John Randolph Bray
John Randolph Bray
John Randolph Bray was an American animator that was born in 1879 in Detroit, Michigan (Google Search, 2022). Bray began his artistic career in 1900 as an artist for a newspaper, called the Detroit Evening News, then moved on to the Brooklyn Daily Eagle in 1903, and quickly began selling his cartoons to magazines (Library of Congress, 1999 & Furniss, 2016, p. 43). He eventually got interested in animation after watching other animated films and began producing his own, which helped further the advancement of animation (LOC, 1999). Bray’s first film, called “The Artist’s Dream”, is the first of his 968 producer credits and was released in 1913 on June 12th, six months before he introduces Colonel Heeza Liar (IMDb, 2022). “The Artist’s Dream” is a film that combines live action cinematography with animation. The film starts off with Bray asking his friend for his opinion on the animation and gets told that the dog is too stiff and that it was a bad animation because of that (IMDb, 2022). Bray can’t believe what he was just told and walks away, however, the aforementioned dog starts to move on its own and messes up the scene (cartoonsonfilm, 2010).
Bray was more than just a former cartoonist turned animator; he was also a businessman. Bray created Bray Studios before he made “The Artist’s Dream” and was quick to make sure he was making the money he wanted to make. One way he managed to do that was he filed patents, and a lot of them. Bray’s first patent, creatively named #1,107,193 by the US Patent Office, presents film as a merger of imagination and natural movement (Moen, 2015, p.132). He further explains in the patent the difference between an animation and a regular moving picture is since animations have to be drawn from imagination rather than from real life (Moen, 2015, p.132). The patent itself depicts his idea for a system of animation where the background is drawn on a blank flat surface and every object and character that is going to be moving in the scene is drawn on clear celluloid (Furniss, 2016, p.46 & Bray, 1914).
This process allowed for the animators to only have to re-draw the parts of the scene that were moving on the overlays, known as “cels” (Furniss, 2016, p. 46). This process did take a while to catch on however since up until about 1950, most of the cels were made out of cellulose nitrate, which was highly flammable (Furniss, 2016, p. 46). The process was also co-developed by Earl Hurd, who was also an animator and joined Bray’s team around the mid-1910s (Furniss, 2016, p. 46). The two of them developed the Bray – Hurd Process company, which was created with the main idea of securing many different patents relating to animation production to dominate American production, much like Thomas Edison.
About 5 years after Bray had filed his first patent, he made a comedic-documentary style film called “How Animated Cartoons Are Made” in 1919 (Moen, 2015, p.133). In this film, animator Wallace Carlson shows off some of Bray’s ideas and techniques in action (Moen, 2015, p. 133). The film starts off with the idea process and moves on to the drawing process which shows two kids named Dudd and Mamie (Clyde Crossan, 2019). The story then goes on to show Dudd’s dog running over to a policeman cuddling his girlfriend and the dog suddenly bites the girlfriend’s leg, however she doesn’t react, and the policeman finds out she has a wooden leg and runs away (Crossan, 2019). The film continues on to the photographing stage which depicts one of Bray’s inventions that he patented (#1,143,542) and it progresses to Carlson showing Bray the film, to which Bray told him to stop and fix the animation because the girlfriend ran like she didn’t have a wooden leg (Crossan, 2019 & Bray & Hurd, 1988, p. 244). It then transitions to Carlson editing the animation and gives a little teaser saying that tells the audience that they can’t wait to show them the full product (Crossan, 2019).
John Randolph Bray continued to make animations for years after making “How Animated Cartoons Are Made” and made many memorable characters. One of his biggest characters were Colonel Heeza Liar. Bray would come up with all of these different situations for Colonel Heeza Liar such as “Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa” (1913), “Colonel Heeza Liar in the Wilderness” (1914) and Colonel Heeza Liar and the Zeppelin” (1915) (IMDb, 2022). Along with Colonel Heeza Liar, he made another film called “The Police Dog” (1914) that also became a big enough hit for Bray to turn it into a series with “The Police Dog No. 2” (1915), “The Police Dog No. 3” (1915), etc. (IMDb, 2022). Eventually he came up with more creative titles similar to Colonel Heeza Liar like “The Police Dog Gets Piffles in Bad” (1915) and the final film of this series “The Police Dog Turns Nurse” (1916) (IMDb, 2022). He would produce these films quickly and seemingly one after another with many films produced in-between. Dr. Robert James describes Bray’s as “[he] realized he would never turn a profit without rapidly increasing his output” (James, 2014). Bray unknowingly proved this idea after producing 59 Colonel Heeza Liar films in a 10-year span (IMDb, 2022). In spite of this notion of quantity over quality, these two film series were wildly successful, allowing Bray to really make a name for himself and his company.
