The historic worldwide success of the Walt Disney company sprang from modest beginnings 100 years ago: the Alice Comedies, Walt and Roy Disney’s first successful film series, first appeared on cinema screens in 1924. These shorts started from an inventive premise: inserting a little girl, filmed in live action, into an animated world. During 1924 the role of Alice was played by the delightful Virginia Davis, who frequently enjoyed elaborate framing stories – as in this film, when she breaks up a fight between Tommy Hicks and Leon Holmes by relating her tale of mediating a feud between an animated cat and mouse. Alice the Peacemaker features animation by both Walt Disney himself and Ub Iwerks, who had just moved from Kansas City to Los Angeles. Iwerks’ drawing style is immediately evident, notably in a scene depicting the two characters’ gradual change of heart, a difficult challenge for an animator. Iwerks would go on to play a major role in Disney’s subsequent successes.

J.B. Kaufman