Alice's Wonderland

"Alice's Wonderland" is the beginning of a long history of Disney treatment of Lewis Carroll's Alice books. These Alice comedies were loosely inspired by them. Although this one, reportedly, wasn't theatrically released, but was rather made as a proof-of-concept for potential distributors, it's better than others from the series I've seen, including the earliest released one, "Alice's Day at Sea" (1924). Later, Disney would reference "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass" with Mickey Mouse in "Thru the Mirror" (1936) and Donald Duck in "Donald in Mathmagic Land" (1959). So, clearly Walt and company had a long-standing interest in the books besides misspelling Carroll's name in the 1951 feature-length cartoon and, as both Carroll and Walt rolled over in their graves, the 3D, CGI monstrosities of 2010 and 2016.

The other Alice comedies don't seem to have anything to do with the books besides featuring a girl named Alice, the dream framing, and her subsequent curious scenarios involving anthropomophic animals. Basically, the same thing happens in this one, except there is a place called "Cartoonland," with its obvious wordplay on "Wonderland," that Alice visits in her dream. There's also a bit of a clock motif, with the animators refereeing the boxing cats and the Cartoonland welcoming committee checking their pocket watches. Alice, as in the books, also goes through a doorway in a tree and a rabbit hole before falling in a fashion similar to that seen in other "Alice in Wonderland" films, except here it happens at the end instead of at the beginning of the dream. There's some dancing and music, too, including a pun made of jazz cats (you guessed it--cartoon cats playing jazz). Best of all, however, is that the dream is connected to the earlier studio-tour footage. One interpretation of the Alice books is that they're a parable for a girl's making sense--or nonsense--of the adult world; likewise, this film Alice is introduced to the adult world of making children's cartoons, which she then dreams about. Not bad for an early experiment in combining live-action cinematography and hand-drawn animation that was never commercially released until it appeared as an extra for DVDs and Blu-rays of the 1951 feature.

This marriage of live-action and animation was also a preoccupation of the day for the rival Fleischer Studios, including with such Out of the Inkwell installments as "Cartoon Factory" (1924), which pit the animator in a battle against his creations. "Alice's Wonderland," on the other hand, takes a different reflexive approach more akin to other studio-tour films of the era, such as "A Tour of the Thomas H. Ince Studio" or the "1925 Studio Tour" of MGM, which also highlighted the filmmaking processes of the companies, as well as advertising their stars. In "Alice's Wonderland," this also gives way to films-within-films as what the animators--the actual ones for Disney and including Walt himself--draw for Alice comes to life on the white boards, with a cat running away from a mouse and the aforementioned cat boxing match. Overall, the drawings are charming enough, and the combination of live-action and animation is effective. Sure, some of the repetitive backgrounds--such as employing the same three characters lined up for Alice's parade in Cartoonland--are relatively lazy, and there's little rhyme or reason to the occasional iris framing, "Alice's Wonderland" remains impressive for a film that was never even theatrically released, including some economical editing through eyeline matches and such to save on the double-exposure matte work and placing of a live Alice within a Cartoonland.

If it weren't for a lovely four-year-old girl, the Walt Disney Company, a multi-billion dollar business and a huge entertainment conglomerate, may not have possibly been established. Young Walt Disney had been contracted to produce a series of cartoons known as 'Laugh-O-Grams,' but the paying Tennessee company went bankrupt, leaving the artist and his employees stuck with a number of cartoons he couldn't sell. Disney's loyal artists left his East 31st Street, Kansas City studio before Walt secured $500 from a dentist to produce an educational short on dental hygiene.

Instead of paying off his debts, Disney decided to plow the money into his new brain-child: a live-action combined with a cartoon that could serve as a demonstration to what his floundering company was capable of producing. He spotted a cute little girl in an advertisement and immediately traced her to Virginia Davis. He contacted her mother, Margaret, who was eager to advance her daughter's acting career. Walt's idea was the opposite of the Fleischer Studios 'Out of the Inkwell' cartoon series: instead of animated characters interacting with the real world, Disney placed his child actress into a cartoon-filled world.

He temporarily hired his artists back, who filmed and drew Virginia dreaming about herself in cartoon land. Experiencing a sureal sequence of both pleasant and nightmarish events, Alice (Virginia) eventually awakens in her mother's arms. Her dream was triggered by a visit earlier in the day to the Laugh-O-Gram Studio where Walt, seen for the first time on film, and the other artists amuse Alice with animated characters on their drawing boards.

Disney knew he had a winner on his hands. He corresponded with the top distributor for cartoon films, Margaret Winkler, who was handling both the 'Out of the Inkwell" as well as 'Felix The Cat' cartoons in nationwide theaters. He wrote to the New York distributor Winker, who wrote back saying she was intrigued by the idea of the "clever combination of live characters and cartoons." Meanwhile, the Fleischer Brothers, getting rich off of Winkler's work, decided to form their own distribution network for its 'Out of the Inkwell' series. On the heels of that withdrawal, Felix's creator Pat Sullivan decided to yank his cat from Winkler when their contract expired after one too many fights, creating a golden opportunity for Disney.

