Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville

Winsor McCay's 1921 cartoon 'Bug Vaudeville' has almost precisely the same plot and premise as Karel Capek's stage satire 'The Insect Play', which was first produced in Czechoslovakia in 1922. I wonder if Capek saw McCay's cartoon.

We have here a series of variety turns by various species of insects and arachnids. In several cases, McCay amusingly matches a particular vaudeville act to an appropriate species: a daddy-long-legs does an eccentric dance, while two tumble-bugs perform as acrobats. Some of the other pairings of species and performance seem more arbitrary: the potato bugs stage a boxing match, while a cockroach is a bicyclist.

McCay uses a framing device to include 'Bug Vaudeville' in his sporadic series of 'Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend' cartoons: a tramp has cadged some cheese from a housewife, and the bugs' antics are apparently his cheese-induced nightmare. In Capek's play, the tramp's slumber is induced by alcohol, and the antics of the various insects are parodic reflections of various forms of human behaviour.

'Bug Vaudeville' is amusing, and skilfully animated, but insects just don't seem to work well as cartoon characters, unless most of their distinctive appearance (and behaviour) is removed. The Fleischer Studio's 'Mr Bug Goes to Town' was a flop, even when re-released with a non-insect title, and Walt Disney famously had almost every insect trait shorn from Jiminy Cricket until the character was essentially a miniature human.

McCay, a major newspaper cartoonist in his day, made very few animations because his toons were so labour-intensive: McCay executed all the drawings himself, without the use of 'in-betweeners'. In his early toons, he drew on paper rather than acetate cels, forcing McCay to re-draw background art even when the background didn't change.

Sadly, almost none of McCay's original artwork survives. In 1982, I interviewed American comic-book artist Leonard B Cole, who worked alongside artist Robert McCay (Winsor's son) in the 1940s. Cole told me that McCay once brought a large quantity of his father's artwork to the studio where they worked, and offered to give it away to any artist who would take it. There were no takers, so McCay simply threw out the lot! (Cole spent a long time regretting his decision to decline the offer.) Today, those illustration boards would be priceless. I'll rate 'Bug Vaudeville' 8 out of 10. It's not very funny, but it's impressively made.

So, for those who haven't seen it, let me tell you about "Bug

Vaudeville." It is framed as a dream. This indigent character goes

to sleep under a tree and dreams a series of vaudeville acts

played by bugs -- roaches, a daddy long-legs, butterflies, and

others. During these acts we see the head and shoulders of the

dreamer at the bottom of the screen, rather small, so you don't

notice them much. The last act is presented as involving a spider

and a fly. The scene is lush vegetation. A spider drops down from

the top and hangs from a single thread of silk. The spider does

various things and goes on and on until you begin to wonder:

Where's the fly? And then the spider reaches down to the bottom

of the screen and grabs the small black silhouette, pulls it up -- it

is not a fly, of course, it's a man, struggling against the spider -- and quickly devours it.

End of dream.

Dreams of the Rarebit Fiend: Bug Vaudeville (1921)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

This Winsor McCay short has a hobo taking a nap after eating some cheese cake, which causes him to have strange dreams. This dream here just happens to take him to a circus where various bugs do tricks on the stage. I'd be lying if I said this here was among McCay's best works because it's certainly no where near that. It certainly falls well short of his earliest films but overall this here isn't too bad and fans of his should still want to check it out. The one thing lacking was an overall passion from the film. I didn't think the material was nearly as lively as it should have been and this includes scenes that are just rather flat and don't contain any laughs or charm. I think this might be due to the fact that everything we're seeing is pretty much just repeating itself. We see a bug doing a trick and then we get to the next bug who just does another trick. The animation itself is quite good and it's clear that it came a long way since McCay's first film ten years earlier.

Winsor McCay is a real pioneer when it comes to animation. His LITTLE NEMO and GERTIE THE DINOSAUR are among the very earliest animated films are still hold up pretty well today--and are also great treasures due to their historical value. However, about a decade later, he produced some "Rarebit" cartoons that aren't quite as innovative and seem to imply that you should NOT eat cheese before napping lest you have some weird dreams. I enjoyed the one involving the pet that grew to enormous proportions, though I gotta admit that this one about "Bug Vaudeville" was a big disappointment. Not only was the animation less stellar, but the cartoon just isn't all that interesting. While not BAD, the cartoon isn't all that watchable today and is one that all but serious fans of animation can probably skip.

This is a creative and detailed Winsor McCay animated feature that is very enjoyable to watch, and it is fortunate that it is one of the surviving movies from his 'Rarebit Fiend' series. The idea itself is clever, and while it is a simple concept, the amusing details and expert technique make it work quite well.

The dream about the "Bug Vaudeville" show opens up a lot of possibilities, and McCay does not let them go to waste. There is a series of interesting insects and arachnids who perform various feats of skill. They are cleverly drawn, and the backgrounds also contain some good detail. Most of their 'acts' are interesting and amusing to watch, and they show a resourceful sense of humor on McCay's part.

Like most of the pioneers of the movie industry, McCay usually seemed to have a good feel for how much material there really was in one of his subjects. He gets lots of good mileage here out of the "Bug Vaudeville" idea, yet he also stops while the material is still fresh, instead of dragging out some extra footage from it. It's an enjoyable short feature, and a fine example of McCay's skill.