Her work as a pioneering animator was lost to history — until now

https://www.npr.org/2022/12/24/ [login to see] /bessie-mae-kelley-first-woman-animator
With a trunk full of paper stock, charcoal, and a giant easel in tow, Bessie Mae Kelley would travel the country for her vaudeville circuits in the 1920s.

Kelley was an animation pioneer, having hand-drawn a mouse couple named Milton and Mary before there was ever a Mickey or a Minnie Mouse. She would apprise vaudeville audiences of the new world of moving cartoons in a budding industry called animation. She even billed herself as "the only woman animator" on these tours.

Yet much of Kelley's story and work was lost to the pages of her own journals and left undocumented — until now.