By 1922, Bray had lost his distributor and his studio was quickly becoming just a memory to most people (Furniss, 2016, p.47). Due to his lack of creativity and experimentation in his films after 1920 was what hurt his reputation and his frugalness with money was what hurt his production quality (Furniss, 2016, p.47). He would allow very few drawings for each film and started to closely monitor the use of supplies to the point where he would only allow one pencil for each animator (Furniss, 2016, p.47).
Bray eventually started making more industrial films for schools and businesses like the classics “Personal Hygiene for Young Women” and “Personal Hygiene for Young Men” (1924), while still producing some more creative films here and there but those never seemed to gain much if any traction (Furniss, 2016, p. 47 & IMDb, 2022). According to IMDb, Bray continued to make films up until 1943 with his final film “Youth Train for Aviation” (IMDb, 2022). Bray was still widely regarded as the “father of animation” due to his many technological advancements and fun characters he created. For Bray’s 96th birthday, The Museum of Modern Art put on a presentation of all of his works dating from 1910 to 1926. (MoMA, 1975). The Museum of Modern Art honored him six years prior by including some of his work, such as “Artist’s Dream” and “Colonel Heeza Liar and the Pirates”, over a three program period over the course of three days alongside others such as Disney and McCay (MoMA, 1969).
John Randolph Bray lived until the age of 99 and left his studio to his grandson Paul Bray Jr. and left his legacy and innovation on the world of animation and filmmaking (Google Search, 2022 & MoMA, 1975).
Bibliography
Bray, J. R., & Hurd, E. (1988). Bray-Hurd: The Key Animation Patents. Film History, 2(3), 229–266. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3815120
Bray, J. R. (1914, August 11). US1107193A - PROCESS OF AND ARTICLES FOR PRODUCING MOVING PICTURES.
Crossan, C. (2019, August 26). How animated cartoons are made 1919. YouTube. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnmJfWoMW8I
Furniss, M. (2016). Part 1: Chapter 3. In A new history of animation (pp. 43–47). essay, Thames & Hudson.
Google. (2022). John Randolph Bray. John Randolph Bray - Google Search. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://g.co/kgs/CmN1R4
IMDb.com. (n.d.). John Randolph Bray. IMDb. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0106218/
IMDb.com. (n.d.). The Artist's Dreams. IMDb. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0002639/?ref_=nm_flmg_act_1
IMDb.com. (n.d.). Colonel Heeza Liar Films. IMDb. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0002758/movieconnections/?ref_=tt_trv_cnn
James, R. (2014, October 31). Animation history: John Bray and Assembly Line Animation. John Bray, the Art of Theft, and Assembly Line Animation. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.artograph.com/infocus/animation-history-john-bray/
Lund, K. (1999, June). Innovative animators early American animation featured in American Memory. Innovative Animators (June 1999) - Library of Congress Information Bulletin. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9906/animate.html
Moen, K. (2015). Imagination and Natural Movement: The Bray Studios and the “Invention” of Animated Film. Film History, 27(4), 130–150. https://doi.org/10.2979/filmhistory.27.4.130
Stathes, T. J. (2010, December 31). The Artist's Dream (J.R. Bray, 1913). YouTube. Retrieved February 4, 2022, fromhttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DFgvqA1eCw
The Museum of Modern Art. (1975). FATHER OF ANIMATION TO BE HONORED BY MUSEUM ON 96th BIRTHDAY. The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/5300/releases/MOMA_1975_0085_69.pdf.
The Museum of Modern Art. (1969, February 6). ORIGINS OF THE AMERICAN ANIMATED FILM PRESENTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF FILM THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. The Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved February 4, 2022, from https://www.moma.org/momaorg/shared/pdfs/docs/press_archives/4188/releases/MOMA_1969_Jan-June_0020_18.pdf.
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