The Laugh-O-Gram Studio (also called Laugh-O-Gram Studios) was an animation studio located on the second floor of the McConahay Building at 1127 East 31st in Kansas City, Missouri, that operated from June 28, 1921, to October 16, 1923.
In 1921, Walt Disney was contracted by Milton Feld to animate twelve cartoons, which he called Newman's Laugh-O-Grams.[ChWDC 1] On May 23, 1922, when Disney was 20 years old, Laugh-O-Gram Films (LOGF) was incorporated by him using the remaining assets of the defunct Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists from local investors. LOGF produced nine of the requested 12 films with little income.[ChWDC 2] Encouraged and inspired by his shorts' popularity at the theatre, Disney decided he wanted to make his own animated versions of fairy tales too, and invested six months on his first attempt at Little Red Riding Hood.[1]
Among Disney's employees on the series were several pioneers of animation: Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Friz Freleng, and Carman Maxwell. The company had financial problems and by the end of 1922, Disney was living in the office and taking baths once a week at Union Station.
During the studio's sales manager Leslie Mace's stay in New York, where he was looking for distributors, he ended up signing a contract for six animated shorts with Pictorial Clubs, Inc. of Tennessee on Sunday, September 16, 1922. Pictorial agreed to pay US$11,000(equivalent to $200,231 in 2023) for the cartoons, which were supposed to be shown at schools and other non-theatrical places, but only paid $100 in advance. The rest of the payment would have to wait until January 1, 1924, when all the shorts had been delivered. When Pictorial went bankrupt only a few months later, the studio never received the rest of the payment, its financial problems became even more serious, and the staff ended up leaving. When the local Kansas City dentist Thomas B. McCrum, from the Deener Dental Institute, contacted Disney and offered him the job of producing a short subject about dental hygiene intended for the Missouri school system,[2] he brought together some of his staff again and made Tommy Tucker's Tooth, which earned the studio $500. Instead of paying off his creditors, the money was invested in the live-action/animation demonstration film Alice's Wonderland, starring the youthful Virginia Davis. Disney had noted how popular the Out of the Inkwell series from the Fleischer Studios was, which had animated characters interacting with the real world. By reversing this gimmick and using a real-life character in a cartoon universe instead, he hoped for a hit. Virginia Davis's contract with Laugh-O-Gram was signed by her parents on April 23, 1923, with terms giving her 5% of the Alice's Wonderland film's receipts.[ChWDC 3] Looking for a distributor for Alice's Wonderland on May 14, Disney wrote to Margaret Winkler, a New York film distributor.[ChWDC 4]
After finishing the raw edits of Alice's Wonderland,[ChWDC 5] the studio filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 1923.[ChWDC 6] Disney finally made some money by shooting a film of a 6-month-old girl named Kathalee Viley[3] and selling his movie camera, earning enough for a one-way train ticket, moving to Hollywood, California; he brought along an unfinished reel of Alice's Wonderland.
The bankruptcy trustee was able to force LOGF's erstwhile distributor and debtor, Pictorial Films, Inc., to pay LOGF's agents the sum owed while agreeing that Pictorial could exercise its contractual distribution rights for LOGF works and to purchase several of LOGF's films: The Four Musicians of Bremen, Jack the Giant Killer, the Lafflets series, and Alice's Wonderland.[4]
The studio building fell to ruin and efforts were made to restore it by a non-profit group called "Thank You, Walt Disney". The Disney family promised $450,000 in matching funds for the rights to other Disney memorabilia and to tell the history of Walt Disney's life in Kansas City, a movie house to exhibit original and restored Laugh-O-Grams, and an education center for animation workshops.[5]
On July 30, 2021, a black Dodge Charger struck the building and caused significant damage to the exterior. The incident occurred early in the morning, the driver fleeing the scene, though authorities subsequently found a woman's driving license and a margarita within the vehicle. Butch Rigby, who launched the campaign to save and restore the building, described the incident optimistically: "The bottom line, it's a bump in the road, but it could have been worse".[6]
Inspiration for Mickey Mouse
McConahay Building in 2004
Left side of the Thank You Walt Disney mural
Disney told interviewers that the inspiration to draw Mickey came from a tame mouse at his desk at Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri.
