Tuesday, May 13, 2014
In his 1925 stop-action cartoon "Animated Hair" (video link), a hand seems to draw a series of faces. Then chunks of hair migrate into other positions to create portraits of Christy Mathewson, John J. McGraw, George Bernard Shaw, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Samuel Gompers, Elsie Ferguson and Babe Ruth.
These short films by cartoonist Sid Marcus (who later co-created the Tasmanian Devil for Warner Bros) were wildly popular and cheap to create. Fifty one of them were produced between 1924 and 1927, and distributed by Fleischer Studios.
More info from UCLA info sheet, page 3