We're thrilled and delighted to have lived long enough to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio opening in Hollywood, after an early stretch making Newman's Laugh-O-Grams in Kansas City. We're glad we got to see Leslie Iwerks, Ub's granddaughter and author (with John Kenworthy) of The Hand Behind the Mouse: An Intimate Biography of Ub Iwerks, do a presentation on Ub and Walt many moons ago:
We are saddened that two of the best cartoonologists and Walt Disney Productions historians, Jim Korkis and Russell Merritt, have passed and presumably found the drawing board and screening room in the Happy Hunting Ground. Have a hunch that Russell knows where the pristine 35mm nitrate prints in the next world are!
Today's post pays tribute to the early days of the Disney Brothers studio.
Walt and Roy moved with the Disney family to Kansas City, Missouri in 1911. The first Disney Brothers studio was located at 31st and First Avenue in Kansas City.
This is where Walt began his illustrious career as an animation producer.
The young K.C. studio made Newman's Laugh-O-Grams in 1921-1922.
Unfortunately, the Laugh-O-Grams studio went bankrupt after six films.
The last Laugh-o-Gram would be Alice's Wonderland, the debut of the next Disney Brothers studio endeavor, the Alice series. It's on the Walt Disney Treasures: Disney Rarities - Celebrated Shorts: 1920s–1960s DVD set (note: used copies can still be found of this collection on eBay).
The Disney Brothers studio relocated to the West Coast and began making cartoons in Walt and Roy's uncle Robert's garage at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles . . . on October 16, 1923.
In the same year in which Buster Keaton's Three Ages, Charlie Chaplin's The Pilgrim, Harold Lloyd's Why Worry and the Otto Messmer cartoon classic Felix in Hollywood were released to movie theaters, the Disney brothers studio, now in Los Feliz, began following Alice's Wonderland with 56 Alice comedies, combining animation with live-action. Alice's Wonderland, the unreleased Newmans Laugh-O-Gram, turned out to be the series pilot.
Alice comedies ran until the Disney studio started making Oswald The Lucky Rabbit cartoons for Universal Pictures in 1927.
Alice Comedies - several very entertaining entries poste don the YouTube Channel of Craig Davison, who has posted numerous animation rarities from the silent era.
Wikipedia elaborates: Kingswell Avenue in Los Feliz was home to the studio from 1923 to 1926. Kansas City, Missouri natives Walt Disney and Roy O. Disney founded Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio in Los Angeles in 1923 and got their start producing a series of silent Alice Comedies short films featuring a live-action child actress in an animated world. The Alice Comedies were distributed by Margaret J. Winkler's Winkler Pictures, which later also distributed a second Disney short subject series, the all-animated Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, through Universal Pictures starting in 1927.
Upon relocating to California, the Disney brothers initially started working in their uncle Robert Disney's garage at 4406 Kingswell Avenue, then, in October 1923, formally launched their studio in a small office on the rear side of a real estate agency's office at 4651 Kingswell Avenue. In February 1924, the studio moved next door to office space of its own at 4649 Kingswell Avenue. In 1925, Disney put down a deposit on a new location at 2719 Hyperion Avenue in the nearby Silver Lake neighborhood, which came to be known as the Hyperion Studio to distinguish it from the studio's other locations, and, in January 1926, the studio moved there and took on the name Walt Disney Studio.
Meanwhile, after the first year's worth of Oswalds, Walt Disney attempted to renew his contract with Winkler Pictures, but Charles Mintz, who had taken over Margaret Winkler's business after marrying her, wanted to force Disney to accept a lower advance payment for each Oswald short. Disney refused and, as Universal owned the rights to Oswald rather than Disney, Mintz set up his own animation studio to produce Oswald cartoons.
Ultimately, the joke would be on Mintz, who was subsequently informed that he didn't actually own the lucky rabbit. Ozzie was actually owned by Universal Pictures and the character would continue well into the sound era, thanks to the Walter Lantz studio.
Walt Disney's pre-Mickey Mouse cartoons from the 1920's are covered in depth in Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman's superlative and highly recommended Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney book.
As far as that lucky rabbit goes, well, what can the Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog gang say other than we LOVE Ozzie!
The following video of Oswald cartoons feature excellent commentary tracks by Mark Kausler, who knows more about animation history and the technique/practice of animation than anybody.
The Ozzie cartoons, notable for stellar work by such animation legends as Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudy Ising, Friz Freleng and Rollin "Ham" Hamilton are both enjoyable and fascinating, with early examples of what would turn up a couple of years later with Disney's Mickey Mouse and the early WB Looney Tunes cartoons.
Am partial to the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series over the Alice Comedies, partly due to the more advanced animation in the 1927-1928 series. David A. Bossert, J.B. Kaufman (Foreword) and David Gerstein (Archival Support) wrote a terrific book devoted to the Disney Oswalds.
The Walt Disney Treasures - The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit DVD came out back in 2007.
It's still available and a tad pricey, but well worth it for those who love animation history, silent cartoons and the evolution of Disney.
For the Disney Studio, it would be on to the successful Mickey and Silly Symphonies from here. Former Disney animators such as Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising formed their own studios.
For more info on Disney's 1920's cartoons, the transition to sound and Ub Iwerks, also read Michael Barrier's Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age, Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse, The Ultimate History by David Gerstein, J. B. Kaufman, Bob Iger and Daniel Kothenschulte (Editor), Walt Disney's Ultimate Inventor: The Genius of Ub Iwerks by Don Iwerks (with foreword by Leonard Maltin), Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman's Walt in Wonderland: The Silent Films of Walt Disney and Walt Disney’s Silly Symphonies – A Companion to the Classic Cartoon Series books.
Closing today's tribute: a clip from a Walt Disney studio walk-through in 1936.
For further info, check out the Walt Disney Family Museum website.
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