Studio: Walt Disney Studio, for Winkler Pictures
Distributor: Film Booking Offices of America
Short Synopsis
Alice and Julius the cat run a circus. The film is a parade of circus turns gone wrong: the animals in the ring, the acrobats, the strongman, the trapeze, each act becoming a gag as the drawn performers misbehave and Julius has to step in, and a finale in which the big top itself comes down. The frame is thin and the cartoon is everything. Circus Daze was long listed as a lost film; a print was identified in recent years, so it is now possible to check the outline above, which follows the catalogue descriptions. It is the first of ten Alice Comedies starring Lois Hardwick, the third and last girl to play the part after Virginia Davis and Margie Gay.
Why It Matters
- Circus cartoons let animators show off, and the Disney studio of 1927 was at the height of its silent skill; the trapeze and animal acts here were drawn by the same team that was about to begin Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for Universal. The ten Hardwick films are the series' last and, technically, best.
- The film's recovery from "lost" status is part of a wider story: the Alice Comedies were scattered across distributors and nearly forgotten for decades, and archivists have slowly reassembled the series from European prints and sound reissues. Each rediscovery fills a gap in the record of Disney's first years.
Notes and Trivia
- Lois Hardwick was recommended to Disney by the Winkler office; she appeared in all the Alice films from here to the end of the series in August 1927.
- A circus was the setting of several Oswald cartoons that followed within the year.
- See also: Alice the Fire Fighter (1926), Alice's Channel Swim (1927).