The Alice Comedies are a series of live-action animated shorts created by Walt Disney in the 1920s, in which a live action little girl named Alice (originally played by Virginia Davis) and an animated cat named Julius have adventures in an animated landscape. The shorts were the first work by what ultimately became The Walt Disney Company.
Live-action animation is a film genre that combines live-action filmmaking with animation.Projects that are both live-action and computer animation tend to have fictional characters or figures represented and characterized by cast members through motion capture and then animated and modeled by animators. Films that are live-action and traditional animation use hand-drawn, computer-generated imagery (CGI), or stop-motion animation.
Ubbe Ert "Ub" Iwerks (/ʌb ˈaɪwɜːrks/ ub EYE-wurks; March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971), was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician. He was known for his early work with Walt Disney, especially for having worked on the creation of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, among other characters.
Iwerks and Disney met in 1919 while working at an art studio in Kansas City. After briefly working as illustrators for a local newspaper company, they ventured into animation together. Iwerks joined Disney as chief animator on the Laugh-O-Gram shorts series beginning in 1922, but a studio bankruptcy would cause Disney to relocate to Los Angeles in 1923. In the new studio, Iwerks continued to work with Disney on the Alice Comedies as well as the creation of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Following the first Oswald short, both Universal Pictures and the Winkler Pictures production company insisted that the Oswald character be redesigned. At the insistence of Disney, Iwerks designed a number of new characters for the studio, including designs that would be used for Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar.
Pete (also named Peg Leg Pete, Bad Pete, and Black Pete, among other names) is a cartoon character created by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks of The Walt Disney Company. Pete is traditionally depicted as the villainous arch-nemesis of Mickey Mouse, and was made notorious for his repeated attempts to kidnap Minnie Mouse. Pete is the oldest continuing Disney character, having debuted in the cartoon Alice Solves the Puzzle in 1925. He originally bore the appearance of an anthropomorphic bear, but with the advent of Mickey in 1928, he was defined as a cat.
Pete appeared in 67 animated short films between 1925 and 1954, having been featured in the Alice Comedies and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons, and later in the Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and Goofy cartoons. During World War II, he played the long-suffering sergeant trying to make a soldier out of Donald Duck in a series of animated shorts.
Alice Solves the Puzzle is a 1925 animated short film directed by Walt Disney. It was the 15th film in the Alice Comedies series, and is notable for being the first film to feature Pete, the longest-recurring Disney character. The film is also notable for being one of the first animated films to have been heavily censored.
Alice's Wonderland is a 1923 Walt Disney short silent film, produced in Kansas City, Missouri by Laugh-O-Gram Studio, and distributed by The Walt Disney Company. The black-and-white short was the first in a series of Walt Disney's famous Alice Comedies and had a working title of Alice in Slumberland. The film was never shown theatrically, but was instead shown to prospective film distributors.
Virginia Davis (December 31, 1918 – August 15, 2009) was an American child actress in films. She is best known for working with Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks on the animated short series Alice Comedies, in which she portrayed the protagonist Alice.
Julius the Cat is a fictional anthropomorphic cat created in 1922 by Walt Disney. He first appeared in Disney's Laugh-O-Gram comedies, making him the predecessor of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse. Julius is an anthropomorphic cat, appearing intentionally similar to Felix the Cat. Later appearing in Disney's Alice Comedies, he gradually became the focus of the series to the point Disney abandoned live action for pure animation on subsequent projects. The first short entered Public Domain on January 1st, 1997 under the copyright act of 1976, and the final short entered Public Domain on January 1st, 2023 under the copyright act of 1998.
Julius was the first of Disney's animated protagonists to battle Pete, their oldest continuing character.