Патрик Салливан: Феликс Мысықтың авторы және анимацияның дамуына қосқан үлесі

Australian American animator and film producer

Patrick Peter Sullivan (22 February 1885 – 15 February 1933) was an Australian American cartoonist, pioneer animator, and film producer best known for producing the first Felix the Cat silent cartoons.

Sullivan was born in Paddington, New South Wales, the second son of Patrick Sullivan, an immigrant from Ireland and his Sydney born wife Margaret, née Hayes. As Mickey Mouse was gaining popularity among theatre audiences through sound cartoons by late 1928, Sullivan, after years of refusing to convert Felix to sound, finally agreed to use sound in Felix's cartoons. Unfortunately, Sullivan did not carefully prepare this process and put sound in cartoons that the studio had already completed. By 1930, Felix had faded from the screen.

In 1917, Sullivan was convicted of rape in the second degree of a 14 year old girl. He spent 9 months and 3 days in prison, during which time his studio went on hiatus.

Sullivan reportedly carried a strong bias against African Americans. According to Rudy Zamora, when he and Eddie Salter tested for positions at the Sullivan studio, they were bested by a young African American boy. Zamora recalled that animator Dana Parker "took the black boy [aside] and told him that they’ll call him when they needed him, [as they were] not hiring anyone that day. But they kept Eddie and I. That was lousy. Then they would have hired this black guy and myself. Ed was third." When Zamora complained about this to Parker, he was told, "The old man (Sullivan) didn’t want any black guys."

It is a matter of some dispute whether Felix was created by Sullivan or his top animator Otto Messmer. Some animation historians accepted Messmer's claim, as he was the principal animator on the Felix series. However, Sullivan was drawing cartoons for Paramount Magazine by 1919 and later when he signed a contract as an animator with Paramount Studios in March 1920, one of the subjects specified in his curriculum vitae was a black cat named Felix who had first appeared in Paramount Magazine as a character named "Master Tom" in a cartoon series named Feline Follies, tending to support Sullivan's claim definitively. Australian cartoonists find the Messmer claim not credible. Messmer came forward decades after Pat Sullivan's death, claimed Felix was his creation and placed the place of creation of the lucrative character in his own house, away from his boss's office. He excluded Pat Sullivan completely, and yet the lettering throughout the creation matches Pat Sullivan's hand. It is also telling that a cartoon kitten says "MUM" in Feline Follies, with the Australian/British spelling, rather than "MOM", the American spelling; Messmer is less likely to have written that.