropped ship out there.

No, it's too much Irish.

Yeah, now you sound like a leprechaun.

Well, here, let me try Australian and I'll add in a little, I'll miss his dash in some Irish.

He signed him all night the other day that we were dating AY.

You need to tell him he's going to be hardy.

Yeah, it's not easy.

Yeah, it's almost almost impossible, I would say.

It just sounds like a bad Irish.

Yeah, it does.

That's all right.

We're still proud of you.

Thank you.

So he decides to go back to drawing because boxing doesn't work.

The problem with that is he's not really a very good artist,

but he's very charismatic and he's a really good storyteller, especially when it comes to anecdotes about his colorful past.

So he gets a job at McClure's, which is a cartooning house,

drawing comic strips strips that were syndicated to papers around the country.

Wow.

So he is an assistant to William Mariner, who is an old alcoholic who had

been a cartoonist since newspapers started printing comic strips.

Okay.

He was known for comics, which you'll know these names,

like Glad Rags, the corpulent tramp.

Yeah, that's the best of the corpulent tramps.

Billy Blinks, the boy burglar.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

And Wags, the dog that adopted a man.

Absolutely.

I love.

Yeah, I love that one.

Those are all.

Your favorite out of those?

Probably the boy burglar.

Wags for me.

Yeah, Wags.

It's a real surprise.

It's an upside down.

It's kind of what happened to you.

What?

Say it again.

Say it to my face.

Okay, you were adopted by an abusive cat.

What?

You got to stop.

I got to stop what?

Where'd the cut come from?

This was from the shower, and this was from a blackberry bush.

For sure, man.

I'm in a sell.

Et Mariner's most popular comic was Sambo and his funny noises.

Yeah,

I really think that, and I've said this for a while, that noises translate to the written word very well

azoinks an oopsie a kerploosh

so uh sambo and his funny noises were a light-hearted

sambo and his funny noises it's a light-hearted strip about a naive black child who gets into funny scrapes with two white kids

what you see uncomfortable it's not comfortable but it could be worse so far

So far, I'm like, okay,

this is not great, obviously, but it

premise-wise, when you hear

in the 1800s, a comic featuring a black child, you're like, buckle up.

A common punchline is Sambo getting beaten up by the white boy.

So, see, there's what I'm talking about.

Now it is

awful and, you know, not to be enjoyed.

So, yeah, there you go.

There it is.

You just got to wait for the other shoe to hit the floor.

Or also getting credit for doing work the white boys have done.

Fuck me.

I bet you Stephen Miller's office is just like this all over the wall.

The amazing reversal of

making it seem

the whites aren't doing the stealing.

I think that's really what is so,

if I may, amazing about the whites is is the way that they're the worst and then talk about how everyone's trying to take stuff away from them.

Yeah,

they steal everything and then shout, I've been robbed.

Yes, it's really great.

It's really, and it seems to be in the DNA.

Yeah, I can't, the nature-nurture part of it is very difficult.

Yeah, it's great.

Good lord.

Every time you hear Stephen Miller talk, you're just like,

wow,

that's a lot of bullshit to shoot shoot out of a fucking head

on october 1914 mariner was drinking heavily at a summer home near hackensack

and his wife took their child and left as she often did when he got really hammered so mariner told the neighbor that if his wife didn't come back that night he would burn down the village as you do like what else how else can what was her concern with him he seems to be pretty balanced well she sounds like she's just weak once again

if it's not a black kid, taking credit, it's a white woman not understanding what we're going for.

I mean,

that night, Mariner lit his house on fire and then shot himself.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

That'll show her.

That's a real kablooey.

His charred remains were found the next morning.

So,

like, I got to say,

that sounds like it worked out for everybody, but yeah.

Wow, that is

quite an exit.

That's quite a

ta-ta.

Now, that's how at the age of 29, Pat Solomon took over the comic strip, Sambo and his funny noises.

So for him, when Mariner

self-amalgated or whatever it's called, he was like, oh, this is great.

All right.

Yeah, I get full control.

Awesome.

So he ghost wrote the strip for a year until McClure ended it, and then Pat rebooted one of Mariner's old comic strips.

See, this one we thought was in poor taste, but now we can bring it back.

Johnny Boston beans.

All right, let's party.

Which ended in

1905, but he changed the name to, I don't, I, see, I,

someone did the research for me on this one, Seurat.

And

it says Johnny.

So he changed the name to Johnny Boston Beans.

So I think the difference is that Boston Beans is one word when Mariner did the strip, and then he separated the two words.

So now it's Johnny Boston.

So like they were like legally were clear.

Yes.

So now he wouldn't have to pay the estate.

Okay.

That's just.

I like to call that one everything stupid.

So animation is a very new technology that's still not really popular.

Right.

Pat charms his way into a job at a Raul Barr Animation, animated studios.

Sorry, the lip.

Raul Barr Animated Cartoons in the Bronx.

Okay.

And Barry works on a series of films for Edison Film Company called the Animated Grouch Chasers.

These names are coming hot.

I want to see.

I want to see.

Grouch Chasers.

Yes.

Have you tried to find the Grouch Chasers?

Oh, no, I'm sure it doesn't exist anymore.

There's no way.

Grouch Chasers.

Okay.

Pat is supposed to be learning on the job, but he's not really good at the whole learning student thing.

Heavy drinking, very common amongst animators, but even by their standards, Pat is an absolute drunken mess.

You need a steady hand to do your animating.

That's correct.

Yeah.

He's constantly late.

He's visibly hungover, and he reeks of alcohol.

Dave, I think he was drinking.

Well, also, Gareth, he's not that great at animating to start with.

Do you remember that part?

Like, he's not very

good at it.

Right.

So this is not a good combo.

Right.

So Barr found his work, quote, unsatisfactory and fires him.

Nine months.

That's how long he lasted.

Nine months.

So Pat then starts his own animation studio.

Good.

Pat Sullivan Productions.

And he's much, much better at producing than he is at animating, mostly because he copied everything he had seen Barr do.

He even negotiated.

He copied his management style.

Yeah, everything.

Yeah.

Right.

He even negotiated his own deal to make cartoon ads for Edison Film Company because Barr had a deal with Edison Film Company.

So Pat adapted Sambo and his funny noises into a cartoon.

And once again, he changed the main character's name to avoid getting sued by the Mariner

family.