They used to fight for little pieces of cheese in my waste-basket when I worked alone late at night. I lifted them out and kept them in wire cages on my desk. I grew particularly fond of one brown house mouse. He was a timid little guy. By tapping him on the nose with my pencil, I trained him to run inside a black circle I drew on my drawing board. When I left Kansas City to try my luck at Hollywood, I hated to leave him behind. So I carefully carried him to a backyard, making sure it was a nice neighborhood, and the tame little fellow scampered to freedom.[7]
In 1928 during a train trip to New York, he showed the drawing to his wife Lillian Marie Bounds and said he was going to call it "Mortimer Mouse". She replied that the name sounded "too pompous" and suggested Mickey Mouse instead.[7]
Filmography
Of the original seven Laugh-O-Grams fairy tales, four were long known to have survived, and have been restored for DVD: Newman Laugh-O-Grams (1921), Little Red Riding Hood (1922), The Four Musicians of Bremen (1922), Puss in Boots (1922), and Cinderella (1922). These shorts later became available on Blu-ray Disc as bonus features for Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Tommy Tucker's Tooth (1922) and Alice's Wonderland (1923) are also available on DVD, and Alice's Wonderland eventually became a bonus feature for the 60th Anniversary Blu-ray Edition of Alice in Wonderland. The original piece of filming and animation known as Newman Laugh-O-Grams (originally released theatrically on March 20, 1921)[8] is available on some DVDs too. In accordance with United States copyright law, all 11 shorts produced by the studio have entered into the public domain as of 2019.[9]
The missing fairy tale cartoons were Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Killer, and Goldie Locks and the Three Bears (all 1922). In October 2010, copies of all three cartoons had been found according to animation historian David Gerstein.[10][11] For many years the two Jack cartoons were believed to be one, until researcher John Kenworthy located old studio assets sheets confirming that they were separate shorts.[12]
Year
Film
Notes
The short
1921
Newman Laugh-O-Grams
The pilot and only surviving piece of an old newsreel series that was only seen at Newman Theater.
Walt Disney's first "real" cartoon. Briefly features Julius the Cat, here unnamed. Later reissued with synchronized sound in 1929–1930 as a Whoopee Sketches (USA) and Peter the Puss (UK) cartoon, retitled Grandma Steps Out.
Featuring Julius the Cat, here unnamed. Later reissued with synchronized sound in 1929–1930 as a Whoopee Sketches (USA) and Peter the Puss (UK) cartoon, retitled The Four Jazz Boys.
Featuring Jack and Julius the Cat, here unnamed. Later reissued with synchronized sound in 1929–1930 as a Whoopee Sketches (USA) and Peter the Puss (UK) cartoon, retitled On the Up and Up.
1922
Jack the Giant Killer
Featuring Jack, Susie, and Julius the Cat, here unnamed. Later reissued with synchronized sound in 1929–1930 as a Whoopee Sketches (USA) and Peter the Puss (UK) cartoon, retitled The K-O Kid.
Featuring Julius the Cat, here unnamed. Later reissued with synchronized sound in 1929–1930 as a Whoopee Sketches (USA) and Peter the Puss (UK) cartoon, retitled The Peroxide Kid.
Featuring Jack, Susie, and Julius the Cat, here unnamed. The king in the cartoon also made a cameo in the 1922 Laugh-O-Gram Cinderella. Later reissued with synchronized sound in 1929–1930 as a Whoopee Sketches (USA) and Peter the Puss (UK) cartoon, retitled The Cat's Whiskers.
Featuring Susie (as Cinderella), Jack (as the Prince), and Julius the Cat, here unnamed. Later reissued with synchronized sound in 1929–1930 as a Whoopee Sketches (USA) and Peter the Puss (UK) cartoon, retitled The Slippery Kid.
