And there was another glimmer of hope. Even before leaving Kansas City, Walt had been sending dozens of letters soliciting distributors for "Alice" with his promise of having "just discovered something new and clever in animated cartoons!" and receiving polite rejections when he received anything at all. But among those to whom he had written while he was still in Kansas City trying to stave off bankruptcy was an unusual distributor named Margaret Winkler -- unusual because she was the first and only female film distributor in the country. An immigrant from Budapest, Hungary, Winkler was a petite, round-faced, plain, and pleasant-looking young woman -- she was twenty-eight -- but her appearance belied what her son would call a feral energy, a quick mind, and a short temper. She had been the secretary to Harry Warner of the Warner Bros. film company, who was stationed in New York, though she was ambitious enough to use her position to travel to film conventions on the West Coast and make connections. By one account, Pat Sullivan, the creator of Felix the Cat, had approached Harry Warner in 1921 to distribute his Felix cartoon series, which had recently been dropped by Paramount. Warner demurred, but he encouraged his secretary to explore the offer. She and Sullivan signed a contract in December. "I think the industry is full of wonderful possibilities for an ambitious woman," she told Exhibitor's Herald, shortly after the signing, "and there is no reason why she shouldn't be able to conduct business as well as the men."
Margaret Winkler did. By the time Walt contacted her in May 1923, she was also representing the Out of the Inkwell series devised by Max and Dave Fleischer, in which Koko the Clown escapes his inkwell into a real, which is to say photographic, world; between Felix and Inkwell she had become one of the leading animation distributors in America. But at the time Walt Disney wrote her, trouble was brewing for Winkler. The Fleischers were threatening to leave, and she and Pat Sullivan, who was so difficult and addled by alcohol that he once allegedly urinated on the desk of Paramount Pictures head Adolph Zukor to force a concession, were locked in a bitter dispute over the renewal of the Felix option. Walt's timing, then, could not have been better, which is no doubt why Winkler wrote back to this unknown novice almost immediately upon receiving his first letter, saying that she would be "very pleased" to have him send a print and that "if it is what you say, I shall be interested in contracting for a series of them." But however encouraged Walt may have been, he did not have the print to send while he was in Kansas City because Fred Schmeltz, the Laugh-O-Gram creditor, had it. He continued to correspond with Winkler, apologizing over the delays while refusing to admit that he did not own the print or that he would have to remonstrate with Schmeltz to show it; by the time he reached Los Angeles, Winkler was getting impatient over his foot-dragging. Corresponding, she wrote him drily early in September, was "about all it [their communication] has amounted to." But in a sign of her own desperation over the Felix and Inkwell threats and not realizing that Walt had no more than one Alice, she asked him "[i]f you can spare a couple of them long enough to send to me so that I can screen them and see just what they are, please do so at once."
Most likely the first week of October via Alicoate, Winkler finally screened "Alice's Wonderland" in New York and pounced. "BELIEVE SERIES CAN BE PUT OVER," she wired Walt on October 15, while emphasizing that the photography of Alice had to be more finely focused and the camera held steadier. She also cautioned, by way of limiting Walt's financial expectations, "THIS BEING NEW PRODUCT MUST SPEND LARGE AMOUNT ON EXPLOITATION AND ADVERTISING THEREFORE NEED YOUR COOPERATION." She offered $1,500 for each negative of the first six films and $1,800 for each of the second six. To show her "good faith," she said she would pay the full $1,500 immediately upon delivery of each of the first six rather than wait until she had gotten bookings or money for them. Walt, clearly with no room to negotiate and ecstatic at having any offer, promptly wrote back accepting. At the same time he abandoned the Pantages project.
The very next day Winkler sent the contracts, incorporating her financial terms and calling for the delivery of the first Alice no later than January 2, 1924. She also included an option for two series of twelve more films each in 1925 and 1926 and a clause that awarded her full rights to all of the films Walt produced during the contract term. That same day, obviously wanting to move quickly, she asked Walt for any photographs of the actress playing Alice and of Walt, and for biographies of each. Most likely in an attempt to impress him, she telegraphed Walt again the same day suggesting that he write Harry Warner, who would attest to her competence. Walt did contact Warner, who wrote back that Winkler "has done very well" and that "she is responsible for anything she may undertake," but by that time Walt, as anxious to proceed as Winkler, had signed the contract, with Uncle Robert serving as his witness. Returning the documents, he wrote Winkler that the first film, "Alice's Day at the Sea," was already in production and would be delivered as early as December 15. She responded a week later, a bit extravagantly: "I see no reason why these should not be the biggest thing brought out for years."
But despite the months he had waited for just this news and despite his promise to deliver a new film quickly, Walt was ill prepared to launch another animation studio. The day he received Winkler's initial telegram on October 15, he headed to the Veterans Hospital, where Roy was convalescing from his tuberculosis. As he later told it, again dramatizing for effect, he arrived late, around midnight, crept onto the screened porch where the patients slept, and shook Roy awake to show him the offer and celebrate. But his enthusiasm quickly elided to panic. "What do I do now?" he asked Roy, and pleaded with him to leave the hospital and help him get started. Roy agreed to meet Walt the next morning at Uncle Robert's house for a strategy session. Roy left the hospital the following day -- he claimed that an examination had shown that he was healed -- and never returned.
Next page: "He had his contract and his star, but he had neither a company nor a staff nor any money"