And Sambo became Sammy Johnson with

J-O-H-N-S-I-N Johnson.

Okay.

First of all, it's nice that the Mariner family is finally going to get screwed over by life.

And second of all, am I the only one who's glad that the

comic about abusing a young black child is back?

And now we get to actually see it, you know, move?

No, yeah, yeah, I think you are.

Yeah, we get to see.

No, no, no, no, no.

All right.

Hold on.

Don't woke me now.

Let me finish.

Don't woke me.

Let me finish.

It'll be nice to see it

with motion.

well, we're not, yeah, okay,

that's great.

I'm excited for you.

Don't put me on an island alone here.

You're on an island alone.

Uh,

the studio cranked out cartoons like Sammy Johnson Hunters, Sammy Johnson Strongman, Sammy Johnson, Johnson Slumbers Not, Sammy Johnson gets a job, Sammy Johnson in Mexico, Sammy Johnson at the seaside, etc.

On and on.

It's like Ernest.

And the reason he's cranking it out, Gareth, is because Sammy Johnson's a hit.

Okay.

After a year, Pat hired a young artist named Otto Mesmer, and Otto's father was a Bavarian immigrant, and his mother was a German-American, and they both worked in factories in New Jersey.

And that's where Otto was born and raised.

Okay.

So after high school, Otto...

trained in art through night classes and correspondence courses and he builds up a portfolio by selling cartoons and and humorous poems

uh to newspapers and and magazines.

Would you like to hear a poem?

No.

One of Otto's poems?

Well, okay, then I'll read it.

It's called Ode to an Old Straw Hat.

People in these fucking hands.

Last spring, when the winds grew warmer, I purchased mere lid.

Two bucks was the sum invested.

My winter hat.

I hid.

Of straw was the thing I purchased.

It cooled my shining plate.

But now are my teardrops falling, for we must part, tis fate.

Tis weak that I thus am sobbing, and I fain wouldst can the weep, but I sigh when I think of winter when my straw lid must sleep.

Wow.

So a seasonal eulogy to a hat.

That's correct.

We got to put him away.

Yeah, it's tough.

And just

to be clear, because we've talked about a lot of stuff on this show, yeah.

If you wore it outside of Straw Hat time, it was insane.

Yeah, past Labor Day, you're going to get the shit kicked out of you.

Of all the times to time travel back to, that might be that might be the

watching the Straw Hat Riot would have been pretty efficient.

Just to go back, just to be like,

it's just, it's awesome.

So Otto is witty, but he's also very shy.

He felt self-conscious signing his name

on his art.

So he would sometimes sign it with the pen name Ottz, OTZ, OTS.

Okay.

He was inspired by the early animated films of Windsor McKay, and he figured out the fundamentals of animation.

And when he was 24, he got his first animator job at Pat Sullivan Studios.

As far as how they're actually animating,

what are they doing?

I mean, are they

like it is just the

drawing by hand and then just taking stills and just editing stills basically like clipping together stills?

Yeah, I believe so.

Okay.

Yeah.

I'm not sure if it's like flipbook

or something.

Okay, right.

I don't think it's flipbook.

I think we're actually talking about because these are, yeah.

These are, yeah, this is actual animation.

So Pat made his animators study pictures and films of famous comic actors so they could learn their comedic timing and funny movements which is another thing that he stole from bar

um

and that kept that's something that still happened that's like in aladdin with robin williams and the little mermaid like that's something that's still

a thing so totally

um and that's actually why a lot of the early cartoons portrayed characters in blackface, white gloves, or white face, because they were based on vaudeville or minstrel show, guys.

All good.

Listen to you once again trying to excuse the way blackface.

Again.

Man.

In his first year at Pat Sullivan Studios, Otto mostly worked on a series of 12 Charlie Chaplin cartoons.

Chaplin sent a stack of photographs of himself in different poses for the animators to draw him.

And Otto just studied them religiously.

He's not a fan of devices like like Max Fleischer's Rhodoscope, which required subjects in live action and then drawing animated characters over them.

He thought a cartoon is best when it shows things that are physically impossible.

Yeah, right.

Quote, why animate something you can see in real life?

So they still say that, by the way.

I say that all the time.

No.

I say that constantly.

No.

It's one of my most common sayings that people love in the business.

If people want to see animated dollop stuff, go to Lakeside.

I don't know YouTube.

Otto had been

at Pat Sullivan's studios for a year when World War I breaks out and he is drafted.

So he married his girlfriend right before he ships off.

Pat did not fight in World War I, probably because he's not a U.S.

citizen.

He's just a guy who jumped ashore and swam here.

So wait, he goes there and then well.

Oh, no, no, he's here.

He's just not even draftable.

Yeah, Pat's like, I guess, not on the records or something.

So Otto is a corporal in the Army Signal Corps.

And once he was just chatting with another soldier in a trench looking, you know, out on the horizon when in the middle of the conversation, just a bullet goes through the other guy's head and he dies.

Fuck.

Which will happen.

That'll happen to you.

Another time, someone in his unit shot and wounded a a German sniper, and the sniper was still alive when the Americans got to him.

Otto, who spoke German, confronted him during his final moments, and the German offered the Americans his last cigarettes.

For the rest of his life, Otto almost never spoke about his time on the battlefield.

Is there any reason he didn't want to talk about it?

Was it

tough for him to talk about the time that a guy that he'd just been involved in murdering offered him his last smoke?

Holy fuck.

There is not a,

I mean, that's quite an encapsulation of the fucking issue with goddamn war.

Just like two humans who are just like, what's this about?

Although, obviously, Germany was pushing.

Yeah.

The other thing about war is it's how all the people are fighting and not the guys who that's what I mean.

You're just you're just checkers.

But now the good news is we don't even, we don't even know about those anymore because we can just do it without.

Now it's just some fucking dude in a room, just fucking or a woman or non-binary, just in a room with a fucking little skin with playing, playing a video game where they're just droning the shit out of people.

And getting deeply, deeply emotionally scarred and having terrible mental damage.

I mean, what about that seems troubling?

The fact that you're just sitting in an air-conditioned room murdering a family?

In April 1917, while Otto is in the war, Pat is hanging out with Ernest Smythe, who's an old friend from London.

He's also an animator at the studio.

And Pat and Ernest begin flirting with two girls who are staying in a rented apartment in the same building as the studio.

And then he's like, you want to go to a bar?

