Born: Unknown (late 1800s), United States
Died: Unknown (1900s)
Country most active: United States
Also known as: NA
Mindy Johnson on Bessie Mae Kelley transcript
The following is excerpted from Infinite Women creator Allison Tyra’s book Uncredited: Women’s Overlooked, Misattributed, and Stolen Work.
Bessie Mae Kelley was a pioneer of early animation, but she was lost to history and would have remained lost were it not for the efforts of animation historian Mindy Johnson. Johnson was deliberately looking for women who had been erased from history when she came across Kelley’s image in an illustration depicting pioneers of the industry. One of Johnson’s colleagues dismissed her as a cleaning lady or secretary—begging the question of why he thought an illustrator would include someone unimportant in their work, but sexism is rarely logical. Johnson was able to locate Kelley’s living relatives, who had kept some of Kelley’s materials almost 100 years after their creation in the 1920s. From the letters, artwork, and film reels, Johnson was able to piece together Kelley’s work and life story. Kelley hand-drew cartoons in collaboration with Paul Terry for his famed animated adaptation of Aesop’s Fables. “Even Walt Disney is on record as saying that when he began his studio in Kansas City, he wanted to make cartoons as good as Aesop’s Fables,” Johnson told NPR.