Bully Boy
Lightning sketch propaganda stirs outrage about Reims bombing, and features a British bulldog eating the German sausage
The bombing of Reims Cathedral in the early months of WWI was perfect propaganda material for the Allied Powers: here, the appropriately named illustrator Lancelot Speed rattles off lightning sketches of Kaiser 'Bully Boy' Wilhelm and the Gothic edifice. The action then picks up as - with the aid of cotton wool and scissors - the building tumbles.
In what was the first of four Bully Boy films by Speed, things then take a little turn for the weird. The Kaiser morphs into a sausage which is cooked under the watchful gaze of Lord Kitchener, before the British bulldog appears to wolf it down. Britons, Lord Kitchener wants you to eat sausages! God save the King.
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The First World War: Drawing the Enemy
Britain's cartoonists take up their brushes to confront the Kaiser and his armies.
As the First World War raged across Europe, Britain's animators dedicated themselves to the propaganda effort. These determined artists, among them Lancelot Speed, Dudley Buxton, GW Studdy and Anson Dyer, unleashed an arsenal of tricks with one objective - making the enemy look ridiculous, and victory seem inevitable.
In cartoon after cartoon, lightning sketch after lightning sketch, the elaborately-moustached 'Kaiser Bill' was subjected to a catalogue of indignities, whether at the hands of 'Tommy', 'John Bull' and their allies, or just falling victim to his own hubris.
15 videos in this collection
1
2
Sea Dreams
3
Sleepless
4
Peter's Picture Poems
5
John Bull's Animated Sketchbook No. 4
6
John Bull's Sketch Book
7
John Bull's Animated Sketch Book
8
Bully Boy
9
Anti-German War Cartoons
10
A Pencil and Alick P.F. Ritchie
11
First World War Cartoon - Joffre
12
Studdy's War Cartoons Compilation Film
13
Tom Merry, Lightning Cartoonist, Sketching Kaiser Wilhelm II
14
Agitated Adverts
15