You want to get...

some cocktails so the girls are like yeah we'll go to a bar um they have a you know round of cream to mints and uh the girls are alice and gladys um one's brunette one's blonde did i mention 14 and 15 years old yeah

did i mention i think i probably should have started when i said girls i mean literal girls they had run away from home

uh five days before and they just wanted to be actresses in the big city

um

and then so they're like yeah we're animators we're in show business um which impresses the the young girls because they're girls

And so they go out with Pat and Ernst the next night.

And then on the third night, Pat is like, Alice, let's just, you and I go out.

And then

a week later, the cops show up at the studio and they arrest Pat and Ernst.

Ernst is charged with abduction, which was later reduced to impairing morals, which is something you need to think about.

Yeah, I agree.

And Pat was charged with rape.

I got to be honest, I'm surprised that that last part part happened.

I'm glad.

I am too.

That to me feels like,

I feel like,

you know, like anytime you went into a bar, it looked like a daddy-daughter dance and you were just like, yeah, whatever.

But I think because these were runaway girls.

Right.

That's probably it.

But yeah, I know what you mean.

Like it was, yeah, it was a free-for-all.

It's just like when someone gets arrested for murder in the 1800s, you're like, wait, what?

Wasn't, wasn't everybody murdering?

So Alice testified that it wasn't consensual

her first time.

Also, he gave her venereal disease, which is really just a, he's just a great.

Anyway, he's convicted.

He gets, the maximum sentence was 10 years.

Pat's wife,

Marjorie,

Writes a letter to the judge asking the judge to be lenient on her husband, who's just convicted of rape.

It was on Sullivan Studio Stationery, the letter she wrote, and decorated with images of Sammy Johnson,

the beloved cartoon character.

Just trying to flood the system, I guess.

Pat's lawyer also did the same, arguing that his client.

My client believes that he is working under cartoon law, where a man can swallow a grenade and survive.

Where if a fellow gets gets shot 15 times and drinks water, it shoots out of him in all different directions, where gravity only exists once you realize you've bent it.

I hate to break this to you.

That's not happening in cartoons yet.

Yeah, I guess.

I figured.

They're not there yet.

It's all very realistic.

Okay.

All right.

I don't know.

I got no excuse then.

Well, because they're basically saying the beloved racist cartoon is this is the guy who makes it.

You know, I got to say, there's been a lot of grim times in American history, but trying to excuse your venereal rape away with beloved racism,

it's up there.

Yeah, so his lawyer is literally like, look,

he's this animator guy, and you know, you should give him some time off because that's really important.

And so the judge agrees that Pat was, quote, a man of very considerable ability and sentenced him to just two years in Sing Sing prison.

In the end, he ends up only serving nine months and three days.

Now, his studio would close down while he was in prison, but reopened when he comes back.

And in 1919.

Imagine working for him.

Just be like, Jesus Christ, dude.

How's everyone doing?

Let's do some, what do we, let's do lunch in the communal cafeteria room.

So, yeah, so Otto comes back in 1919 from the war.

The studio is open, but it's barely, at this point, it's really having a hard time.

So Otto starts making Chaplin cartoons again, which puts the studio back in business.

Imagine having seen what he's just seen and he's like re-he's just picturing the bullet going through his friend's head over and over again.

But

it turns the studio around again.

And now they're actually turning down work.

So Paramount approaches to make a few original cartoons for a film package, which is like a bundle of features and shorts and cartoons and newsreels and stuff.

So Pat almost says no because they're so busy, but Otto wants, he wants to pitch something new.

And Pat says, okay, go for it, as long as it doesn't interfere with the other work we have.

Like that comes first.

So Otto agrees and works on nights and weekends to complete the side job.

And the the cartoon is called Feline Follies.

Now we're talking.

Are you excited?

Yeah.

It features a black cat called Master Tom

who romances another cat called Miss Kitty White.

And Miss Kitty.

Can you just make it about cats, you sons of bitches?

What's your deal?

Todd, it's sexy.

And Miss Kitty, when Miss Miss Kitty reveals she has a litter of Tom's kittens, Tom commits suicide by inhaling coal gas.

What Jeff Scott said?

What?

This is the cartoon?

Is that true?

Remember, Otto just came back from war, so he's dealing with some.

He's working some shit out.

Oh, my God.

Yeah, I'm going to take the kids down to the little theater there.

We're probably going going to watch a cartoon.

Jesus Christ.

Well, the Paramount executive in charge, John King, loves it.

It's great.

Can we see penetration?

Let's see the little cat dick.

He tells Otto to make another one.

So go darker.

Yeah, make it worse.

Can there be blood and gut somehow?

Let's really see it.

So Feline Follies premieres on November 19th.

Feline 19th Follies is about a litter abandoned and

Tom offs himself.

Technically, those are follies.

Oh, wait a minute.

I got an idea now.

What?

I'm wondering if I have a fun inkling of where this goes.

Uh-oh.

By the end of the year, Otto had finished the third short featuring the cat, and Master Tom had a new name, Felix.

Oh, my God, even weirder.

Between 1919 and 1921, Otto made 25 Felix the Cat shorts for Paramount holy shit

they're popular but not lucrative enough lucrative enough for Paramount boss Adolph Zucker and in 1920s Zucker decided to cut the package of films that the Felix series was part of

And when Pat heard this, he realized he didn't own the rights to Felix.

Paramount did.

Whoops.

Yeah, that's why they say never trust trust an adolph.

Well, that, and there's other reasons, but yeah.

No, that comes from this, probably.

There was another thing we haven't done a dollar upon it, so you probably don't know about it, but it's not great.

It's not animated, it's bad.

Huh.

Interesting.

I'd love to learn more about it.

No one knows for sure how Pat got the rights to Felix from Paramount.

One of Pat's animators said Pat told the story once and only once.

And given Pat's record, may not be true at all.

But Pat said he got shitfaced drunk.

Okay, we can obviously believe that.

Good start.

And he barged into Zucker's office, screaming that he had been robbed, and stood on Zucker's desk and started pissing all over his papers.

Zucker then picked up his phone and told his attorney to hand over the rights.

Well, I mean, there's a lesson here.

There's always the nuclear.

I mean, I could see that working.

I could too.

Not just because it's because you're just like, I can't be involved with this guy.

Get him out of my life completely.

It's in chapter six of The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump.

