This July, my family stopped by a Leadville, Colorado antique shop was selling a 16mm home movie print of a mystery cartoon called "Left Behind" for $49 (17% off). When we unwrapped the box, my dad and I found that the box has a picture of Felix on the back, but Googling could find no Felix film (home movie issue or otherwise) with that exact title. My dad then decided to shine a light on the back of the film to reveal its title card. It was an Alice Comedy presented by Raytone, who is known for reissuing Alice Comedies with soundtracks, yet this was a silent print! One Google search later and I was at the Big Cartoon Forum, where a member (I can't say whether it's Dave Koch or not; the forum has changed software several times) said that this was actually Alice Wins the Derby (1925)! Looking at Kaufman's Walt in Wonderland book revealed that the film was copyrighted.

The vendor of this item was Novelty Film Co. and they were located in New Jersey. I did a Google search for "novelty film home movie company," and found that, according to the book Charlie Chaplin at Keystone and Essanay: Dawn of the Tramp, they distributed 50ft excerpts from early Charlie Chaplin movies. [reference ] I also found out they were mentioned in a 1949 issue  of Popular Photography and in a 1948 issue  of Minicam Photography (not the full thing).

Unfortunately, I don't have a 16mm projector to play the film back on, nor do I have any proper software or hardware to transfer it with. I've uploaded the photos  to Google Drive.

---

If you'd like to have it transferred, try getting in contact with Tom Stathes. In fact, if the entry for "Alice Wins the Derby" on the IAD is any indication, Mr. Stathes actually released an unauthorized DVD containing it and other Alice Comedies.

I guess that Novelty's retitles were their ways of avoiding possible lawsuits, at least in the case of Disney. Or was there some sort of secret deal worked out between them and Disney (or RKO, or whoever was the copyright holder)? Or did Disney (or whoever held the copyright) care that little about Walt's earliest films? Must've been a pretty fly-by-night operation, in any event.

---

Yep, this is ~3 minute segment from Alice Wins the Derby. I might be going out of order, but to address some of the things that were brought up:

-Winkler owned many of the Alice films, and then the Weiss Brothers got ahold of some of them for 1929-1930 sound reissues, including Derby. I'm not sure of the exact association but Raytone might have been a Weiss company, or a company they contracted with.

-It looks like Novelty had an agreement with Raytone and/or Weiss to issue these in 8mm and 16mm for the toy film market. They sold 25ft, 50ft, 100ft, and 200ft length versions of the films in 16mm, and half those lengths for 8mm format. "Toy films" were almost always silent prints, whether the original subjects were silent or sound films. Weiss then began selling 8mm and 16mm prints of the Alices they had (both silent and sound prints; some people only had silent projectors and only needed silent prints, or wanted to spend less by buying/renting silent prints) in the late 40s and 50s.

-Thankfully, issuing them on DVD isn't illegal or 'unauthorized'...Disney never owned the copyrights to them, even if they retained prints for their own archives and use whichever of the films they still have copies of today. Winkler never copyrighted them in the first place, so there is no entity that needs to authorize their use.

-Until the 60s or 70s, *no one* cared about anyone's early films, especially cartoons, Disney or not...even many of the animators who started out in the early days didn't want to talk about their crude first films. It was seen as a miracle that any further money could be made off them after sound came to be, so films like this were given any sort of treatment under the sun to try and make a buck off them, if they were even kept at all. The way we care about these films, or even just have a passing curiosity about their history or importance, is a modern phenomenon.

-These "toy film" or "home movie" prints aren't worth more than $15-25 (give or take) depending on subject matter and condition...wish you would have been able to get it for quite a bit less than $49!

I'm a collector of Pre-Mickey Disney items - would you consider selling your Alice film ?

Thanks for the offer, laughogram. I'm going to have to turn it down for the moment, since even though prints like this aren't expensive (Tommy Stathes previously said they went for $15-$25; I bought mine for $49 with 17% off), I haven't even played the darn thing, nor have I gotten it transferred. Maybe I'll reconsider once I transfer and/or play the thing.

---