{"id":79078,"date":"2014-11-04T17:47:45","date_gmt":"2014-11-04T22:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=79078"},"modified":"2014-11-04T17:47:45","modified_gmt":"2014-11-04T22:47:45","slug":"gertie-turns-one-hundred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/gertie-turns-one-hundred\/","title":{"rendered":"Gertie Turns One Hundred"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/TGXC8gXOPoU?rel=0\" width=\"600\" height=\"450\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>A century ago, well before <em>Jurassic Park<\/em> or <em>The Land Before Time<\/em> or even plain old moribund <em>Godzilla<\/em>, cinema\u2019s preeminent dinosaur was Gertie, a colorless, potentially narcoleptic herbivore, species indeterminate, fond of dancing and casting elephants into the sea. <em>Gertie the Dinosaur<\/em>\u00a0(1914) was one of the first animated films; it pioneered key-frame animation, a technique in which a story\u2019s major positions were drawn first and the intervening frames were filled in afterward. Gertie\u2019s creator, the cartoonist Winsor McCay, made more than ten thousand drawings of her, and these, as you can see above, yielded fewer than seven minutes of animated footage. (If you want to skip straight to the Gertie goods, head to the seven-minute mark, but beware\u2014you\u2019ll miss some riveting live-action scenes featuring well-dressed gentlemen shaking hands, well-dressed gentlemen gathering at a dinner party, and well-dressed gentlemen smoking.)<\/p>\n<p>This Friday, as part of the MoMA International Festival of Film Preservation, the animation historian John Canemaker hosts <a href=\"http:\/\/www.moma.org\/visit\/calendar\/film_screenings\/22248?utm_source=social&amp;utm_medium=twitter&amp;utm_campaign=110414e\" target=\"_blank\">a screening of <em>Gertie<\/em> and three of McCay\u2019s other early animations<\/a>, \u201cas well as a re-creation\u2014with audience participation\u2014of the legendary routine that introduced Gertie in McCay\u2019s vaudeville act.\u201d No elephants will be harmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A century ago, well before Jurassic Park or The Land Before Time or even plain old moribund Godzilla, cinema\u2019s preeminent dinosaur was Gertie, a colorless, potentially narcoleptic herbivore, species indeterminate, fond of dancing and casting elephants into the sea. Gertie the Dinosaur\u00a0(1914) was one of the first animated films; it pioneered key-frame animation, a technique [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1539],"tags":[15926,2691,10960,12976,15929,15925,15928,705,81,8706,15927],"class_list":["post-79078","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-video-multimedia","tag-15926","tag-animation","tag-dinosaurs","tag-drawings","tag-early-cinema","tag-gertie-the-dinosaur","tag-john-canemaker","tag-moma","tag-movies","tag-screenings","tag-winsor-mccay"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Gertie Turns One Hundred<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A century ago, well before \u201cJurassic Park\u201d or \u201cThe Land Before Time\u201d or even plain old moribund \u201cGodzilla,\u201d cinema\u2019s preeminent dinosaur was Gertie.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/gertie-turns-one-hundred\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Gertie Turns One Hundred by Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"November 4, 2014 \u2013 A century ago, well before Jurassic Park or The Land Before Time or even plain old moribund Godzilla, cinema\u2019s preeminent dinosaur was Gertie, a\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/gertie-turns-one-hundred\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Paris Review\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/parisreview\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2014-11-04T22:47:45+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/tpr-hadada-roundell-logo-1.png\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1200\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"675\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/png\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@parisreview\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Dan Piepenbring\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/gertie-turns-one-hundred\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/gertie-turns-one-hundred\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Dan Piepenbring\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/6b16ca558fc538230f135c3220dfd3c8\"},\"headline\":\"Gertie Turns One Hundred\",\"datePublished\":\"2014-11-04T22:47:45+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2014\/11\/04\/gertie-turns-one-hundred\/\"},\"wordCount\":203,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/#organization\"},\"keywords\":[\"1914\",\"animation\",\"dinosaurs\",\"drawings\",\"early cinema\",\"Gertie the Dinosaur\",\"John Canemaker\",\"MoMA\",\"movies\",\"screenings\",\"Winsor McCay\"],\"articleSection\":[\"Video &amp; 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