Charlie’s White Elephant (aka Charlie et sa belle)
R (Animation): John Coleman Terry. P: Movca Film Service. USA 1916
This is a 1916 Charlie Chaplin cartoon that was fourth in a series of nine cartoons made by the American Movca Film Service. Animated by John Coleman Terry, Hugh Michael “Jerry” Shields and Gustavo A. Bronstrup. In this cartoon, Charlie wants to marry Mabel Normand, but she insists that he brings her a white elephant first. His opponent for the hand of the fair Mabel is, of course, Roscoe Arbuckle.
YouTube / Film Affinity / IMDb / Letterboxd
“Around 1911, Shields met John Coleman Terry (1880-1934) and began experimenting with animation. Art Babbitt, who worked with both men in the early 1930s, recalled their early process: ‘Original drawings were laid flat on the ground and shot in sunlight. There were no pegholes for registry. The period of Jerry Shields was about 1911’. Terry and Shields formed the Movca Film Service in September 1914, claiming to possess ‘an invention that is claimed to be a great improvement over present methods in the manufacture of comic cartoon films.'”
Charlie Judkins
Early NY animators
Another Charlie cartoon:
Charlie on the Windmill / Charlie & The Indians
R (Animation): Hugh “Jerry” Shields. P: Movca Film Service. USA 1915
“With this much material to work from, it’s easy to see parallels, both with the later Felix the Cat cartoons that this team would create, and with the work of Winsor McCay, who influenced them both as well. The backgrounds tend to be undetailed, and white space fills much of the screen. I noticed less of Chaplin’s physical style in this than in Windmill, and a lot more of the imaginative whimsy of Felix cartoons.”
Century Film Project
“Sullivan’s Charlie/Charley series (1918-1919) is often confused with the earlier Charlie Cartoons (1916) produced for Movca Film by S. J. Sangretti and animated by John C. Terry, G. A. Bronstrup, and Hugh Shields. Charlie On the Windmill, often misattributed to Sullivan and Messmer, has been positively identified as part of the Movca series by Dalla Cineteca del Friuli (Bologna, Italy).”
The Internet Animation Data Base
THE EARLY SILENT ERA 1895-1915