Hey Guys! I'm new to this forum but I figured you guys might be able to help me out with something! I just 2 days ago purchased a 16mm reel on eBay containing two cartoons.
1. "Winter Days by Walt Disney, An Alice Comedy" 2. "Willie's Dream"
The listing stated that they suspected that Winter Days was an early cut or variant print of the 1926 short "Alice's Orphan" which I am inclined to agree with, the second however, is a mystery!
Here are some photos from the listing:
Winter Days:
Willie's Dream:
I DO NOT YET HAVE THE REEL! ITS STILL IN THE MAIL AND SHOULD BE HERE WITHIN THE NEXT WEEK!
The seller stated that "Willie's Dream" appears to be about some toys coming to life à la Toy Story. He speculated it could be a Disney film since the title-card has a pair of mice on it similar in design to Mickey Mouse, and also because of its location on the reel with the Alice Comedies short.
I did some digging and I ended up finding a reference to a film titled "Willie's Dream" in a 1907 film catalog with an authorship of "Miles Bros." Miles Brothers were a company who were very involved in the early film scene, making several important live action recordings of roadways and things in the early 1900s.
Case closed right? Well nope, If that were the case that would mean that this Willie's Dream animation predated Phantasmagorie, the first animated short ever, plus it doesnt seem to match the Miles Bros M.O. as they seemed to focus on live action films not animated content.
Anyway the film should arrive soon and i plan to have them both scanned professionally and probably uploaded to YT, let me know if anyone can shine some light on this mystery!
Youtube compresses the video, and the grain on film makes raw film scans looking disgusting on Youtube. I would recommend uploading the scans to something like MEGA.nz or Archive.org. I am very intrested in it and would like to try to restore the scans when they are finished, very intresting find mat.
also the film that is called "Willies Dream" does not look like the one you listed from 1907, The print itself is most likely from 1932-1935, as it has a bootleg Mickey and Bootleg Felix on the title card. I found records of 3 lost films "Dolly's Toys (1901)", "The Enchanted Toymaker (1904)", and "Dreams of Toyland (1908)" by Arthur Melbourne-Cooper that might be it looking at the screenshots. However it says that the first 2 might've used stop-motion. The best bet is that it might be "Dreams Of Toyland" due to a similar name and the description I found is that it "features a scene with many animated toys that lasts circa three and a half minutes." If not it could one of the lost works of Quirino Cristiani as it does have a similar cut-out style to his works from before the 30s, And this looks like a cheap bootleg that might've stolen the animation, or just bought the rights to it.
Thank you for replying!!! i looked into dreams of toyland and a video of it does exist, however its completely live action (it uses stop motion but no actual drawings, all props and people). I think you might be right about the idea that it could be a bootleg, I'll take your advice and mirror it on Archive as well, I completely forgot about YouTube's additional video compression lol. I plan to get them scanned frame-by-frame in 4k (Or 2k depending on what kinda equipment the film lab I end up getting it done at has) so it might be an enormous file haha. I've also got another print on 16mm of Out of The Inkwell: Fishing by Max Fleischer (1921) which i plan to have scanned aswell! ^u^ I'll be sure to update this when i get them and have them scanned!!!