
Before Mickey, Snow White, and Moana, there was Alice and her cat Julius. What's that all about?
The Walt Disney Company celebrated its 100th anniversary for an entire year. But the magic began on October 16, 1923, largely thanks to a woman named Margaret Winkler. She named her film company MJ Winkler Productions so that no one would know one of the most successful entrepreneurs in animation was a woman.
Winkler, a Hungarian immigrant, was just 18 when she started her career in entertainment as a secretary for studio head Harry Warner. She learned all the ins and outs of the movie business and in 1921 left Warner to start her own production and distribution business.
Her first cartoon, Felix the Cat, she turned into a global star. A savvy promoter who understood the business side of creativity, she sold the series both domestically and internationally, regularly linking her success to trade.
"The most significant contribution of Winkler was her talent for defining and creating a market for these short films," wrote Malcolm Cook for the Columbia University Women Film Pioneers Project.
Contrastingly, in 1923, Walt Disney was a struggling cartoonist in Kansas City. His company, Laugh-o-Gram Films, was on the brink of bankruptcy. But he still held hope for a project where a live-action character named Alice would interact with animated characters, including her cat, Julius.
According to Disney, "In the summer of 1923 [Walt] spent a portion of his last $40 on a first-class train ticket to Los Angeles, where he and his brother Roy O. Disney worked on creating animated films based on their [projects] in an uncle's garage, and then in the back of a real estate office two blocks from here."
In a letter to Winkler, who lived in New York, Walt wrote, "In the past, all the cartoons with live action were made in a makeshift manner ... I intend to employ only trained and experienced people for my actors and staff so that I can put into these comedies the quality of humor, photographs, and detail which, in my opinion, they should have."
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Winkler replied, "If your comedies are as you say they are and as I believe they should be, we can do business."
Before finalizing the deal, Walt checked with her former boss, Harry Warner, about Winkler's "responsibility and authority." Warner responded, "She is responsible for anything she undertakes. The main thing for you to consider, I think, is the quality of the goods you are going to give her, and if that is right, I do not think you need have any doubt of her handling your goods."
On October 16, 1923, Winkler and Disney signed a contract for the production and distribution of 12 episodes of "Alice Comedies."
According to Disney, the contract is considered "the founding document of The Walt Disney Company."