Never have I wanted to reenact it more.

So the story would be impossible to believe if Pat hadn't actually nabbed the rights.

Maybe Zucker just wanted to get the crazy man out of his office.

But either way, Pat then tried to sell the series to Warner Brothers, but

they're not down.

You pissed all over another guy's desk, so we don't care to make a deal with you.

So

Harry Warner reaches out to Margaret Winkler, who is his former secretary, to take it on as part of her new distribution business.

Okay.

So MJ Winkler Pictures.

So from 1922 to 1925, Pat Sullivan Studios made 64 Phoenix shorts

under MJ Winkler Pictures.

And Felix becomes a worldwide hit.

It's massive.

Right.

So Felix's physical appearance is drawn from Otto's studies of Charlie Chaplin.

He communicates directly with the audience by winking or holding up a finger and doing something funny.

He has signature movements, most famously pacing back and forth with his hands behind his back while thinking about a problem.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And before Felix cartoon characters would be designed and animated for one short film, and then that's it.

Then they're done.

Uh-huh.

Wait, what do you mean?

They would.

You're a one-off.

They're all one-offs.

Oh, so they weren't like keeping cells or whatever.

They're like, throw it in the trash.

So the re-animator's like, I feel like I drew this already.

Fucking, we got him walking.

We got a bunch of him walking in the garbage.

I mean, so there's like no, there's no franchise.

There's no, like,

yeah, once you're done with the character, you just never bring them back.

Like, you're done with them.

Imagine.

Even the characters that did recur didn't have distinct personalities.

It's just like a funny dog and cats.

Like, it's not, you know, the same thing.

But Felix has a strong, unique personality, and he breaks the fourth wall and rules of reality in ways American animation has never done.

Did he ever look into the camera and say, you know, the guy who funds these was convicted of rape?

No, no, he didn't actually.

And the rights were returned because he pissed all over a guy's desk.

So,

so

there's also this

the fluid movement between reality and fantasy.

So wild visual gags that Otto was so good at inventing,

he, like the thing you were talking about before, the getting shot and the

then all the

like water coming out of you or like all those things.

This is the guy who came up with all that.

Like he took it to the fantasy level.

Right.

He took it out of reality.

And it's like revolutionary.

Like people are just like, holy shit.

Now, wait a a minute, wait a minute.

You can draw whatever you want.

This is...

Hold on, hold on, hold on.

How the hell did he get him to fly?

How do you trade a cartoon cat how to do that?

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It's also seen as very artistic.

Before this, gags, like I said, very real, like a Pratfall, stuff like that.

But Felix would do things like remove his tail, use it as a screwdriver, and then put it back on, or take the number four off a calendar and turn it into a chair.

He could sneak, he could sneak in a building.

He's a magician.

Why are you doing that?

Well, Dan, he's not real.

Don't tell me it's not real.

I'm watching him with my dad.

The tail only exists because a man drew that.

Do you understand?

They took it off his bottom, Benny.

No, no, no.

But he.

How is it a screwdriver?

It's he's a fake.

I feel like I'm losing my mind.

No, Dan, Dan, no, it's right.

I just weren't.

It's rage.

No, it's underwear.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

But honey.

Honey.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

I saw somebody.

No, no, no, no, you didn't.

Didn't some men kill

in the war.

I know.

And none of them

were able to stop the league of the corks.

No, they, but they weren't.

Nobody, even if someone were to be shot today, God forbid, they wouldn't be able to put nine corks in it and stop the water they drank from coming out of it.

I'm not taking off my hat because there might be an explosion.

Well, what's true?

I'm never taking off my hat is that we haven't seen that in any of the cartoons.

Yeah.

So what, yeah.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right.

You understand how this is fucked up my world.

Yeah, absolutely.

We should just.

What's real anymore?

I mean, I just, I don't know, but I'd say the stuff Felix does is not real, and our lives remain quite real.

Oh, are you ready for deep fakes then, motherfucker?

Okay, well, let's just,

let's take this outside of the theater.

Let's leave the picture, Haas.

Uh,

he could also take the sun out of the sky.

All right.

Okay.

No.

First of all, no.

First of all, we'd go into it, we'd die.

First of all, we'd either burn or hit an ice age.

So, no.

And make it in the body of a banjo and play it.

He could tip his ears like a hat.

Everyone get your hats.

We're not going to watch this guy play this sun anymore.

He could tip his ears like a hat.

No.

When he was confused, a question mark appeared over his head, which he would grab and use as a fish hook or straighten it out and use use it as a baton.

I've had about enough of this.

When he got an idea and three exclamation points appeared over his head, he could gather them, fashion them into a propeller and use it to fly away.

The amount of people who were out there, like, if I could just get the question marks to appear,

that's the battle.

Turning them into a copter's not going to be a problem.

I just love that.

Why won't they appear?

It's just so amazing.

This is blowing people's minds.

Oh, yeah.

Wait, wait, wait,

People were probably like, put the cat in water, drown it.

They're dangerous.

By the way, Jose just came over very interesting.

I'm sure he did.

So press around the world considered Felix an icon of the era.

Marcel Brayon of the Academy Francais, quote, he becomes the impossible.

Nothing is more familiar to him than the extraordinary.

And when it is not surrounded by the fantastic, he creates it.

The whole thing is that even if the environment is banal, Felix will make it dynamic.

It has, without question, ruined my marriage.

There's no way to return home and have a conversation with a normie.

After you see that Felix takes his talk bubble, expands it into an ocean, swims upon it, catches a squid, turns it into calamari, and then returns it back to its normal talk bubble farm.

George Bernard Shaw, quote.

Whoa, George Bernard Shaw.

It's really amazing.

If Michelangelo were now alive, I would not have the slightest doubt that he would have his letterbox filled with proposals from the great film firms to concentrate his powers to the delineation of Felix the Cat instead of the Sistine Chapel.

That is, that's pretty sad, to be quite honest with you.

If to be like Michelangelo is like,

no, no, no.

The 16th Chapel just walking in, just like, wow, look at that.

Felix touching his own question mark.

Look at that.

Honey, he's playing the banjo.

Oh, that's naughty.

Oh, okay.

Oh, my goodness.

You know, the guy who came up with this has quite a checkered past.

So Felix the Cat cartoons remain very dark and relatively topical.

In Felix Revolts, a town council bans cats and Felix becomes an organizer unionizing the cats to strike so that rats run wild in the town.

