100 Years of Disney Animation

Today is the 100th anniversary of Walt Disney's first commercially-released cartoon, Alice's Wonderland, which is mind-boggling, I must say. It was actually made in the summer of '23, but it was released a century ago today to the masses.

The story behind the cartoon is simply that Disney made it out of desperation to salvage his dreams to be a filmmaker (animated or not),  because soonafter Laugh-O-Grams, Inc., went kaput. It was made with KC Film Ad equipment and staff, and Walt took it with him to LA to live with his Uncle Robert and brother Roy. It was noticed by Margaret J. Winkler, the States Rights distributor of the Fleischer and Sullivan films.

Just like Harpo's tattoo!

According to the Internet Animation DataBase, the cameramen were Ub Iwerks and Rudy Ising, with "technical direction" (animation?) by Hugh Harman and Max Maxwell.

Now don't get me wrong; I love Disney and his cartoons. He truly made animation an art form, and anybody who uses the term "Disney style" with contempt apparently has no idea what that means, and it's not cuteness. But honestly I find it baffling that he thought this film was good and that Winkler showed any interest. The latter can be explained by the fact that Sullivan and Fleischer were bowing out, and she was as desperate as Disney was. Maybe I think Sammy Shrew is good and you all don't.

The problem with the short is that nothing really happens (literally too, since it was all a dream). It is just a pilot, I know, but it doesn't grab your attention except the novelty of "a person within a cartoon". To add insult to injury, it shamelessly steals from Out of the Inkwell and Aesop's Fables. The only redeeming quality is historical: Harman, Ising, and Iwerks are all visible in the studio segments. The fact that they were all my age (I turn 21 in two weeks or so) is stunning too.

Ising is at left, Iwerks above him, and Harman sitting.

My dislike of the whole Alice series is probably why I feel this way, because I find it fist-on-your-cheek-lazy-eyed boring. Messmer and Felix would rule the barnyard (literally!) until this series was done.

But even with it's faults, it was the start of something magical. After Alice died a worthy death, the Oswald series would show how much was being put into making animation a transcendent art above all film,. It's a shame he's not here to fix the mess we're in now with gunk even worse than Filmation ever was.

I hope that the rest of the celebration of Walt Disney's animation legacy will reverse that.