Ubbe Ert Iwerks, known as Ub Iwerks, was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician, known for his work with Walt Disney Animation Studios in general, and for having worked on the development of the design of the character of Mickey Mouse, among others. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Iwerks grew up with a contentious relationship with his father, who abandoned him as a child. Iwerks met fellow artist Walt Disney while working at a Kansas City art studio in 1919.
The Alice Comedies are a series of animated/live-action shorts created by Walt Disney in the 1920s, in which a live action little girl named Alice and an animated cat named Julius have adventures in an animated landscape. The shorts were the first work by what ultimately became The Walt Disney Company.
Silly Symphony is an American animated series of 75 musical short films produced by Walt Disney Productions from 1929 to 1939. As the series name implies, the Silly Symphonies were originally intended as whimsical accompaniments to pieces of music. As such, the films usually did not feature continuing characters, unlike the Mickey Mouse shorts produced by Disney at the same time. The series is notable for its innovation with Technicolor and the multiplane motion picture camera, as well as its introduction of the character Donald Duck making his first appearance in the Silly Symphony cartoon The Wise Little Hen in 1934. Seven shorts won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film.
The golden age of American animation was a period in the history of U.S. animation that began with the popularization of sound synchronized cartoons in 1928 and gradually ended in the 1960s when theatrical animated shorts started to lose popularity to the newer medium of television. Animated media from after the golden age, especially on television, were produced on cheaper budgets and with more limited techniques between the 1960s and 1980s.
Margaret J. Winkler Mintz was a key figure in silent animation history, having a crucial role to play in the histories of Max and Dave Fleischer, Pat Sullivan, Otto Messmer, and Walt Disney. She was the first woman to produce and distribute animated films. Winkler was the subject of the feature film Walt Before Mickey.
Virginia Davis was an American child actress in films. She is best known for working with Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks on the animated short series Alice Comedies, in which she portrayed the protagonist Alice.
Trolley Troubles is a 1927 animated short subject film, produced by Charles Mintz and George Winkler and directed by Walt Disney. The cartoon is the first appearance of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a character that Disney and Ub Iwerks created for Universal Pictures and Charles B. Mintz.
Aesop's Fables is a series of animated short subjects, created by American cartoonist Paul Terry. Produced from 1921 to 1933, the series includes The Window Washers (1925), Scrambled Eggs (1926), Small Town Sheriff (1927), Dinner Time (1928), and Gypped in Egypt (1930). Dinner Time is the first cartoon with a synchronized soundtrack ever released to the public. The series provided inspiration to Walt Disney to found the Laugh-O-Gram Studio in Kansas City, Missouri, where he created Mickey Mouse.
The Skeleton Dance is a 1929 Silly Symphony animated short subject produced and directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks. In the film, four human skeletons dance and make music around a spooky graveyard—a modern film example of medieval European "danse macabre" imagery. It is the first entry in the Silly Symphony series. In 1993, to coincide with the opening of Mickey's Toontown in Disneyland, a shortened cover of the cartoon's music was arranged to be featured in the land's background ambiance. The short's copyright was renewed in 1957, and as a published work from 1929 it will enter the US public domain on January 1, 2025.
Wild Waves is a Mickey Mouse short animated film first released on December 18, 1929, as part of the Mickey Mouse film series. It was the fifteenth Mickey Mouse short to be produced, the twelfth of that year, as well as the last to be released by Celebrity Productions before Columbia Pictures took over distribution.
The Barn Dance is a Mickey Mouse short animated film first released on March 15, 1929, as part of the Mickey Mouse film series; it was the first of twelve shorts released during that year. It was directed by Walt Disney with Ub Iwerks as the head animator. The title is written as Barn Dance on the poster, while the full title is used on the title screen.
Puss in Boots is a 1922 film directed by Walt Disney. The film was based on the book by Charles Perrault.
When the Cat's Away is a Mickey Mouse short animated film first released on May 3, 1929, as part of the Mickey Mouse film series. It was directed by Walt Disney and animated by Ub Iwerks and Ben Sharpsteen. It was the sixth Mickey Mouse short to be produced, the third of that year. In this cartoon, Mickey and Minnie are the size of regular mice, and Tom Cat is the size of a person.
