Margaret J. Winkler

Margaret Winkler Mintz, After marrying fellow film executive Charles Mintz and starting a family, Winkler retired from the film industry.

Career Winkler began her career as the personal secretary of Harry Warner, one of the founders and then-leader of Warner Bros. Pictures. Through most of the silent era, Warner Bros. was strictly a film distributor, and Harry Warner, as president, made the distribution deals. In 1917, Warner Bros. began distributing animated cartoon short films featuring Mutt and Jeff in New York and New Jersey. Warner was impressed with Winkler's talents.

In 1921, animation producer Pat Sullivan approached Warner, seeking distribution for his new Felix the Cat cartoon shorts. Wanting to withdraw from distributing cartoon shorts (at the time experiencing a lull in popularity), Warner, who disliked cartoons but was impressed by Winkler's competence, encouraged her to start her own company and distribute Sullivan's series. Winkler founded M.J. Winkler Productions. As one of the few women executives in the film industry, Winkler named her company - and signed her name - as "M.J. Winkler" to disguise her gender. Lacking a middle name, she'd added the "J" initial for professional use.

In 1922, Winkler signed with Pat Sullivan Productions to distribute the Felix the Cat cartoons. The following year, she signed another contract to distribute the Out of the Inkwell series for Max and Dave Fleischer's Inkwell Studios. Winkler was intrigued with the idea of a live-action girl in a cartoon world, and signed Disney in October 1923 to a year-long contract to produce an Alice Comedies series.

Walt Disney did not inform Winkler that Laugh-O-Gram Studio, where he had made Alice's Wonderland, was now bankrupt, and Disney had moved to Los Angeles. He instead quickly formed a new studio, Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, with his brother Roy, and recruited his Laugh-O-Grams partner Ub Iwerks and many of their animators - Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, Carman Maxwell, and Isadore "Friz" Freleng - to come to Hollywood and work for them. Disney Brothers was the first cartoon studio in Hollywood and eventually changed its name to Walt Disney Productions. Disney was helped by the tutelage of Winkler, who insisted on editing all of the Alice Comedies herself. One of her suggestions was the addition of a suspiciously Felix-like anthropomorphic cat character called Julius. This was apparently the "straw that broke the camel's back" for Sullivan, who parted company with Winkler and signed with rival distributor E. W. Hammons of Educational Pictures in 1925. In 1925, she began self-producing a series of Krazy Kat cartoons with Bill Nolan as the creative producer/director.

In November 1923, Winkler married Charles Mintz, a film distributor who had been working for her since 1922.

Winkler died on 21 June 1990, in Mamaroneck, New York at the age of 95.

Filmography

Year Title Role Notes Source1922 Felix the Cat Distributor All Episodes 1922 Out of the Inkwell Distributor 1923 Alice Comedies Distributor