July 29 - Laugh-O-Gram Studio

Image courtesy wikipedia.org

On this day, in 1922, the Laugh-O-gram Studio of Kansas City, Missouri released its first cartoon that was more than a single gag, Little Red Riding Hood. In June 1921, a young artist by the name of Walter Elias Disney was contracted by a Kansas City theater manager, Milton Feld, to produce one minute cartoons that would be inserted into the newsreels shown before each feature at the Newman chain of theaters. Walt, only 19 at the time, drew the short films entirely on his own in the evenings after working all day at the Kansas City Ad Agency. The topics of the jokes in the shorts were all pulled from local Kansas City happenings, making the Newman Laugh-O-grams (as they were called; notice the lower case g on grams that Walt insisted on) a kind of editorial cartoon that moved. One week the punch line might be about pot holes, the next lampooning ladies fashion and the next showcasing a police scandal. Walt also drew pieces for the Newman Theater’s birthday celebration and one reminding audience members to refrain from reading the title cards out loud (a precursor to the silence your cell phone announcements of today). Most of the Newman Laugh-O-grams have been lost to history as film in those days was highly flammable and wasn’t kept around once it had been shown. The few pieces that do survive were part of a sample sales reel that Walt presumably brought with him when he later moved to California.

Image courtesy laughogram.org

The Newman Laugh-O-grams made Walt something of a local celebrity. People were starting to praise his humor and inventiveness. His success prompted Walt to place an ad in the paper promising to teach cartoonists the new art of animation. Several young artists responded, including Rudy Ising and Hugh Harman, both of whom would go on to great success at Warner Brothers. With all this helpful talent beginning to coalesce around him, Walt decided it was time to start his own animation studio. He couldn’t run it out of his family’s garage anymore (and not just because they’d moved to Oregon at this point) so he rented out space in the McConahy Building at 1127 East 31^st Street, occupying five rooms on the west end of the second floor. On May 18, 1922, the Laugh-O-gram animation studio (Walt continued the name since it was already recognizable) was officially incorporated, albeit illegally incorporated. Walt was listed as the studio’s president even though he wasn’t quite old enough to legally hold the position.

Image courtesy youtube.com

Walt knew that his strengths lay in telling stories over drawing pictures, so he left most of the actual animation work to his young staff, although he did just about everything else at the studio. What they clearly lacked in experience and skill, they more than made for in enthusiasm and many of them would eventually become masters of the art form. In addition to Rudy and Hugh, Laugh-O-gram’s staff included Carman Maxwell and Friz Freleng (both of whom also found success at Warner Brothers), Lorey Tague,  Otto Walliman and Red Lyon. Walt’s old friend from the Kansas City Ad Agency, Ub Iwerks, also helped out a great deal, but since he was his mother’s sole means of support he couldn’t leave the steady paycheck behind to join Walt full time. The Ink and Paint Department consisted of one young woman, Aletha Reynolds. And, just to prove what a small world it really is, Carl Stalling, who would be part of bringing sound to Disney cartoons and later become a musical god at Warner Brothers, played the organ at the movie theater just around the corner from the studio. He and Walt started their friendship at this same time.

Image courtesy imdb.com

It took months for Walt and his crew to painstakingly finish their first six minute cartoon, Little Red Riding Hood. Red would be the only Laugh-O-gram cartoon that was drawn on sheets of paper rather than on sheets of celluloid before being photographed. To streamline the process, generic characters were created of a girl, a boy, a dog, etc. that could be used in later films as different characters. Model sheets were created of each character showing front and side views in close ups, medium and long shots that could be traced to help with consistency.  Now that the studio had a product, it needed a distribution deal.

In September 1922, Laugh-O-gram Studio signed a multi-picture deal with Pictorial Clubs of Tennessee for $11,000. It sounded like the onset of a dream come true, but was in reality the beginning a nightmare for several reasons. Walt only got $100 up front, with the balance being due on delivery of the sixth film. That meant he didn’t have any operating capital to actually produce anything. To make matters worse, PCT went bankrupt just months after signing the deal without ever paying Walt any more of the remaining balance. What really sealed Laugh-O-gram’s fate though is what happened next. A New York company, also called Pictorial Clubs, acquired the Tennessee group’s assets. That included Red, The Four Musicians of Bremen, Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack and the Giant Killer (all of which were already completed) and three more cartoons that had yet to be produced. The horrible part of the acquisition deal, however, was that the new Pictorial Clubs wasn’t responsible for any of the old Clubs’ debt. Which meant that Laugh-O-grams was required to make more cartoons but wasn’t required to get paid for them.

Image courtesy youtube.com

One by one, all of Walt’s staff would leave the studio and return to regular paying jobs. Walt would shrink his studio to just two rooms while at the same time living there himself. Laugh-O-gram managed to squeeze out the other three films, based on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Puss in Boots and Cinderella. Walt then tried different schemes to try to save his company. He made several short films he called Lafflets, basically reviving the format of the Newman Laugh-O-grams but for a wider audience. He filmed a live action pilot for a series of sing along shorts under the brand Sing-O-Reel. He convinced a local dentist to pay him $500 to make a cartoon about dental hygiene, Tommy Tucker’s Tooth, that was distributed not to theaters but to schools.

Image courtesy thedissolve.com

With the money from Tooth burning a hole in his pocket, Walt decided to do something creative with it rather than pay off creditors. He managed to hire a little girl named Virginia Davis to star as a live action girl in a cartoon world. He sweet talked his old crew into doing the animated parts of the new film and ended up with a 12 minute 29 second new lease on life. Because let’s be honest. The seven shorts that ended up going to Pictorial Clubs were nothing special. Sure the boys at Laugh-O-gram got better and better with each new project, but collectively their work wasn’t much different from a lot of run of the mill animation at the time. All their talents, though, came together and bloomed on their final collaboration. Called Alice’s Wonderland, it would become the film that launched an empire. Not an empire called Laugh-O-gram, though. That company was dead as a doornail.

Image courtesy d23.com

Before Walt could leave Kansas City to visit his brother Roy out in California, he had one more scheme to raise the price of a train ticket. He charged new parents a fee to film their babies and then stage a showing of that film for friends and families in their own living rooms. It might have reduced Walt from the head of his own studio to being nothing more than a high priced children’s photographer, but it provided the link to the future that he needed. With the proceeds he made from several of those sessions, coupled with what he got for selling his camera, Walt was able to take his print of Alice’s Wonderland, make his way to California and start some serious cinematic history.

Image courtesy g105.iheart.com

Incidentally, if you read the name of the man who gave Walt that first contract at the beginning of this post and thought to yourself, I think I’ve heard the name Feld in some other connection with Disney, you’re right. Milton Feld went on to be a circus promoter which led to booking and promoting other forms of travelling entertainment. Years after both Walt and Milton died, the Feld Family would purchase the Ice Follies and approach the Walt Disney Company about creating a Disney themed show. The first Disney on Ice show debuted in 1981 presented by Feld Entertainment and has been going (and growing) strong ever since.