Studio: Walt Disney Studio
Distributor: Winkler Pictures
Short Synopsis
Plot documentation for this late Alice Comedy is thin, and this summary is based on the surviving film. The title points to a horse race, a derby, and the cartoon is set around a racetrack and its stables. Julius the Cat, Alice's animated partner, is in charge of getting their horse into shape. In an early scene he works over the horse as it lies stretched out on a rubbing table outside the stable, with a bottle of liniment at hand, while other animals watch from the stalls. Later Julius races across open country, and a scene near the track sends a huge, dark swarm pouring out over a balcony and scattering everything in its way. Alice, played by Margie Gay, is the series' live-action lead, though the frames this book checked show only the animated cast. How the race ends is not described in any source this book could check.
Why It Matters
- By late 1926 the Alice series had become largely Julius's show, and this short shows the Disney animators giving the cat the kind of improvised, rubbery physical comedy, massage-table gags, sprints and a slapstick stampede, that they would soon refine with Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.
- It comes from the last stretch of the Alice Comedies, made by the same team, Iwerks, Harman, Ising and Hamilton, who within a year would launch Oswald and, after most of them left Disney, found the cartoon departments of other studios: Harman and Ising went on to start Looney Tunes at Warner Bros.
Notes and Trivia
- Margie Gay played Alice in more of the films than anyone else, taking over from Virginia Davis and Dawn O'Day.
- See also: Alice's Day at Sea (1924), Trolley Troubles (1927).