John Canemaker.

With all John Canemaker has done in animation, it's difficult to find a title that fits him. He was once called "animation's ambassador at large" and that's probably as close as you'll get to a job description. Canemaker has brought animation's unsung heroes into the limelight, expanded the parameters of the medium and inspires those who are embarking on careers in the industry. He does this all for and with his enthusiasm for animation. "It's one of the great art forms of our time," he says. "It's an art form that incorporates so many other traditional forms to create a new one."

There is, however, much more to John Canemaker's animated world than just history and how-to's. Born in Waverly and raised in Elmira, New York, Canemaker grew up with animation and became so interested that he made his own animated film in high school.

After graduation, his life took a less animated path and he embarked on a career in acting. In 1961, John moved to Manhattan, where he found success in Off-Broadway, summer stock and over 35 national TV commercials. "When I was 28, someone said, 'Well, you've made all this money what are you going to do with it?'," he remembers. "They said, 'You've never been to college, why don't you go?'"

Enrolling at Manhattan's Marymount College at age 28, Canemaker met a professor who changed his life. Sister Dymphna Leonard heard that John had done some animation and offered him course credit if he'd travel to the Disney Studios and Archives to research and write a paper on the subject, which he gladly agreed to do. "I met all the Nine Old Men, who were all alive at that time," notes Canemaker. "They showed me films and I saw Albert Hurter's drawings and I flipped [the animation drawings of] the Mushrooms from Fantasia and I was gone!"

Left to right: Ollie Johnston, Jeanette Thomas, Frank Thomas, Marie Johnston and John Canemaker (on train) December 21, 1983 Flintridge, California. Photo courtesy of John Canemaker.

The Felix the Cat Guy and ...
The trip provided John with full credit and something more. "It peaked my interest in animation," he says, "it whetted my appetite for it and I started to seek out the pioneers of animation." Shamus Culhane, J.R. Bray, I. Klein and Winsor McCay's assistant, John Fitzsimmons were among Canemaker's first interviews and during many of these someone else's name kept coming up. "Everyone said, 'You should meet this guy who did Felix the Cat. He lives in New Jersey, his name's Otto Messmer.'"

The meetings between Canemaker and Messmer would change both men's lives. "The first interviews were kind of interesting, because he hadn't been asked the questions I was asking, in a long time," John recalls. "It was as if the cobwebs were being whisked away from his mind. With each interview, he would remember more and get stronger." John reintroduced Otto Messmer to the public as the real genius behind crafting Felix as a personality. (In the 1920s, producer Pat Sullivan's name was the only one that appeared on the Felix shorts, while Messmer worked in quiet, creative anonymity.)