Studio: Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, for Winkler Pictures
Distributor: Winkler Pictures (M. J. Winkler)
Short Synopsis
Alice and her gang of kids have formed a club with their dogs, and the local dog catcher is their enemy. When he rounds up the dogs, the children set out to free them, and the chase and the rescue are carried through in the usual Alice manner: a live-action opening with the children and the real dogs, a crossing into the cartoon world where the dogs and the dog catcher become drawn figures and the gags turn impossible, and a return to the yard for the finish. The film is mostly live action by the standards of the series, with a large cast of neighbourhood children, and Walt Disney himself appears briefly, as he did in a handful of the early Alice films. A full shot list is not available; the outline follows the surviving synopses.
Why It Matters
- The early Alice films are as much Our Gang comedies as cartoons, and this one shows why: the children, the dogs and the villainous dog catcher are the stock of silent kid comedies, and Disney's team were learning live-action staging and editing while they learned animation. The mixing of real dogs and drawn dogs is a small technical pleasure.
- Dog Catcher comes from the first summer of the series, when Winkler was pressing Disney to put more live action and less costly animation into each film; the balance tipped back toward cartoon, and toward Julius the cat, by the end of the year. It is a document of the series before it found its cartoon identity.
Notes and Trivia
- Disney's cameo is one of only a few times he appeared on screen in his own films.
- The film is among the Alice Comedies that survive in archive prints but have had no official release.
- See also: Alice's Wild West Show (1924), Alice Gets in Dutch (1924).