The Wonders of Winsor McCay

Revised in 2024.

Born this day (according to some, including himself) circa 1867-1871: Winsor McCay (Zenas Winsor McCay). McCay was a trailblazing illustrator, cartoonist, and animator, and, what is probably not as well known, a major star of vaudeville.

Some believe with reason that McCay was born and spent his early years in Canada; what is known for sure is that he spent the bulk of his nonage in Michigan. McCay drew pictures compulsively from early childhood, but his father sent him to business school in Ypsilanti. Instead, the precocious youngster skipped classes and made his way to Detroit, where he drew caricatures and portraits of patrons at local dime museums. This led to similar gigs at the local dime museums and theatres in Chicago and then Cincinnati through the 1900, simultaneously designing posters and other advertising materials for his employers.

In 1900 McCay was hired by the Cincinnati Enquirer as an illustrator and editorial cartoonist, where he rapidly worked his way up to the head of his department. (These were the days before newspapers printed photos — visuals for articles were illustrated by hand). Through most of 1903 he collaborated with George Randolph Chester, best known for Get-Rich-Quick Wallingford, on an illustrated series of humorous poems called A Tale of the Jungle Imp by Felix Fiddle. From here it was but a baby step to creating comic strips.

In late 1903, McCay moved to the New York Herald, where he worked in much the same capacity as he had at the Enquirer. Early the following year, he started creating comic strips for the paper as well. His early efforts (all that same year) were all short lived. They include Mr. Goodenough, Sister’s Little Sister’s Beau, The Phurious Phinish of Phoolish Philipe’s Phunny Phrolics, and Little Sammy’s Sneeze. The latter one begins to point the way to his better known strips, both because of its child protagonist, and the repetitive formula: every single strip concerned Sammy’s efforts to repress a sneeze — which inevitably escapes, causing embarrassment and pandemonium. The genius of Little Sammy and many of McCay’s subsequent efforts is that the premise was always the same; the fun and creativity arose from the endless variations each strip could ring on the same idea.

The Dream of a Rarebit Fiend, launched that same year, was McCay’s first major sucess, running for over 20 years, and inspiring Edwin S. Porter’s 1906 film version, which greatly enhanced its longevity in the public’s memory. The premise of that one was that the hero eats too much Welsh rarebit, and it always gives him fantastical, grotesque nightmares. McCay’s imagination was equal to his skill as an artist. His was a mind very much of his time, akin to the exertions of L. Frank Baum, Georges Méliès, and others.

McCay’s ambitions were boundless. His next couple of of efforts in the comic strip line strove for something like profundity. The Story of Hungry Henrietta (1905) concerns a girl who stress eats because her parents don’t love her enough. With each new installment of the strip, McCay drew the girl to look a little fatter and a little older. In A Pilgrim’s Progress by Mister Bunion (1905), the hero is forever trying to unload a suitcase labelled “Dull Care”. Neither of these lasted very long. But that same year, he debuted the strip that is widely regarded as his masterpiece, Little Nemo in Slumberland, which concerned the dream life of a little boy, whose name just happens to have echoes of The Odyssey and Jules Verne. (And later inspired the naming of a certain Pixar fish). The strip is revered not just for the vividness of McCay’s imagination but for the playfulness of form. He often diverged wildly from the normal square panels that usually frame comics. He had characters spill out of their frames. Sometimes he drew himself into the story! The fabulous buildings in his dreamscapes were inspired by structures he had seen at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair, and in travel magazines.

In 1906, the same year Porter’s Rarebit film was hitting theatres, McCay got the chance to do the same — in person. F.F. Proctor booked him to do chalk talks and lightning sketches on his vaudeville circuit. His original act had him doing this to the sound of his own theme song, a tune called “The Dream of the Rarebit Fiend” composed by Thomas W. Thurman. Later he would work the B.F. Keith and William Morris circuits, and take his act to the very frontiers of existing stage technology.

In 1907, Klaw and Erlanger brought Little Nemo to Broadway as a musical, with tunes by Victor Herbert and lyrics by Harry B. Smith. The cast included one “Master Gabriel” as Nemo, as well as comedy stars Joseph Cawthorn, Billy B. Van, and Harry Kelly. It ran for two years. The show was the origin of the nonsense word, “Whiffenpoof”, which became the name of a famous Yale singing club, which was founded in 1909, as well as its theme song.

In 1911, Stuart Blackton of Vitagraph hired McCay to create an animated film of Little Nemo for him, the first of a dozen he would create for the studio over the next decade. Subsequent notable ones included the famous Gertie the Dinosaur (1914), designed to be interacted with by McCay on the vaudeville stage, as well as a very straight one about the sinking of the Lusitania (1918), and several “Rarebit Fiend” dreams, the most delightful sounding of which to me is called Bug Vaudeville (1921). By then, McCay himself was no longer working in vaudeville however. In 1911 he had moved to William Randolph Hearst’s New York American. For a time, he was simultanesouly doing illustrations, editorial cartoons, and comic strips for Hearst, touring vaudeville, and hand-animating silent films. How was it possible? There aren’t enough hours in the day! The newspaper work suffered. Hearst and his editors made him quit vaudeville by 1917, and drop film-making by 1921, promising that they would make up for the loss of income with a boosted salary. When they did NOT come across with the promised bonus by 1924, he returned to the Herald Tribune.

By then, McCay’s influence was manifesting in the work of those he inspired, young guns like Walt Disney and Max Fleischer. McCay died of a stroke in 1934. After he passed, his son Robert tried to carry on as “Winsor McCay Jr” with limited success. As a boy, Robert had played Little Nemo in his dad’s vaudeville act.

For more on the history of vaudeville, including sketch artists like Winsor McCayconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, and for more on silent film, please see Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.