I can't.

That is like, I mean, I was going to say, yeah, that's just like...

That just shows everybody.

That just shows that Otto is doing all of the art and Pat's not paying attention because that's Otto going,

I'm not treated well.

That's great.

Look at all these dirty rats out there ruining society.

And Felix turns the tide.

Rats declare war on cats.

Hell yes.

No.

Hell yeah.

We can like both rats and cats.

No.

And Felix joins the army to fight on the battlefield.

His dead bodies one right in the head.

On the battlefield, dead bodies pile up, clearly from Otto's experiences in World War One.

You know, the only note is when Felix says, I'm Otto, I need therapy, please help.

We should lose that.

That's kind of off topic.

It's just crazy how much death there is.

Like, it's just a guy working out his shit because of fucking.

He's just fully

trying to process his trauma.

He has PTSD and instead he's just animating it.

It's really insane.

By 1925, Felix was by far the most popular cartoon character in the world.

For many non-Americans, including Italian director Frederico Fellini, he was their first taste of American culture.

Someday I hope to meet a Felix and I work out with a healing.

Charlie Chaplin regularly praised him, and Buster Keaton parried him in Go West.

Oh, really?

I fucking love Buster Keaton.

Oh, he's the best.

Felix was merchandised in a way no other cartoon character.

Did you see when Buster Keaton had to transition to the talkie?

Like the first time we heard him talk, you were like, what's going on?

Uh-oh.

Yeah, because he was like so great with his face.

And then he was just in a movie.

He's like, I don't know.

Maybe we'll call Maj.

And everyone's like, okay, we're actually

working to you here.

So he's merchandised in a way that no other cartoon character has ever been.

He had two radio hits, Felix the Cat and Felix Kept On Walking.

There were Felix tie pins, brute brooches, clocks, Christmas ornaments, cigars, car radiator caps, baby oil, blankets, radios, records, and sheet music.

Jesus Christ.

So this is, I mean, this is, yeah, the full on.

By the way, I can't really criticize while I'm surrounded by Jose merchandise.

But

that, so it's like it's the first time where this is hitting on this level.

It's Disney.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right.

Felix became the British polo team's official mascot.

It's an absolute honor to finally find ourselves.

Now, look, I understand that today it maybe feels low stakes, but remember, what would Felix do?

Well, I think he'd take the head off of his mallet and he'd turn it into a gavel and you'd see a trial where he would say that the gentleman we're playing should no longer exist.

A bit heady, but something like that could work for us.

Yeah, it's the first, he is the first giant balloon ever made for a Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade.

What the fuck was that parade before that?

I can't imagine.

Just probably us just being like, we stole the land.

So the merchandising rights are making Pat Solman $100,000 a year, which is about $1.8 million today.

And then he got $8,000 per Felix film, most of which Otto writes and directs.

Right.

And $80,000 per year for the Felix cartoon strip, which Otto, again, wrote, and then he would actually sign Pat's name on it.

And from 1922 to 1925, Pat made almost $19 million in today's money.

And in 1925, the starting salary for an

animator at Pat Sullivan Studios was, do you want to guess?

A week.

The starting salary a week?

Oh, God.

A week.

$20?

Last 10.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

God damn.

We are sick.

We are sick.

That's about...

In today's money, that would be about

$8,600 a year.

Fuck.

In the fall of 1925, Pat and Marjorie, and by the way,

1925.

Animation,

what do I want to call it?

Just exploitation continues today.

Like it is one of the most exploitive parts of show business.

Having worked on a few animated things, the amount you kind of can't even get over the idea that factored into the budget is the work will be coming from Malaysia.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's terrible.

I'm sure that that's going real healthy and great over there.

And look, and it's, you know, it's also like most of it's not unionized and you're still sending it out.

You're already paying people shit in America and now you're like, well, let's not do it here.

It's not shitty enough.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So in the

In the fall of 1925, Pat and Marjorie went on a five-month Felix promotional tour through England, France, the Mediterranean, Africa, China, and Australia.

Jesus Christ.

They sailed on a luxury ocean liner, the HMS Majestic.

Reporters often asked Pat about Felix's origins.

I can only imagine that tale tells Endo Tendo.

Well,

he would change the story depending on the audience.

But he never mentioned Otto.

and always referred to himself as Felix's only creator.

In the press, Pat used a rags to riches storyline, calling himself, quote, a poor boy who made good abroad.

Sometimes Pat brought up Sammy Johnson and tied into Felix.

Wait, who is Sammy Johnson again?

Sammy Johnson's the

old

Sambo character that he changed to

more often.

He would say his wife came up with the idea.

Quote, she came bursting into the studio carrying in her arms the most washed-out, pope-eyed, half-starved ragamuffin of a cat that ever lived in a New York back street.

And she said, She said, Everybody's drawing men.

Why not do an animal feature?

And that was how Felix began.

Completely untrue.

Just totally fabricated, 100% fabricated.

I mean, but he's trying to make up for the fact that he,

you know, that there was a statutory charge.

There's that.

So.

you know what I mean?

You got to remember, it's always in the back of his normal mind.

Sometimes Pat said Felix's name came from the phrase Australia Felix, a term used by early European settlers on the continent.

I don't know what it means.

When it was a penal colony.

There was also a 1917 novel called Australia Felix.

Pat said Felix was named and or colored black after the black Australian boxer Peter Felix.

Also, should I mention that Pat would not hire any black animators at his studio?

Yeah, it's

good.

Meanwhile,

this guy sounded pretty

good.

By the way, may I say ahead of his time a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So while this is going on, Otto is actually writing and directing the Felix cartoons.

According to Sullivan, Studio Animators, Pat hardly ever came into the office.

Otto ran the studio when Pat was away, during which he would forge Pat's signature on checks, memos, and other paperwork.

So Otto's running the studio completely.

Wow.

Yeah.

And drawing.

He's

the guy.

It's his studio.

It's literally all.

Meanwhile, Pat's abroad with his wife saying that she helped him conceive it all.

This is capitalism.

Yes.

Yep.

What Pat did show up sorry when pat did show up he would stumble through the doorway hammered toss a bag of dirty laundry to the nearest animator and tell him to take it to the cleaners

i gotta say though to only show up to work when you're drunk is pretty awesome

like to just get hammered and be like i should go to the office

if the animator didn't jump up fast enough to do laundry pat would fire him on the spot.

