Before Mickey, there was Margaret...
Walter Elias Disney was broke and didn't have two nickels to rub together, save the $40.00 he got for selling his movie camera, and that money would have to get him to California. His Kansas City animation studio, Laugh-O-Gram, was bankrupt, his film shorts, eleven in all, weren't profitable and no one wanted to distribute them. Walt needed a new career, wanted a new career, and decided to head west to work in the movie industry. He would fill whatever position he could find at whatever studio would hire him to get out of Missouri. Funds were so tight he had to borrow a suit from his cousin just to look presentable...
Southern California in the 1920's was bustling as the new American movie capital. Gone were the days of Fort Lee, New Jersey...the epicenter for film was now Hollywood. Arriving in the summer of 1923, Walt tried desperately to land a job in the film industry, marketing himself to the big studios, all to no avail. He just couldn't break-in, and his suit and shoes were getting shabbier by the day...but there was Alice's Wonderland...
When Walt Disney's Laugh-O-Gram folded, he kept an animated pilot, partly finished, which he intended to expand and market using his technique of combining live-action with an animated environment. The film was almost finished and Walt called it...Alice's Wonderland. It was not particularly revolutionary, live actors had already been paired with animation on film by the Fleischer brothers in the Out of the Inkwell series and Pat Sullivan's Felix Saves the Day. He had undoubtedly seen these animated films, but where the Fleischer's and Sullivan used an animated character in a live-action world, Walt's Alice brought a live character into an animated one.
Walt's was different, albeit not terribly original. Hard as he tried to pitch Alice, Walt Disney was still stuck with dreamy ideas that were going nowhere and living at his uncle in Los Angeles, still almost broke and wearing a right shoe with a split in it. Before leaving Missouri, Disney had written M.J. Winkler in New York about distributing his Alice's Wonderland short. Lucky for Walt, Winkler was interested...
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She was the personal secretary of Jack Warner, who was extremely supportive of Margaret being the only female film distributor in the country. Warner encouraged Margaret to promote Disney and make Alice a success. Along with her brother George, she gave Walt the start needed, launching him into what he eventually became. Margaret J. Winkler was a Jewish immigrant from Austria-Hungary, coming to America with her family in 1904 when she was nine years old. In her late twenties when she decided to market Walt Disney and already very successful when she brought Disney into her cartoon distribution empire, already the largest animation film distributor in the United States at the time, having exsisting contracts with Patrick Sullivan (Felix the Cat) and the Fleischer brothers, Max and Dave (Betty Boop and Popeye the Sailor).
Her terms with Walt were fair and very generous. She would fund and distribute the Alice's Wonderland shorts...$1500.00 for the first six films, then $1800.00 for the next six, and she would hold the rights while Disney was contracted with Winkler Pictures. In addition, the original live-action actress, five year old Virginia Davies, had to be used for future Alice productions. Margaret would pay Disney the full amount upon receipt of a film's negative. Generally, distributors did not pay until funds were received from theatres purchasing the rights to show a film. In this case Walt was being paid right up front, an extremely rare move, giving Disney the needed capital to produce without having to finance projects on the hope that some movie house, somewhere, would buy and show the film.
The terms were accepted by Walt on October 15th, 1923 and a delivery date for the second Alice short was set for January 2nd, 1924. Lucky for Margaret, Walt Disney was a go-getter, telling Winkler that the next Alice film was already in production, then hurriedly writing Virginia Davis' parents back in Kansas City to get her to Los Angeles for the filming as soon as possible. The Disney Brothers Studio was born, Roy and Walt taking their first steps towards becoming legends.
Walt Disney was persistent and never gave up, his work and talent in making animated pictures improved just enough to keep the series alive, if not very profitable. He innovated, made the films more clear and crisp by stabilizing and motorizing the camera, developed new techniques for the Alice Comedies such as placing a cutout, or mask on the edges of the camera lens (While not ingenious, this did make it easier to paint the post-production animation into the masked areas and speeding up the time it took to create a finished product). He also practiced his animation skills, all made possible through Margaret Winkler, and her good graces.
A few months after signing Walt Disney, Margaret Winkler married Charles B. Mintz. She eventually chose to back away from the business, and raise her family. In 1929, the name changed from Winkler to Mintz Studios, Margaret's legacy seemingly erased, overshadowed by her very controlling husband. It had been downhill for Walt and the Alice shorts since Margaret let Charles take control, the split between Disney and Mintz, inevitable. Charles Mintz was a tough businessman, besting Walt Disney on many different levels. When Disney decided to part ways, Mintz had ownership of Walt's intellectual creations, including Alice, and had hired away most of Walt's animation staff, leaving Disney and his company almost dysfunctional. Despite all the setbacks, Mickey Mouse and the Walt Disney Studios were on the horizon, and Walt's imminent success was soon to follow.
In the end, Margaret Winkler was the force and inspiration behind Walt Disney. While technically not a female pioneer of science, she had a tremendous impact on the development of animation through her support and funding of most all the characters in the Golden Age of animation, and particularly with Walt Disney, who's skills were developed and refined because of Margaret. She would live to see what she had wrought, the numerous successes of her contribution to animation, passing away at the age of 95 in 1990. Without her backing and encouragement, Disney would not be the worldwide brand it became. Without her there would be no Mickey and Minnie Mouse, no Disneyland or Disney World, no Pirates of the Caribbean, no Haunted Mansion. Without Margaret Winkler-Mintz, Walt Disney would likely be just another nameless face in the crowd. She was the first brick in Disney's Magic Kingdom.
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