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McCay's employer, William Randolph Hearst, was displeased with McCay's success outside of the newspapers, and used his contractual power to reduce McCay's stage activities. In late 1914, William Fox, offered to market Gertie the Dinosaur to moving-picture theaters. McCay accepted, and extended the film to include a live-action prologue and intertitles to replace his stage patter. This is the version of the film generally seen today; the original animation comprises roughly 5 minutes of the entire 12-minute film.
The film features McCay with several of his cartoonist friends, such as George McManus (creator of Bringing Up Father), Roy McCardell, and Thomas A. Dorgan. As the film opens, they are "on a joy ride", when their automobile suffers a flat tire in front of a museum. The cartoonists enter the museum, and see a "Dinosaurus" skeleton. McCay bets McManus a dinner that he can "make the Dinosaurus live again by a series of hand-drawn cartoons". He then spends six months making "ten thousand cartoons"; when McManus visits, McCay shows him the drawings, although an assistant trips and scatters a large pile of them over the floor (a gag also used in the Little Nemo film). The scene then shifts to a dinner party with the group of cartoonists. McCay begins by sketching a single drawing of Gertie. Someone complains that "your bet was that you could make it move", following which the film shifts to the original animated Gertie. McCay, through intertitles, tells Gertie to come out and bow, and continues through the same interaction as in the vaudeville show (although the "apple" that McCay throws to her is now referred to as a pumpkin, which was more appropriate for the size of Gertie's mouth). The film concludes with the group telling George (McManus) to pay for the dinner.
Read more about this topic: Gertie The Dinosaur
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