Rare Animated ‘Alice’ Will Stay Rare

Another “lost” silent cartoon by the young Walt Disney has been found. But, for now, the owner--unlike the British collector of Disney’s recently reclaimed “Little Red Riding Hood”--isn’t anxious to share her rare find with the Disney studio.

“Alice’s Spanish Guitar,” a 1926 one-reeler that combines live action and animation, has resurfaced at the George Eastman House in Rochester, N.Y. But museum curator Paolo Cherchi Usai--citing what he calls “a delicate diplomatic situation”--has to bite his tongue when it comes to ballyhooing the discovery.

Because of constraints placed on him, he can’t identify the donor of the rare short (made when Disney was 25), reveal where in the United States it was found or entertain requests for copies.

“One of the many conditions given, including the fact that the film has to be available here for research, is that I am not allowed to make any further copies or negatives, other than the ones that will stay at the Eastman House,” Cherchi Usai says.

This, of course, keeps a rare find rare and benefits Eastman House, which was given the film as a gift and could eventually entertain bids for the print.

“We need to make all efforts to support our preservation project,” the curator says. “If someone offered us a lot of money, we would [sell] it and invest the money in other films.”

“Alice’s Spanish Guitar,” on highly flammable nitrate stock, has been restored at a Netherlands lab, which, for $20,000, also made a reference print and preservation negative. It was unveiled earlier this week at Italy’s Pordenone Silent Film Festival, which specializes in vintage animation.

The new “Alice,” which runs just under nine minutes, is described as a cliffhanger about a guitar-playing sen~orita (Alice), the villainous Putrid Pete and a hero named Gaucho Julius. Putrid Pete kidnaps Alice and takes her to his castle lair; Alice’s fiance, Julius, gives chase. A duel and rescue ensue.

“It’s a silent pretty much done in the Douglas Fairbanks style; it’s very abstract,” the curator says.

Six-year-old Margie Gay plays Alice, who interacts with animated characters. In all, there were 56 Alice shorts, made at Disney’s Silver Lake address (now the Hyperion Studio) between 1922 and 1927. More than 30 have been accounted for, including the first in the series, “Alice’s Wonderland.”

While he hasn’t yet seen the cartoon and can’t assess its exact value, Scott McQueen, head of library restoration at Disney, calls the find “great news . . . very exciting.” Disney, he points out, already has “the lion’s share” of “Alice” shorts, but has no legal rights to “Alice’s Spanish Guitar,” which is in the public domain. As for the owner’s no-copies mandate, that’s “unfortunate,” he adds. “That makes it tough for people to see or study it.”

Russell Merritt, co-author of “Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney,” calls such stipulations routine. “The conditions [of ownership] are not surprising, and archives do not relish having the uniqueness of their collection compromised.”

Cherchi Usai says Disney has already contacted him to see if a second negative could be struck. The answer was no. McQueen, in a later phone conversation, denied any knowledge of the find.

Little wonder everyone’s so circumspect. The world of the rare-print collector is straight out of a John le Carre espionage novel.

“In the past, production companies were not as friendly as they are today toward collectors and film archives,” Cherchi Usai says.”

Little needed to be done to restore “Alice,” says Cherchi Usai, who initially studied the film on a manual rewind bench. The nitrate print is in excellent shape. “I don’t think it has been run that many times. It even has the original leader.”

Film historian Merritt calls the new “Alice” a transitional work: “an [artistic] gamble of that middle period when Disney was still trying to expand the shape of his cartoons and make his animation more lifelike. At this point the live actor becomes less important.”

Bottom line, what is “Alice’s Spanish Guitar” worth?

“The value of a film like this, which can be instantly reproduced, is entirely aesthetic and historical, not monetary,” replies Merritt.

“How do you put a price tag on a piece of primitive filmmaking?” asks McQueen. “It’s not ‘Casablanca’ or ‘Gone With the Wind.’ It’s of interest to the cognoscenti and has very little commercial value.”

But McQueen acknowledges Disney would “always welcome” the film to its archive. “We would always be interested in repatriating or preserving the film.”