When I began researching the history of animation in 1973, I was lucky to meet, interview, and in some cases, befriend several artists and artisans from the silent film era. The original pioneers, such as James Stuart Blackton, Emile Cohl, and Winsor McCay, were long dead. But good fortune smiled early on, when I found John Aloysius Fitzsimmons (1893 -1984), who, as a young man, assisted McCay, the great comic strip and film animation innovator, on two of his most important films, Gertie [the Trained Dinosaur] (1914) and The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918).
Fitzsimmons was a spry 81-year old when I met him, an articulate, informative eyewitness to the technical processes of frame-by-frame, hand-drawn animation filmmaking. He also recalled with great clarity, admiration and warmth, working with McCay who died forty years earlier. You can see Fitzsimmons on-camera speaking about his work with McCay in my 1976 documentary, Remembering Winsor McCay and read more details in my 1987 biography, Winsor McCay – His Life and Art. (CRC Press, 2018 edition).
Here are links to two pdf documents: unpublished personal remembrances written in March 1974 by John A. Fitzsimmons titled “My Days with Winsor McCay,” and an unedited transcript of my first interview with Fitsimmons on Sept. 22, 1974 at his home in Rockville Centre, N.Y. Typos and other errors abound, but were corrected in subsequent publications.
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