Abstract

During the 1920s, animation grew its deepest roots in the United States, although it would be wrong to think of it as a flourishing industry. With the exception of Disney’s small group in California, operations concentrated in New York, where a few dozen people founded and dissolved production companies, moved from one studio to another, and constituted what in the industry was called the ‘cartoon racket’. It cannot be said, either, that the public loved the films produced by those groups: As many veterans later recalled, animated films were more or less considered fillers; whether they were shown or not was of no major consequence to the audience.