Animated
Photo: Bray Studios / Motion Picture News, 1915 · Public domain · via Wikimedia Commons 1915 trade-paper illustration for Colonel Heeza Liar at the Bat
Colonel Heeza Liar
America's first recurring cartoon star — a pint-sized, tall-tale-telling colonel created by J.R. Bray in 1913 as a spoof of Teddy Roosevelt — complete with round spectacles and a bristling walrus mustache.
- Actor
- Animated
- Film
- Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa
- Year
- 1913
- Medium
- Animated
- Style
- Walrus
- Fan Votes
- 0 legendary · 0 meh
Why Colonel Heeza Liar's Mustache Matters
Before Felix, before Oswald, before the mouse, there was Colonel Heeza Liar. John Randolph Bray introduced the character in Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa (1913), and he became the first recurring star of an American animated cartoon series — a tiny, potbellied old soldier who claims to have shot, caught, flown or fought everything, in the tradition of Baron Munchausen and, pointedly, of big-game-hunting ex-president Theodore Roosevelt.
The Roosevelt parody lives in the mustache. The Colonel wears round glasses, a broad-brimmed hat and a stiff, bristling walrus that juts forward off his upper lip like a shelf; in the 1915 trade-paper art for Colonel Heeza Liar at the Bat it is practically the whole face. It is the earliest famous mustache in American animation, drawn when "animation" still meant one man and a stack of paper.
The series ran through the 1910s and was revived in 1922–1924, when a young Walter Lantz appeared on camera alongside the animated Colonel in live-action/animation hybrids. Everything from that era is in the public domain today, so the Colonel's lip belongs to the ages.
- *Colonel Heeza Liar in Africa* (1913) is generally credited as the first entry in the first recurring American animated cartoon series.
- Creator J.R. Bray went on to patent key animation processes and ran one of the first true cartoon studios.
- The Colonel's adventures included *Colonel Heeza Liar at the Bat* (1915), *Colonel Heeza Liar's Treasure Island* (1922) and *Colonel Heeza Liar's Forbidden Fruit* (1923).
- During the 1922–1924 revival, future Woody Woodpecker creator Walter Lantz appeared on screen with the animated Colonel.
How to Grow the Walrus
Big, bushy, and draped over the mouth like a velvet curtain. The mustache of wise men and Sam Elliott.
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