How the cartoon Gertie the Dinosaur became part of animation history
Gertie the Dinosaur is a silent cartoon that was directed by Winsor McCay in 1914, and this was the earliest animated film to feature such a creature.
Gertie became important to the field of animation because she was used in front of live studio audiences and this benchmarked progress in Hollywood, thus this dinosaur did tricks for her master like she were a newly trained circus elephant!
McCay publicly spoke of the educational work coming out of his studio regarding this relatively new animation process, and what it was likely to bring to entertainment in years to come; Gertie, then went on to influence the next generation of animators, such as Walt Disney for instance!
Gertie the Dinosaur on the other hand, was the first film to use many innovative animation techniques: keyframes, registration marks, tracing paper, the Mutoscope action viewer and animation loops, were but a few.
With this, McCay was able to give his dinosaur a loving personality that was at times friendly – but also rebellious – thus, Gertie would appear from her cave, lift her foot and bow to the audience; she could cry too and enjoy prizes like an apple, plus when a flying lizard distracts Gertie, she tosses a mammoth into the lake and chucks a rock at it when it tries to swim away!
In addition, advertisements were required to educate and inform audiences about dinosaurs because dinosaurs were still new to the public imagination in the early twentieth-century and quite scary to many people.
Winsor McCay himself would take a whip on stage with him while lecturing students on the production of animated film, and famously introduced Gertie as the “only dinosaur in captivity” to huge amounts of laughter!
When Gertie poked her head out of the cave, McCay would through an apple to her, just as she was about to eat the apple on the screen, something the 3D specialists and live-action / animation people have emulated many times since.
After she quenches her thirst by draining the lake, McCay has her carry him offstage, with him bowing to the audience. Because “Gertie the Dinosaur” became such a huge success, other film studios began to follow suit and joined this new industry of animation. Although McCay was criticized for creating something so lifelike, it was thought that he must have traced the characters from photographs or resorted to tricks using wires.
As part of the recognition to this embryonic piece of animation, there is now an ice-cream shop in the shape of Gertie that stands by Echo Lake in Disney World and the Gertie original footage has been selected for preservation by the United States National Film Registry.
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The Old Curiosity Shop in Westminster sells odds, ends, brick-a-brack and contains many dusty treasures. Today it is an antique shop made from the wood of old ships and dates back to the 16th century.
Nell Trent and her grandfather are residents at the Old Curiosity Shop. Nell is an orphan. She is lonely and Kit, her friend works at the shop where Nell teaches him to write. All her inheritance is never received as it gambled away by her grandfather with money fed to him in high interest loans by bully Daniel Quilp. Quilp is an evil moneylender who funds the grandfathers habit and takes the Old Curiosity Shop when all the money is lost. He hates Kits popularity.
This is a chase story and Nell takes Grandad to live in the midlands as a beggar. They escape in the dead of night and head up north through the English countryside. Nell’s brother tries to track them down for his share of the inheritance. Quilp joins them just to enjoy their misery, knowing full well there is no inheritance left anymore. Quilp is hunted down and dies trying to escape his pursuers while hunting for the runaways himself in what has now become a caper.
Nell dies of exhaustion on this arduous journey and her grandfather refuses to believe it. He sits at her grave then dies himself, having never recovered from his breakdown at the hands of Quilp, he is mentally too ill to go on now that his beloved Nell has gone.
This book is renowned for its very sad conclusion. Nell’s pain and suffering is unusual for Charles Dickens who likes a happy ending.
The village where Nell Trent dies is thought to be Tong in Shropshire. St Bartholomew’s Church has a fake grave of Little Nell. Charles Dickens grandmother was a housekeeper at Tong Castle and regularly visited the area.
The story appealed to so many that even American fans visited this 600 year old church, and Nell’s grave is still a tourist attraction today.
Charles Dickens loved to write about children and their difficulties in life, perhaps because his own upbringing wasn’t easy.
Little Nell meeting her early end caused uproar at the time and people just couldn’t believe it. With such a heartbreaking finish he emphasizes the fragility of health in childhood.
Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children was founded in 1852. It was the first designed specifically for children anywhere in the world and Charles Dickens was one of its first and most generous fundraisers, giving a public reading of A Christmas Carol there in 1858.
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