Turning Chicken
Early Disney. Prehistoric Disney. Today’s Birdbrain Week installment is a 1925 episode in Uncle Walt’s pre-Mickey series, the Alice Comedies. These silent films combined the antics of a live action little girl with cartoon characters who never seemed to do anything once. The economies of the era forced pioneer animators to recycle their drawings over and over and over — if somebody does one bit of business, rest assured they’ll do the same thing three or four times before the shot is over.
“Alice’s Egg Plant” doesn’t have many big laughs, but its chicken coop set-up is cute, and the plot resolution is rather clever. At simple face value, this one would normally be, at the very least, pretty entertaining. But considering (A.) the story concerns a communist agitator urging the hens at Alice’s egg mill to go on strike, and (B.) Disney’s future labor union dealings, the whole affair becomes positively fascinating. Note that our sympathy is squarely on the side of management, even though Alice’s straw boss buddy, Julius the Cat … uhhh… whips the employees!
Completely useless trivia factoid! Disney went through several little ‘Alices’ in the course of the series, but this is the one and only entry to feature a six year old actress performing under the delightful stage name Dawn O’Day. One more name change and Miss O’Day would grow up to be a fairly famous leading lady, and Oscar nominee, Anne Shirley.
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