Jesus Christ.

What's the tinkling?

Is the cat playing with something?

No, you hear that?

It's a wind chime.

What is it?

Yeah, I hear your wind chime.

Is that magic?

Would we close the door?

It's far away.

It's fine.

It's weird, but we can handle it.

It kind of sets the mood.

I'm sure somebody will scream about it, but that's just them not being able to handle it.

Well, you took an icy sip earlier, and in my head, I thought, there's a comment.

Oh, yeah.

Sorry.

Sorry, Sorry, we're living.

The idea of doing this without water is shocking.

Like what someone was just basically like, is it possible for you guys to just hydrate before?

It's like, well, you know, why don't we just get IV backs?

Why don't we just work for Pat?

Okay, so he would fire the guy and then Otto would give him a severance check.

and send the guy home.

And then the next day, the animator would just quietly sneak into work and Pat would have forgotten about it.

So best case scenario would be to not get up fast enough when he wanted his laundry done because then you would get severance and weekly.

I mean, yeah.

So, that's what I would do.

I'd be like, do your laundry, you're fine.

That's right.

That's actually, yeah.

So, Pat's employee, Seamus Calhoun,

Calhane?

How do you say C-U-L-H-A-N-E?

C-U-L-H-A-N-E, Culhane.

Collahane?

Yeah, probably Colhane.

Seamus Colhane, and now there's a bunch of Irish people screaming.

Pat's employee, Seamus Cohane, called Pat, quote, the most consistent man in the business, consistent in that he was never sober.

Like any pop culture phenomenon, Felix had many imitators.

Cartoonist Paul Terry, creator of Mighty Mouse, introduced a cat that looked similar to Felix.

It was also named Felix.

I mean, you pushed it.

You pushed it.

I love that guy.

He's just the least creative thief on the

just coming in like you feel like, guys, I had an idea last night for how we can take a slice of this Felix action.

So Mighty Mouse will introduce a cat into Mighty Mouse's world.

Uh-huh.

Kind of a little bit antagonistic, doesn't play by the rules of physics, is not bounded by the society norms in any way.

Sounds exactly.

He's got a real Felix feeling to him.

Yeah, he sounds like Felix.

But he's not Felix.

And he's in Mighty Mouse's world.

And I think he could be a bit of an antagonist for Mighty Mouse, which we've been looking for.

I think this way we can capture some of the Felix.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah.

What's his name?

What are we calling him?

Felix.

We're going to call him Felix.

He will also be named Felix.

He is Felix the Cat.

I have to go.

I'm about to golf.

All right, guys.

Take out.

This is terrible.

Pat threatened to sue, so he changed the name to Henry.

Did you not expect that lawsuit?

How did you do it?

The only way that's not a lawsuit is he never finds out.

How do you change it to Henry also?

Fine, we'll call him Hank.

Fine.

John Bray, who had gotten an animation by faking being a reporter to interview Windsor McKay about his production methods and then tried to copyright the methods that McKay told him about.

And then he sued McKay

for using them and

created a character named Thomas the Cat who looked exactly like Phoenix.

Felix.

So animators are full of

loads.

That is a loaded operation.

I am reporting the name of the publication, The Real Times.

At Margaret Winkler's suggestion, Walt Disney, very early in his career, created a Felix-ish rabbit called Oswald,

which in combination with the Disney studio style and use of sound became very successful.

Now, Pat was pissed that Winkler ripped off Felix, so he switches distributors.

It's so great for him to be furious about someone stealing Felix.

It's crazy.

It's like

it's crazy.

It's awesome.

America's awesome.

Yeah.

The new distributor, Educational Pictures, released two cartoons a month for two and a half years.

So when Walt Disney finds out that Otto is actually Felix's creator, he tries to hire Otto away.

But

he wants Otto to move to California.

And Otto's like a fucking New Yorker, like one of those weird New Yorkers that can't leave the city.

Yeah.

So he turns Disney down.

Although, let's be honest, it's not like Disney treated people well either.

No, but he didn't know that.

It would be, it's strange.

It's just strange to be under the conditions he's under and he's just to be like, yeah, but California doesn't smell like egg piss

in 1928.

Two talkies,

so now we have films with sound, came out.

By the way, that feels like a slur now.

Yeah, a little bit.

Okay.

It changes the industry.

So the jazz singer and a cartoon called Steamboat Willie, starring Mickey Mouse.

Yep.

Steamboat Willie is the setup of Buster Keaton's film, Steamboat Bill.

It was the third Mickey Mouse short and the first cartoon with synchronized sound and music.

So, you know, good visual gags, happen in perfect sync with the rhythm of the music.

It's a massive hit.

People go fucking bananas.

They can't believe it.

It's so funny.

It's so funny.

I mean, obviously, we're spoiled.

Obviously, we've fucking ruined everything by the amount that is thrown at us entertainment-wise.

But the idea of grown adults going to watch Steamboat Willie and be like, that's it.

We're peeking.

When it's just like a mouse on a boat, like, I don't know.

Oh, boy.

Like, grown men were like, this is the height of cinema.

So, like,

like Pat, Walt is a very, very good promoter, and Mickey became famous worldwide as quickly as Felix had.

Now, everybody wants cartoons with sound, and the animation industry, which has been in a kind of a slump, is revived.

So, the

popularity of sound cartoons is not good for Felix, who is a silent film character.

Pat's staff had been pushing

having Felix's films have sound and color for years, but Pat was refusing to do it.

Quote, you don't change when you're making money.

Yep.

Spoken like a true thief.

As Mickey eclipsed Felix in popularity, Educational Pictures dropped Pat Sullivan Studios.

And in 1930, two years after Steamboat Willie, Pat gave in and said, okay, let's convert Felix into a sound cartoon.

Sure.

All right, I get it.

All right.

This sound shit ain't going away.

It's not a threat like I said.

Well, you definitely had the people who were like, all right.

You know, it's like how Howard Stern views podcasts.

Like, enough already.

It's a flash in the pan.

It's not going to hold.

Yeah.

Okay.

Is what?

Him with podcasts?

It's insane.

Is that how he is?

That's hilarious.

Such a curmudgeon.

Like, like it's any different.

It's just people doing their own thing.

Like, it's any different.

And like this idea of, you know, you need to go live in 18 different markets to fail.

