ABSTRACT
Winsor McCay had drawn his Gertie the Dinosaur in 1913, accordingly over a period of six months, starting with the key frames and filling in the 'in-betweens'. He had brought the series of drawings to the Vitagraph Company of America in January 1914 to have them photographed frame by frame. The next month the film was premiered at the Palace Theatre in Chicago where McCay entered the stage, armed with chalk, and began sketching on a blackboard. Personal appearances of cartoonists on stage were part of many vaudeville acts. McCay's Mosquito and McCay's Gertie, they are both animals and they act that way. With the end of vaudeville personal appearances like those of McCay would become rare, and personalities like Walt Disney had to be prerecorded to appear as a host on screen or television together with their cartoon characters.