Walt took a train in the summer of 1923 to show Winkler the work in progress of "Alice's Wonderland." After seeing the pilot reel, she offered $1,500 per reel of Alice shorts, with Virginia Davis in the lead role. Walt signed a one-year contract to produce the series, contingent that Winkler would edit all the Alice cartoons herself. Disney immediately moved to California, living with his brother Roy, and working out of his garage for a brief time. He called his new company, Disney Brothers, which eventually morphed into Walt Disney Productions.

Virginia and her mother, Margaret, moved to Los Angeles partly for the $100 per month salary Walt was offering, and partly because the young girl's doctor, knowing her fragile health, said she would benefit with a dryer, warmer climate. Virginia was in 13 'Alice Comedies' episodes, while four other Alices followed her. Disney, who directed and produced all 57 films, drew most of the cartoons. It became obvious, however, as the series marched on, he was more interested on the animation aspect of each film as he diminished the live action sequences. The 'Alice Comedies' ended in July 1927 when a rabbit came upon the scene.

When Walt Disney was just starting out he worked for an advertising agency in Kansas City drawing theatrical cartoon ads and experimented with stop-action animation in his spare time. His first animation venture "Laugh-O-Grams" was unsuccessful but its last gasp before going out of business was an unfinished one-reel (12 minute) cartoon called "Alice's Wonderland".

Max and Dave Fleischer had already introduced a cartoon series called "Out of the Inkwell" which superimposed animated figures on real film backgrounds (allowing a live actor to interact with a cartoon character). Walt borrowed this idea for the first segments of "Alice's Wonderland" and for the later segments he reversed it and superimposed a live actress (Virginia Davis) on an animated background. Virginia's mother let them shoot the live scenes in her house with Virginia's aunt playing Alice's mother.

The film begins with little Alice visiting an animation studio, where Walt and Ub Iwerks are working. They show her some scenes on their drawing boards and these turn into moving cartoons, which interact with live things in the studio. The best is a cartoon mouse (imagine that) poking a live cat until it moves. Although everything was silent in 1923 some music was later added to the production.

Back home from her day at the studio, the sleeping Alice dreams of taking a train to cartoon- land. She appears in live action superimposed on a cartoon background and interacts with a variety of cartoon animals. Finally, she jumps off a cliff and after falling for a while wakes up in her own bed.

Walt ran out of money before "Alice's Wonderland" could be finished and his company was disbanded. He moved out to Los Angeles and eventually sent what had been completed to an independent cartoon distributor in New York who contracted for a series of Alice cartoons.

Virginia Davis joined Walt in California and they began cranking out the series. Eventually there would be 56 Alice cartoons although Virginia was eventually replaced over a pay dispute.

"Alice's Wonderland" was probably never really completed. It appears that at some point they reassembled it to provide an ending (basically just a repeat of an earlier scene in a different context). It is also likely that the falling scene was originally intended for a rabbit hole entrance to Wonderland at the start of the dream sequence, but was moved to the end to substitute for the unfinished portion.

These silent cartoons are surprisingly entertaining. More importantly, Alice qualifies as Disney's first enduring character and the Alice series was his first successful venture.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Of all of Walt Disney's earliest films, this is the coolest one I have seen. That's because unlike most of these shorts, you actually get to see Walt and his staff--including such famous animation folks as Ub Iwerks, Rudolph Ising and Hugh Harmon--all three of which went off on their own later to found cartoon studios. It's also amazingly charming and well worth seeing--even if the last few seconds of the cartoon are missing.

This is the first 'Alice' cartoon which starred the adorable Virginia Davis. It begins with young Virginia going to the studio and getting a tour led by Walt himself. I loved this portion because instead of a stuffy tour, lots of animated characters were running about--as if they were real! The integration of them into the real world was very stunning for 1923--and something we might take for granted today. Later that night, Alice dreams that she goes into the land of animated characters--highlighted by her being chased by lions! It's all very cute and exciting and actually holds up very well today. While I have seen some other Alice cartoons, this is the best I've seen so far and can't imagine them being much better.

By the way, Iwerks is billed as 'Ubbe Iwwerks'--and it's one of the few times his correctly spelled birth name is used. spelling for his name was used) Harmon and Ising

Contrary to popular belief, the Disney industry was not started with that famous mouse we all know and love. It was actually started by a little girl named Alice (portrayed by Virginia Davis). This was one of the earliest uses of live action and animation. I remember seeing this short on Vault Disney. I was interested in seeing some of Disney 's early shorts that he produced. I really did not care for this one. The Alice shorts had lasted for about four more years, with Disney constantly replacing young actresses for the role of Alice.