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On Oct. 16, 1923, Margaret Winkler agreed to provide and distribute Alice Comedies, a brand new sequence by Walt Disney. That contract is taken into account the founding doc of The Walt Disney Company.
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On Oct. 16, 1923, Margaret Winkler agreed to provide and distribute Alice Comedies, a brand new sequence by Walt Disney. That contract is taken into account the founding doc of The Walt Disney Company.
Disney
Before Mickey, Snow White and Moana, there was Alice and her cat Julius. Say what?
The Walt Disney Company has been celebrating its 100th birthday all 12 months lengthy. But it was on Oct. 16, 1923 that the magic started – thanks largely to a girl named Margaret Winkler. She named her movie firm M.J. Winkler Productions, lest anybody discover out that probably the most profitable entrepreneurs in animation was a girl.
Winkler, a Hungarian immigrant, was 18 years outdated when she started her profession in leisure as a secretary for studio govt Harry Warner. She realized the ins and outs of the movie enterprise and in 1921 left Warner to discovered her personal manufacturing and distribution enterprise.
She turned her first cartoon – Felix the Cat – into a worldwide star. A savvy promoter who understood the enterprise facet of creativity, she offered the sequence each domestically and abroad, commonly spinning her success to the trades.
Alice Comedies foyer card
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“Winkler’s most significant contribution was her talent for identifying and building a market for these short films,” wrote Malcolm Cook for Columbia University’s Women Film Pioneers Project.
By distinction, Walt Disney was a struggling cartoonist in Kansas City in 1923. His Laugh-o-Gram Films was almost bankrupt. But he nonetheless held out hope for a venture that featured a reside motion character named Alice interacting with animated characters – together with her cat Julius.
According to Disney, “In the summer of 1923, [Walt] used some of his last $40 to buy a first-class train ticket to Los Angeles, where he and his brother Roy O. Disney would work on making animated films out of their uncle’s garage and later in the back of a real estate office two blocks away.”
In a letter to Winkler, who was primarily based in New York, Walt wrote, “In the past, all cartoons combining live actors have been produced in an amateur manner… It is my intention to employ only trained and experienced people for my casts and staff that I may inject quality humor, photograph and detail into these comedies.”
Winkler wrote again, “If your comedies are what you say they are and what I think they should be, we can do business.”
Before signing a deal, Walt checked Winkler’s “responsibility and standing” together with her former boss, Harry Warner. “She is responsible for anything she may undertake,” Warner responded. “In my opinion, the main thing you should consider is the quality of goods you are going to give her, and if that is right, I don’t think you need any hesitation in having her handle your merchandise.”
On Oct. 16, 1923, Winkler and Disney signed a deal to provide and distribute 12 episodes of Alice Comedies.
According to Disney, the contract “is considered the founding document of The Walt Disney Company.”
Alice Comedies contract web page
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This story was edited by Jennifer Vanasco and produced by Beth Novey.
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