- Alice Comedies
The "Alice Comedies" are a series of
animated cartoon s created byWalt Disney in the 1920s, in which alive action little girl named Alice and an animatedcat named Julius have adventures in an animated landscape."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 failingLaugh-O-Gram Studio inKansas City, Missouri . After completing the film, the studio wentbankrupt and was forced to shut down. After raising money by working as a freelancephotographer , Disney bought a one-waytrain ticket toLos 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 obtaining a distribution deal, which was finally arranged through
Winkler Pictures , run byMargaret Winkler and her fianceé,Charles Mintz ."Alice's Wonderland" starts off with Alice entering a cartoon studio so she can watch cartoons being created. The cartoon characters come to life and play around, and Alice is amazed by what she sees. After heading to bed that night, Alice dreams that she is in the cartoon world, being welcomed by all the creations. Alice plays around with the cartoons until danger approaches: a group of lions break free from a cage and chase her.
This short helped set the stage for what was to come in the later Alice Comedies, as it established the world as a playful dream, and also introduced the elements which would soon define the series.
Content
Although seen as cute and funny in their time, the Alice Comedies contain content which might be considered surprising and somewhat harsh today. Alice is a little girl, yet she spends much of her time avoiding danger, and even getting kidnapped by the cartoon villains, threatened with such perils as being tied to a log in a sawmill. These scenes are parodies of similar scenes in movie serials such as "The Perils of Pauline" (1914), starring actress
Pearl White .DVDS
In 2005 and again in 2007, 10 Alice Comedies were released as part of the
Walt Disney Treasures series. Seven were part of the Disney Rarities that was released in 2005, while three more were released as part of The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, released in 2007.horts
ee also
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External links
*http://www.disneyshorts.org/characters/alice.html
* [http://www.inkwellimagesink.com/pages/cartoons/WaltDisney-AliceInCartoonland.shtml "Alice in Cartoonland: The Original Alice Comedies",DVD]
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