Charles "Charley" R Bowers

Actor, Animator, Artist, Businessman, Cartoonist, Filmmaker, Inventor

1899

1946

Cresco, Iowa, United States

Biography

Charley Bowers was a cartoonist, animator, and director during the silent film era. While much of his work has faded into near obscurity, Bowers was a pioneer in incorporating surrealist film techniques into silent animation. (Axmaker, 2025)  

Family and early life

Bowers was born in Cresco, Iowa in 1889. (Stans, 2016) Not much is known about his early life, as he had a habit of telling outlandish and embellished stories that were impossible to confirm and unlikely to have happened. Bowers began to work as a newspaper cartoonist in the early 1910s, which eventually led him to work in the animation industry. (Axmaker, 2025)  

Career outline

Throughout the 1910s, Bowers worked on a number of animation series including The Katzenjammer Kids and Bringing Up Father. In 1916, he worked on animation for Bud Fisher’s Mutt and Jeff series. (Axmaker, 2025) Bowers worked on Mutt and Jeff between the years of 1916-1926. However, Fisher refused to give him credit for his work, so his name did not appear in any of the films. (Lenberg, 2009, pg. 36) During the 1920s, Bowers also worked on live-action “novelty” comedy shorts for both the Film Booking Office and Educational Pictures. (King, 2011, pg.193)  

After leaving Mutt and Jeff, Bowers collaborated with the cinematographer Harold L. Muller. The two would create eighteen live-action short films, which often starred Bowers in comedic roles. During this time, Bowers also used what he dubbed “The Bowers Process” in his films, which combined live-action film with stop motion animation and optical illusions. In his films, Bowers loved making machines and technology “come to life” using cinematic illusions to make inanimate objects appear alive and moving on film. (Axmaker, 2025)  

In the 1930s, Bowers’ career began to die down. He made a small number of stop-motion animations between 1930-1940 but received no real critical acclaim. Bowers was described by the film director Joseph Losey as a “tireless worker” who continued to build his craft up until the very end of his life. (Stans, 2016) 

Bowers died in 1946. One obituary called him a “pioneer in animated cartoons.” (The Buffalo News, 1946) While he might have been a pioneer, his name would fade into near obscurity in the years after his death.   

In the 1960s, a French archivist named Raymond Bourde stumbled across three of Bowers’ shorts, published under the alias “Bricolo”. Bourde became obsessed with finding the creator of these unique and inventive shorts andsearched for many years to find Bowers’ work. Bourde’s research into Bowers led to the discovery and preservation of many more of Bowers’ films. (Axmaker, 2025)  

Today, many Bowers’ cartoons and live-action shorts are now preserved and are shown in many retrospectives on the silent era. (Axmaker, 2025) 

Personal style

Bowers is known for a comedic style that blended the slapstick comedy that was popular in the 1920s with a sort of technological fiction wherein he would use fantastic inventions to comedic ends. Through the use of physical comedy and technological fiction, Bowers created a dreamlike and surrealist style of slapstick comedy. (King, 2011, pg. 203-204) 

Filmography

References:

Axmaker, Sean. “The Amazing Charley Bowers.” San Francisco Silent Film Festival, https://silentfilm.org/the-amazing-charley-bowers/. Accessed 27 Nov, 2025. 

“Charley Bowers, Pioneer in Animated Cartoons, Dead.” Obituary. The Buffalo News, 27 Nov. 1946, p. 20. https://www.newspapers.com/article/the-buffalo-news-obituary-for-charles-r/127540052/, Accessed 28 Nov. 2025

King,  Rob. “The Art of Diddling: Slapstick, Science, and Antimodernism in the Films of Charley Bowers.” Funny Pictures: Animation and Comedy in Studio-Era Hollywood, edited by Daniel Goldmark and Charlie Keil, University of California Press, 2011, pp. 191-207. 

Lenberg, Jeff. “Mutt and Jeff” in The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons, 3rd Edition, Infobase Publishing, 2009, New York, NY.