Patrick "Pat" Peter Sullivan

Animator, Producer

22/02/1885

15/02/1933

Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Raoul Barre’s Animated Cartoon Inc.

Pat Powers

Pat Sullivan Cartoons

Famous Players-Lasky – Paramount Screen Magazine

M.J. Winkler Pictures

Joe Brandt

Bijou Films

Biography

Pat Sullivan was born in 1885 as Patrick Peter O’Sullivan in a working-class suburb of Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Pat is best known for producing the Felix the Cat cartoons.

There has been controversy surrounding who created the Felix the Cat character. Sullivan asserted that he and his wife, Marjorie, invented the character and featured the black cat in the short animated films, The Tail of Thomas Kat (1917) and Feline Follies (1919). However, Otto Messmer, claimed he came up with the idea of Felix the Cat and was not acknowledged because Sullivan owned the rights to the character. Messmer was a long time animator for Sullivan who ran the production studio for Sullivan as he travelled around in the 1920s promoting Felix.

Family and early life

Pat was the second son of Patrick O’Sullivan and Margaret (née Hayes). His father was an Irishman and was said to be “Sydney’s oldest cab rider.” While Pat enjoyed drawing as a child, his mother favoured a career in music for him. Perhaps his first introduction to his work in later years, he produced a newspaper called Blowflies with neighbourhood kids. To earn money, Pat and his older brother William sang outside hotels.

Pat married Margaret (Marjorie) Gallagher on May 21, 1917. It is unclear how Pat and Marjorie met, but she was one of Sullivan Studio’s female inkers in its early years and later a partner in business with Pat. Marjorie was raised in Scranton, Pennsylvania, as one of seven daughters and two sons born to Thomas and Sarah Gallagher.

In 1917, Sullivan was convicted of second-degree rape of a 14 year-old-girl for which he spent nine months in prison. While imprisoned, he was permitted to draw but could not animate. Many of his staff found other jobs, and Sullivan’s film contracts dried up. Since he was imprisoned, Sullivan was not required to serve in World War One. Once he was released, he began animating again with 8,500 completed drawings.

Sullivan struggled with alcoholism for most of his life. By the early 1930s, his alcoholism consumed him. Sullivan died on February 15th, 1933, at 47, from alcoholism and pneumonia.

Career outline

Pat began his career at the Worker (a labour weekly) and the Gadfly (a society/gossip/humour weekly), contributing the occasional cartoons and illustrations under the pseudonym of P. O’Sullivan. He would later drop the ‘O’ from his surname because his initials were confused with another Sydney cartoonist.

He sailed for London in 1907 to further his career. Life in London was difficult for Pat, who eventually sold some cartoons to weeklies, Ally Sloper, Sketchy Bits, and newspapers like the Bulletin and London Daily Mail. By early 1910, London had become unsuccessful for Pat, who sailed for New York and began boxing.

In 1911, his urge to draw led him to the McClure Newspaper Syndicate, where he held a three-year on-and-off tenure. At McClure, Pat was one of the assistants to cartoonist William F. Marriner for his comic strip Sambo and His Funny Noises. He also created a few of his own short-lived comic strips, like Willing Waldo and Old Pop Perkins.

After Marriner died in 1914, Pat continued to ghost Sambo until the strip’s termination at the end of 1914. In the Spring of 1915, Pat began working for the pioneering and successful Raoul Barre’s Animated Cartoon Inc. However, he was laid off nine months later because of unsatisfactory work.

The firing from Barre’s inspired Pat to begin his own animation studio, and by early 1916 he had gained contracts with the Efanem Film Company and the Edison Company for advertising and split-reel entertainment shorts.

Influences

Pat’s work on the Sambo comics inspired him to turn his comics to animations like Winsor McCay and George McManus.

Filmography

References:

Canemaker, John. Felix: The Twisted Tale of the World’s Most Famous Cat. Da Capo Press, 1996.

IMDb. “Pat Sullivan.” IMDb, IMDb.com, https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0838273/.

Young, John. “Sullivan, Patrick Peter (Pat) (1885–1933).” Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1 Jan. 2005, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sullivan-patrick-peter-pat-13209.