Long before animation became a billion-dollar empire—and decades before the world knew the name Mickey Mouse—there was Margaret J. Winkler, a determined young woman with a keen eye for talent and a business instinct sharper than any of her male contemporaries cared to admit.
Winkler arrived in Hollywood’s orbit not as an artist or producer, but as Harry Warner’s secretary, a role that in the early 1920s often meant being invisible while doing everything. Yet she was impossible to overlook. Organized, ambitious, and utterly unafraid of risk, she saw promise in the then-fledgling field of animated shorts at a time when most studios dismissed cartoons as novelties.
Garden of Shalom (Sect. 16, Row I, Grave 33)
In 1921, with characteristic boldness, she founded M. J. Winkler & Co., becoming the first woman in film history to distribute animated films. Her taste proved impeccable. Winkler secured distribution for Pat Sullivan’s Felix the Cat series—already popular, but under her steady promotion becoming a bona fide cultural phenomenon.
Then came her most consequential partnership: Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, two young men with big ideas and very little leverage. Winkler took a chance on them, signing their 26-episode series Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Oswald’s commercial success put Disney on the map—and when Disney famously lost the rights to Winkler’s husband and business partner Charles Mintz, it set off the creative spark that produced Mickey Mouse. Without Winkler’s early instinct for innovation, the entire landscape of American animation might look very different.
In 1923, she married Mintz, and together they built a bustling animation operation responsible for characters like Krazy Kat and the Scrappy cartoons of the 1930s. Yet within the studio walls, it was Margaret’s voice—steady, sharp, and strategic—that kept the business afloat. By all accounts, she was a stronger negotiator than Mintz and a more diplomatic force with distributors and artists alike.
After the birth of her daughters, Winkler gradually stepped away from the day-to-day whirlwind of the animation business. She retired quietly, her fingerprints still on some of the most influential characters ever created. While histories of early animation often spotlight its male pioneers, insiders knew the truth: Margaret Winkler had been the one holding the reins from the beginning.
She spent her later years in New York, living a private life far from the bustle of the studio system she helped shape. Margaret Winkler Mintz died on June 21, 1990, in Mamaroneck, New York, leaving behind a legacy every bit as vital as the icons she nurtured.
Today, she is remembered as a trailblazer, a woman who stepped into a male-dominated industry and proved—decades ahead of her time—that women not only belonged in animation, but they could also steer it, shape it, and push it toward greatness. Her legacy lingers in every frame drawn since.