It's like oh no,

okay,

okay, cool.

What?

Yeah,

we've all failed a ton.

I mean it's like whatever.

Um okay, so he gives in, they make a sound cartoon.

It doesn't go well.

Pat had fired most of the staff and replaced them with cheaper freelances.

So Felix was voiced by

Harry Edison, who was a sound engineer and whose voice was whiny and annoying.

So

yeah, All right.

I thanks a catty calf.

Good.

All right.

Let's do one more.

This time,

when you discover that the manhole cover is taken off of the sewer, I want you to be pretty upset about it.

Okay.

And then quickly jump in there.

So let's hear the sound of you, how you feel to jump.

We'll add the sound at the sound after

you begin.

Okay, ready?

All right, here we go.

And rolling, go.

Okay, great.

The levels are a little low on our end.

So we're trying to really, we would really like to, like, let's say someone was listening to this in a car or something right now.

Oh, okay.

We want them to turn it down when they're here, okay?

So, and also, let's hear you take the sewer cap off.

So, maybe it's heavy.

They're heavy.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Here we go.

All right.

Here we go.

And go for it.

Go.

Good, got that.

Okay, great.

That's good.

Now we're going to.

Now we've got some more.

Are you okay?

I got to take a week off.

No, no, no, no, no.

Nope.

Not in this business.

My throat is filling up with blood.

Let's hear, why don't we get one of those?

Why don't you show us how that feels in your throat right now?

Good, good, good.

All right, great.

Uh, let's take one.

I'm at what?

Yep.

All right, good.

I'm a cute.

Just talking to the guys in here.

We're a little tired.

We're going to take a breather.

You stay in there and scream for a little while.

We're going to go out for a minute.

Get some,

what do you call it?

What's the sandwich?

I'm the sound sandwich here.

What's the sandwich?

Hold on.

Hold on.

We're trying to figure out.

What's the sandwich that you dip in the au jus?

What's that one called?

A Russian MILF.

Okay.

What's.

Wow.

Nope.

All right.

That's not a good look, and I've committed the ultimate sin.

It's not the same time period, so it doesn't mean that.

What?

What are you talking about?

What is a MILF to you?

Since 1928 or whatever.

It's a what?

It's a little Harry Roden.

A MILF?

Yeah.

All right, pal.

You're concerned about it.

I need emotional help.

Yeah.

Well, look, stop.

Just give us a minute.

We're figuring out what it's called.

It's a.

The hell is the same?

Would you dip into

it's the auge.

Anyway.

All right, we're going to take it to a scavenge.

What?

Goodbye.

So he used this guy with a terrible voice.

The films were made cheaply and in a rush so the picture and sound didn't line up.

You know, there's nothing better than not making the pivot and then rushing it and fucking it up.

He blockbustered.

So good.

Copley Pictures, Felix's new distributor, stopped making new Felix shorts in 1931.

Again, Walt Disney tries to hire Otto away and Otto turns him down.

He keeps drawing the Felix cartoon strip for newspapers and Pat taking most of the profits.

Pat's ex-employee, Hal Walker, quote, Pat was an alcoholic and sex maniac who used Marjorie for purposes of influencing other men.

Oh my God.

So that's way darker.

But

I don't think that he's pimping her out.

I think that's flirting and like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but yeah.

Like he probably

sex, a sex maniac?

Hey, go.

Well, I mean, we're all sex maniacs when we get in the situation.

No, I don't agree.

Which led to his next piece called Sex Maniacs.

Yeah, Sex Maniac's not a great description.

This is a dog who loves to fuck.

Or you could, you know, own it.

Yeah, I'm a sex maniac.

Yeah.

Oh, it was a compliment.

Thank you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you very much.

I could not from just thinking, I'm a sex maniac.

So,

yeah, so he's probably using her to flirt or whatever but who knows maybe maybe it was more i'm sure she was doing well too he's he's not a good

well he's not a good guy so you know not a good guy but the loyalty to this guy is pretty bizarre yeah

so pat uses felix money to finance uh madam and open a brothel

Okay, well,

what would you do now?

Definitely not go back into the animated world where I've had a tremendous amount of success, even if it's on the back of others.

I obviously would start a Hooters rip-off.

It's just such a crazy pivot.

Hold on.

He's a sex maniac.

He's like, finally, I have enough money to open a place where I can just fuck.

Oh, can you imagine when the sex maniac boss walks into a brothel that he owns?

Terrible.

Ugh.

And of course, the second he'd walk in, I'd be itching my crotch.

Like, oh, oh, hey, Pat.

Oh.

Well, he did contract syphilis there.

Oh, man.

Finally, a contract he honored and he's married gareth yeah time for noses to drop so he gave syphilis to marjorie well listen

and her body was covered in syphilis scars and went out in public she wrapped herself in scarves to hide

she had scarf scars she had scar scarves scar guards now you're just talking about peter she was rumored to be sleeping with their chauffeur and one day pat confronts them in their luxury apartment, seventh floor of the Forest Hotel in New York.

And after an argument, this chauffeur storms out.

And a minute later, Marjorie fell out the window and hit the ground and died.

I'm sorry.

Define fell?

Well,

in my defense, Your Honor, I've been working in animation so intimately, I thought she'd bounce back up.

So he shot her out of a fucking window after the chauffeur left.

Yeah, I mean, that's how it sounds.

If it's suicide or murder or an accident, it's never made clear.

A lot of people in Pat's life had their suspicions because he's a drunk, abusing maniac.

And her obituary in the Times said Marjorie had wanted to go shopping and lean too far out the window while trying to attract the attention of the chauffeur.

She didn't know.

She didn't know what she was doing that day.

God, I miss her.

Yeah, I I do miss it.

It's so hard.

I kept telling her you don't know how to yell out windows.

She was trying to grab stuff from the stores with her hands, but we were on the seventh floor.

Sweet Marge didn't understand how it worked, and nobody grieves her more than I, her loving husband, who gave her syphilis.

And while we were together, committed the ultimate sin and raped a young girl, basically.

But that day, none of that mattered.

Even though we had an argument with the chauffeur, the very chauffeur she was trying to communicate with,

she just fell she fell and as i tried to push her back up to the balcony i tried to shove her back up and she just it was too late

uh it sounds

i mean it sounds suspicious yeah i know when you put it that way i know yeah i tried to shove her back up to the seventh floor as best i could actually and she was fight she was fighting to not fall too and i tried to shove her it was just oh even thinking back on it.

