Jean Parker Katz of Schenectady was one of the 10 finalists in The Gazette’s recent “My Fabulous Father” contest. All the stories were terrific, but we could only honor three winners — the
top vote-getters.
I thought Jean’s father — Dana Parker — had a pretty neat job. At one time, he was one of the illustrators for Felix the Cat.
See some of Dana’s work — plus a circa 1925 photo of the artist at work — by clicking HERE, HERE and HERE.
Felix is long forgotten today, except to serious animation fans. He showed up in the 1920s, and was a staple of the silent film era. A compact black body, white eyes, and giant grin were his trademarks.
From 1922 on, Felix was all over the place. He got his own comic strip (drawn by Otto Messmer) and his image was printed on ceramics, toys and postcards. Jazz bands played songs about him.
Dana Parker was perfect company for Felix. The gentle soul was born on Oct. 17, 1890, in Brooklyn.
He dabbled in acting, served with the Army during World War I and by the early 1920s was working as a cartoonist for the Miami Herald. He later moved his young family back to New York and secured a position with the Pat Sullivan animation studio.
The Sullivan team of animators turned out all those Felix cartoons. Some of Parker’s duties included production of Felix cartoon posters. Sullivan’s name was on the studio, so it was always on the byline for the Felix cartoons.
“He never gave any credit to Otto Messmer,” Jean said of the man animation buffs believe was the cat’s creative guide and spirit. “He never gave any credit to anyone as far as I’m concerned.”
Parker left a personal mark on his posters; a small “dp” — an ascending stroke on the “d” and a descending one on the “p” — is found on his work.
Parker also worked on the animation, as his draftsmanship and design were similar to Messmer’s work with pencil and India ink.
Sullivan was said to be a frugal man, and didn’t think Felix needed any creative extras — like cohesive sound tracks.
“Pat Sullivan didn’t want to bother with sound,” Jean said. “So my father said, ‘This is ridiculous’ and he quit. It just didn’t seem to have any future for him.”
Parker moved to radio, for the advertising agency of Batten, Barton, Dustine and Osborn. By 1930, he was writing jokes and snappy conversation for the husband-and-wife team of Julia Sanderson and Frank Crumit.
Parker later wrote a western series and provided the voice for “The Mystery Rider,” a masked man who preceded “The Lone Ranger.”
“But he wasn’t a good guy,” Jean said. “He was a bad guy.”
Dana was always a good guy at home. He was never far from his pencils.
“He was always drawing something,” said Jean. “He might be drawing me or my sister, one of our toys. He’d sit down with a pencil in his hand and draw something, anything.”
“Terry and Ted” was another Parker-penned series, an adventure show that beat “Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy” to the radio waves.
Dana didn’t have any trouble writing the scripts. But Jean said he occasionally was irked by his program sponsors. One of them was Blackstone Cigars, and company chiefs ordered no jokes on the air about cigars or tobacco products.
“He wasn’t going to let anyone tell him what to do,” Jean said. “He knew what he wanted and he wasn’t going to tolerate fools.”
He began looking for another job, but that never happened. He died of coronary disease on June 22, 1933, at 42 years of age.
The memories have survived 75 years. It’s like Jean wrote in her story for our fabulous contest:
“When either my sister or I was sick in bed, a butler would appear, asking in a British accent, what did the young mistress fancy for breakfast this morning? He was also a storyteller, making up tales about Little Brown Bear on the spot … provided we were in bed, quiet, by 8 PM. He even wrote some of his stories down, fully illustrated, to send to us at camp.
“My father drew us into his world of acting. He owned one of the very first movie cameras sold to the public, and used it to make a movie of a story he wrote for children. The cast was my sister and me, and a group of neighborhood children, all under age twelve. He couldn’t resist taking the only adult part himself – the meanie in the film!"
