Overlooked Films: ALICE'S WONDERLAND (1923)

Over the years, Disney and company have gotten a lot of mileage out of Alice in Wonderland. The highwater mark was the 1951 animated film, and they capitalized on that with a ride at Disneyland and a near-ending stream of toys, dolls, jewelry, figurines, tea sets, coloring books, etc., etc. They mined the vein again in 2010 with Johnny Depp, and yet again in the new series Once Upon a Time in Wonderland.

But Walt Disney’s affair with Alice began back in 1923, when he produced Alice’s Wonderland for an outfit called Laugh-O-Gram. When he formed his own studio later that year, this mix of live action and animation was the basis for his first series of cartoons, known as the Alice Comedies. Over the next four years the studio churned out a whopping 56 of those babies, all before Mickey Mouse was even a gleam in Walt's eye.