Alice Comedies
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The Alice Comedies are a series of cartoons created by Walt Disney, in which a real little girl named Alice and an animated cat named Julius have adventures in an animated landscape.
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History
Alice's Wonderland
Disney, Ub Iwerks, and their staff made the first Alice Comedy, a one-reel (ten-minute) short subject titled Alice's Wonderland, while still heading the failing Laugh-O-Grams studio in Kansas City, Missouri. After completing the film, the studio went bankrupt and was forced to shut down, meaing the film was never released to the public. After raising money by working as a freelance photographer, Disney bought a one-way train ticket to Los Angeles, California to live with his uncle Robert and his brother Roy.
In California, Disney continued to send out proposals for the Alice series, in hopes of a distribution deal, which was finally arranged through Winkler Pictures, run by Margaret Winkler and her fianceé, Charles Mintz.
About the series
Julius bears a striking resemblance to Felix the Cat. This wasn't accidental: Charles Mintz, who distributed both the Felix series for Pat Sullivan and the Alice series for Walt Disney, had insisted on this in an attempt to emulate Felix's success.
Black Pete made his first appearance in "Alice Solves the Puzzle", released on February 15, 1925, and was a recurring antagonist in the series. Legend once had it that Clarabelle Cow made her first appearance in 1926's "Alice on the Farm", but this has since been disproven (the cow in the cartoon is white and looks nothing like Clarabelle).
The Alice Comedies lasted four years in theatres, from 1924 to 1927. The series ended with "Alice in the Big League", released on August 22, 1927.
Alice was played by four young actresses at various times during the series' run: Virginia Davis, Margie Gay, Dawn Evelyn Paris (later known with the stage names of Dawn O'Day and Anne Shirley), and Lois Hardwick.
See also
Animation Before Hollywood: The Silent Period