cel technology in his follow-up to Gertie, The Sinking of the Lusitania (1918). It was his most ambitious film at 25,000 drawings, and took nearly two years to complete, but was not a commercial success. McCay made six more films, though three of them were never made commercially available. After 1921, McCay was made to give up animation when Hearst learned he devoted more of his time to animation than to his newspaper illustrations. Unexecuted ideas McCay had for animation projects included a collaboration with Jungle Imps author George Randolph Chester, a musical film called The Barnyard Band, and a film about the Americans' role in World War I. In 1927, McCay attended a dinner in his honor in New York. After a considerable amount of drinking, McCay was introduced by animator Max Fleischer. McCay gave the gathered group of animators some technical advice, but when he felt the audience was not giving him attention, he berated them, saying, "Animation is an art. That is how I conceived it. But as I see, what you fellows have done with it, is making it into a trade. Not an art, but a trade. Bad Luck!" That September he appeared on the radio at WNAC, and on November 2 Frank Craven interviewed him for The Evening Journals Woman's Hour. During both appearances he complained about the state of contemporary animation. McCay died July 26, 1934, of a cerebral embolism. Reception and legacy Gertie pleased audiences and reviewers. It won the praise of drama critic Ashton Stevens in Chicago, where the act opened. On February 22, 1914, before Hearst had barred the New York American from mentioning McCay's vaudeville work, a columnist in the paper called the act "a laugh from start to finish ... far funnier than his noted mosquito drawings". On February 28 the New York Evening Journal called it "the greatest act in the history of motion picture cartoonists". Émile Cohl praised McCay's "admirably drawn" films, and Gertie in particular, after seeing them in New York before he returned to Europe. Upon its theatrical release, Variety magazine wrote the film had "plenty of comedy throughout" and that it would "always be remarked upon as exceptionally clever". A fake version of Gertie the Dinosaur appeared a year or two after the original; it features a dinosaur performing most of Gertie's tricks, but with less skillful animation, using cels on a static