I don't think you know how.

The second I saw her splat, I just, I looked up and I said, yes, that's what I wanted.

What?

Oh, yeah, I was just in a lost head space, man.

I didn't know what I was doing at that time, and I saw her pass away, and I said, and now I can go do what I want with my penis.

Now can you do this in an Australian slash Irish accent?

I was like, basically, like it's just a bit different but I thought I could maybe find a way to go put it inside of a glarry hole.

I mean that was that was

a little better.

It was a tough one.

Okay, so after Marjorie's death, Pat is depressed.

He falls into depression and he AJ.

The idea of probably murdering and then being like, I'm so low.

Probably.

Absolutely murdered her.

Absolutely.

I mean, I guess she could have run and jumped, but come on.

No, she was killed.

Come on.

Uh, so he is very fucked up from years of alcoholism and syphilis.

And in the last year of his life, he couldn't recognize Otto.

I mean, that is.

Well, to be fair, he didn't really recognize it before that.

Yeah, that's right.

Pat Sullivan died of the motor.

I love, I love the like simple, like, it's just like Felix.

Oh, yeah, I know him.

Well, did you know that

the studio was a little hijinksy?

So he dies of pneumonia and alcohol-related damage in the hospital in 1933.

He was 47 years old.

Wow.

His company was in shambles.

He hadn't kept records for years.

Pat Sullivan Studios closed down.

He had no children, so the rights to Felix go to his nephew.

Now, Otto keeps writing and drawing the daily and Sunday Felix cartoon strips.

He'd get freelance animation work.

And in 1971, Pat's nephew dies.

And that's when animation historians learned that Otto was the creative force, if not the sole creative force, the main, behind Felix the Cat.

And 50 years after Felix debuted, Otto was publicly recognized as his creator for the first time.

When Otto, in 1976, when Otto was 83, the

Whitney Museum showed a retrospective of his work.

And the next year, animation historian John Kennemaker released a TV documentary, Otto Mesmer and Felix the Cat, in which Otto talked on camera about Felix and Pat Sullivan's studios for the first time.

And in 1983, Otto Mesmer died of a heart attack in New Jersey at the age of 91.

He was survived by his first and only wife, his children and grandchildren.

Wow.

So at least he got the recognition before he died, which isn't common in this sort of situation.

No.

He should have been wildly rich.

He should have been way more, you know, successful and beloved.

Almost, I would say, a Walt Disney type person.

And he didn't get any of that because drunken, abusive guy.

I also think a lot, at least

in this business, there is this,

there are people who

are geniuses and they don't have the ability to also be

they're so fixated on the creative that they're unable to put the pieces together to be the pushy creative voice, you know, or whatever.

And,

you know, it's like, I mean, I'm sure we both in many circumstances have found the person who is willing to take all the credit and is not skilled at the work.

That is a real, and this obviously to the nth degree, but that is a real like

trope.

And I know we both personally have dealt with that before.

But at least he did get recognized, but also, you know.

We're just run by fucking psychopaths.

And like we were saying before, it's like, you know, money, money capitalism, exponential growth, winning it, winning the money game is truly the cultural cancer of,

you know, you think of what we could have and how money completely fucks all of that up.

Well, it's a system in which once a guy's rich, everyone goes, you're awesome.

Nobody is ever like, so how'd you do that exactly?

Yeah, and nobody's ever like, dude, that's like, that's, you're clinically insane for wanting to have a trillion dollars.

Yeah, you're you're insane.

You're an insane.

Like, think of what, think of what the internet could have done.

And instead, we're like, we got to get rid of it.

Right now we're like, oh, it's, so it's going to destroy the world.

No, we're fully just like, oh yeah, like AI, like, let's go.

And I was, I was talking to my brother last night.

We were sort of talking about all that stuff.

And it was just like, you know, okay.

Go, you know, go run your little project for every, just, if you just gave everyone a UBI and we just had that and that was just kind of built in, then it's like, all right, at least then we're not thinking, like, oh, yeah, nobody's going to have anything, and you're trying to do that as soon as possible.

Right.

Yeah, you get to have that.

Anyway, dollar podcast.com.

Doll heads, bring your doll heads.

Get them on stage.

We love them.

So

this was written, or the research written by Sarah Sabsey and

Sarah.

I always, Sarah, apologies.

And the sources are Wild Minds by Reed Mittenbuehler, Felix by John Kennemaker, and the birth of an industry by Nicholas Simond and the New York Times.

Boy, boy, oh boy.

Well, we are.

I thought it was just a cute little cat.

I thought it was going to be Tom and Jerry.

That's where I thought we were headed.

Oh, yeah.

No, that story is much worse.

No, that one's actually dark.

I don't know.

I don't actually know.

But you know what's funny is

that was my favorite cartoon growing up, Tom and Jerry.

That was awesome.

Insanely violent.

Oh, God.

Like off the charts violence.

Like,

the older I get, the more I'm like, you know, I'm like, Wiley Coyote

really

funny Roadrunner.

There's this whole thing where everyone's like, well, all these older people had lead, and that's why they're all like this.

And while, yes, I think that's a big part of it.

But I also think, like,

the media, the culture we absorbed was so fucking seeped in violence.

It's watch the Three Stooges.

Watch the Three Stooges.

Yeah.

Like, we were just comfortable with it.

Yeah.

Super funny.

Yeah.

Still is funny.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, thank you for listening.

And

remember, no problem.

Remember, Gareth is a problem.

What?

That's our new clothes.

Who's your deal?

Why not?

That's fantastic.

Hey, dollop fans.

I know you love the dollop.

You love listening to the dollop.

Do you want to watch the dollop?

You're like, Gareth, what are you talking about?

By the way, it's not Gary, it's Gareth.

Well, we have partnered with Lakeside Animation and we are starting to animate some of our episodes.

So if you want to go watch a five-parter animation, which is actually like a 22-minute episode or 30-minute episode, I can't remember, of the Rube, you You can go to Lakeside Animation on YouTube and watch a really awesome animation of The Rube.

It really genuinely kicks ass and we're very proud of it.

And the more you share it, the more you give it to people, the more you follow Lakeside, all that stuff, the better chance we have of making a lot more of them.

We're already making a second one, so go there and watch The Rube.

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