CARTOON PRODUCER RECALLS EARLY DAYS

WHEN she was 18 years old, Margaret J. Winkler worked as a private secretary to the motion-picture magnate Harry Warner in his Manhattan office. At 26, she began her own company to produce and distribute animated cartoons, including Pat Sullivan's ''Felix the Cat'' and Walt Disney's ''Alice in Cartoonland.''

''How did you do it?'' a Boston newspaper reporter once asked her. ''Are people surprised to find out that M. J. Winkler Productions is owned by a woman?'' The year was 1923. The world's first female producer and distributor of cartoons answered the question with modesty and humor. She said that men were ''sometimes scared, but they got over it.''

Now living in Mamaroneck, in the minimum-care unit at the Sarah R. Neuman Nursing Home, Margaret (nee Winkler) Mintz celebrated her 90th birthday last Monday, with laughter and a large birthday cake.

''It all just came naturally,'' Mrs. Mintz said in an interview before her birthday. ''I suppose I surprised people. But to me, well, it was just matter of fact.''

After her marriage, she turned her company over to her husband, Charles, and lived in Beverly Hills, Calif., for five decades.

Motion pictures were in their infancy when Mrs. Mintz began her career. The first public movies were shown in Paris by Louis and Auguste Lumiere in the year she was born, 1895. D. W. Griffith produced his ''Birth of a Nation'' in 1915, and the year M. J. Winkler Productions became a company, Griffith's ''Orphans of the Storm'' was released.

The teen-ager who went to work for Warner Brothers did not feel that she was part of a soon-to-be giant industry. She recalls that she was simply happy to be employed. She and her three brothers lived in Harlem. Their father was a tailor. Their mother died when Margaret was 6 and homemaking responsibilities fell to the small daughter until her father remarried.

She had no formal business training and no driving ambition to found her own company, she said, but one day the cartoonist Pat Sullivan strolled into her office and showed her a series he was trying to sell. Warner Brothers was not interested in ''Felix the Cat,'' he told her.

In February 1922, an announcement was made in Motion Picture World, a trade journal: ''M. J. Winkler leaves Warner's . . . Will market independent films.'' The young entrepreneur experimented with production work herself, she said, but soon hired producers so that she could concentrate on distribution.

A fat scrapbook filled with newspaper clippings, moving picture program listings (common in the 1920's) and menus from special-showing dinners tells the M. J. Winkler Productions success story. The scrapbook is now kept by the Mrs. Mintz's daughter, Kathryn Fish of Larchmont.

''I carried this book with me on the plane when I helped my mother move from California,'' said Mrs. Fish. That was five years ago, when Mrs. Mintz left her long-time home to live near her daughter.

''When I look at the clippings, I just marvel that mother could have done all that she did,'' Mrs. Fish added.

Soon after M. J. Winkler Productions was formed, advertising campaigns began for ''Felix Saves the Day,'' ''Felix All at Sea'' and ''Felix 50-50.'' Movie reviewers tackled the cartoon phenomenon with glee.

Typical praise came from the New York Daily News critic P. W. Gallico, who wrote not only about Felix but about ''the delightful elasticity of Mr. Sullivan's elephant.'' P. W. Gallico was Paul Gallico, who later earned fame as a sportswriter and novelist.

In Britain, where marketing specialists embraced Felix, M. J. Winkler sold the rights to Felix combs, tie pins, silver spoons, candles, blankets, pins and radiator tops. Felix dolls - black and white velvet - were made by the Gund Manufacturing Company. An auto dealer bought the rights to use the cartoon logo for his Felix Chevrolet in Hollywood. Crystal radio sets, encased in Felix the Cat bodies, were lined up on store counters.

In 1923, M. J. Winkler Productions was the largest distributor of short subjects in the world. In addition to Felix cartoons, the company sold rights to show Edgar Guest's ''Just Folks'' series and Burton Holmes's ''Snapshots of Europe.''

That was the year Walter Disney, 22, showed up in M. J. Winkler's office, at 220 West 22d Street, to discuss his idea for a cartoon series. The cartoons would feature a real little girl, named Alice, he said. He showed his sketches, detailing cartoon figures that would surround Alice.

''Walt Disney was very likable,'' Mrs. Mintz recalled, adding that his humor came through in his cartoons rather than his conversation.

Soon ''Alice's Wild West Show'' and ''Alice's Day at Sea,'' starring Virginia Davis and her police dog, Peggy, were being distributed. Mr. Disney, who was juxtaposing human and cartoon action, produced the ''Alice'' cartoons in Hollywood, where George Winkler, one of Mrs. Mintz's brothers, had set up a branch office.

New York movie houses, like the Rivoli Revue and the Mark Strand Theater, gave cartoons central positions on their programs in the 1920's. From their 77-cent orchestra seats, or their 45-cent balcony seats, audiences could applaud silent movie stars like Pola Negri in ''Belladona''; dancers in numbers such as ''Roses of the South''; an orchestra performing classical jazz and the latest M. J. Winkler production all in one evening. Margaret Winkler and Charles Mintz enjoyed many such evenings. They had met while both worked for Warner Brothers, and they married in November 1923. The following year Mr. Mintz took over the operation of the company.

The couple lived in Manhattan and Mr. Mintz produced ''Oswald the Rabbit,'' which was originated by Walt Disney, and introduced ''Krazy Kat.''

By 1930, Mrs. Mintz was a mother of two children and no longer took part in the business she had founded. She said she ''never really thought about it.''

After moving to Beverly Hills in 1931, and the death of her husband in 1939, Mrs. Mintz donated her time as a volunteer - to the Red Cross and Travelers' Aid, during World War II, and to the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

''I got more pleasure out of my volunteer work than anything else in my life,'' said Mrs. Mintz, showing a certificate from the medical center commending her for 35 years of service, from 1940 to 1975.

''I was able to take a personal interest in people,'' she said. ''I visited homes, and could help families who didn't know how to help themselves.''

Now that she is living in Mamaroneck, Mrs. Mintz said, she was looking for new opportunities to volunteer. She knits scarves, lap robes and berets for the Red Cross but said that she hoped to find more projects.