Studio: Walt Disney Studio, for Winkler Pictures
Distributor: Winkler Pictures (M. J. Winkler); Film Booking Offices of America
Short Synopsis
Alice is the chief of a cartoon fire brigade whose crew is made up of Julius the cat and a company of lookalike cats. A hotel catches fire, and the brigade's response is a catalogue of fire-house slapstick: the alarm, the slide down the pole, the engine that will not start, the hoses that tangle, the ladders that bend, and the rescue of the hotel's guests, who have to be caught in nets, carried down and persuaded to jump. The gags are the stock of the silent fire-engine comedy, which every studio made at least once, done in the Alice manner with the real girl directing the drawn cats. The film survives in archive prints but has had no official release, and detailed accounts are few; the outline follows the surviving synopses.
Why It Matters
- Fire-engine comedies were a test of an animator's timing, with their pile-ups of running figures and collapsing ladders, and the Disney crew of 1926 handled them well; the multiplication of Julius into a whole brigade of cats is the kind of visual joke the series liked.
- The film is one of the last dozen Alice Comedies. By the end of 1926 Disney was negotiating with Charles Mintz, who had married Margaret Winkler and taken over her company, and the relationship was souring; within a year Mintz would take Oswald away from him. Fire Fighter is the series on its way out, still competent, no longer surprising.
Notes and Trivia
- Disney returned to the fire-house comedy with Mickey's Fire Brigade (1935) and Mickey's Mellerdrammer-era shorts.
- The film is one of the Alice Comedies not included on any Disney DVD release.
- See also: Alice in the Wooly West (1926), Alice's Circus Daze (1927).