It’s safe to say nearly everyone is aware of Felix the Cat. Most know him from his 1958-1961 cartoon series appearance where carried a magic bag of tricks. Some have seen him in the 3 color cartoons that appeared in 1936. But far fewer people know him from his earliest, mostly black & white incarnation on film shorts from 1919-1930. And fewer still are aware that a great deal of these films are missing, lost, or otherwise unavailable to the general public.

Since the early Felix films have fallen into the public domain by now, many of the surviving films have been made available on VHS and DVD mostly by low-budget or fly-by-night companies packaging up what are often really poor film transfers and selling them on the cheap, often alongside other public domain cartoons of the same time period. With well over 50 of these home video releases out there, it’s a confusing mess trying to figure out what’s available…let alone trying to watch all the films that exist. In addition to this, there are a great number of Felix films out there in public or private archives, some of which have been transferred and put online for viewing, but most of which have not.

I have already compiled a list of all the known Felix films from 1919-1930, as well as a list of all known home video releases and which Felix films they contain (where it was possible to determine this). There’s still a huge number of films that are unavailable as far as I can tell.

The purpose of this thread is:

to determine what the best sources for these films are
to compile a collection of all of the best available copies of the material
to discover sources for any films not available in any home video release
to identify any other early Felix preservation efforts in progress

This topic header will be updated as new information comes to light.

–SKot