Little Red Riding Hood is a short animated film by Walt Disney that is a rendition of the traditional story of Little Red Riding Hood. The film is part of the Laugh-O-Grams series that was released in 1922. This is one of the first cartoons by Disney, and considered to be Disney's first attempt at animated storytelling. Rather than using animation cels, it was made mostly by photographing inked lines on paper. The film was considered to be lost for many years and it was listed in 1980 on the American Film Institute's "10 Most Wanted Films for Archival Preservation". A print of the film was discovered by British collector David Wyatt in a London film library in 1998 and was restored the same year.
Fiddlin’ Around is a 1930 animated short film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by Columbia Pictures as part of the Mickey Mouse film series. It was the sixteenth Mickey Mouse short to be produced, the first of that year.
Arctic Antics is a Silly Symphonies animated Disney short film. It was released on June 26, 1930.
Julius the Cat is a fictional anthropomorphic cat created in 1922 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. He first appeared in the very first animated series created by Disney, the Alice Comedies, making him the predecessor of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse. Julius is an anthropomorphic cat, appearing intentionally similar to Felix the Cat. A bold and inventive hero, he gradually became the primary focus of the Alice Comedies, to the point Disney abandoned live action for pure animation on subsequent projects.
Walt Before Mickey is a 2015 American biographical drama film about the early years of Walt Disney based on the book Walt Before Mickey: Disney's Early Years, 1919–1928 by Timothy S. Susanin, with a foreword written by Diane Disney. The film stars Thomas Ian Nicholas as Walt Disney, Armando Gutierrez as Ub Iwerks, and Jon Heder as Roy Disney.
↑ "1919–1924". Archived from the original on October 19, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013. Source: Page 67. "Disney's World", by Leonard Mosley, 1985.
↑ "1919–1924". Archived from the original on October 19, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013. Sources:
The Disney Studio Story, by Richard Holliss and Brian Sibley, 1988.
The Art of Walt Disney – From Mickey Mouse to the Magic Kingdoms, by Christopher Finch, 1973.
Disney's Art of Animation – From Mickey Mouse to Beauty and the Beast, by Bob Thomas, 1991.
Page 19. Walt Disney – Hollywood's Dark Prince, by Marc Eliot, 1993.
Page 67. "Disney's World", by Leonard Mosley, 1985.
Page 140. The International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers: Volume II – Directors/Filmmakers, by Christopher Lyon, 1984.
Page 62. Walt Disney – An American Original, by Bob Thomas, 1994.
Page 40. Walt in Wonderland – The Silent Films of Walt Disney, by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman, 1993.
Page 41. Walt Disney, by Jim Fanning, 1994.
Page 9. Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse – His Life and Times, by Richard Holliss, 1986.
Page 41. Walt Disney – Pop Culture Legends, by Jim Fanning, 1994.
Page 42. Building a Company – Roy O. Disney and the Creation of an Entertainment Empire, by Bob Thomas, 1998.
Page 13. Disney – The First 100 Years, updated edition, by Dave Smith and Steven Clark, 2002.
Page 61. Walt Disney – The Triumph of the American Imagination, by Neal Gabler, 2006.
↑ "1919–1924". Archived from the original on October 19, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013. Source: page 49. Walt in Wonderland – The Silent Films of Walt Disney, by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman, 1993.
↑ "1919–1924". Archived from the original on October 19, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013. Sources:
Page 22. Walt Disney – Hollywood's Dark Prince, by Marc Eliot, 1993.
Page 52. Walt in Wonderland – The Silent Films of Walt Disney, by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman, 1993.
Page 79. Walt Disney – The Triumph of the American Imagination, by Neal Gabler, 2006.
↑ "1919–1924". Archived from the original on October 19, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013. Sources: [16] [23] [24] [40.69] [63.50]
↑ "1919–1924". Archived from the original on October 19, 2013. Retrieved December 3, 2013. Sources: [1] [34.22] [1102.72] (spring [40.71]) (August [63.51])
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