Part VII
Chapter Nineteen
Arriving in Los Angeles a few days later presented a fresh start for the young Walt Disney. With 1 August coming to pass as he rode the train west, a new month had begun putting the events of the previous month behind him. He didn’t owe money to anyone in town and had nothing but opportunities for work in the film industry. And perhaps most important of all, he was near family once again. Roy, who had moved to Glendale three years earlier, had worked for a time as a door-to-door vacuum salesman. However, when he experienced a relapse of tuberculosis, he checked himself into the VA hospital in Sawtelle, a suburb west of Los Angeles. Walt also finally had a place to live: shortly after the death of Aunt Margaret, Uncle Robert had moved to a small bungalow at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in the town of Los Feliz, located a few kilometres north of Los Angeles, and he invited his newly-arrived nephew to move in with him.
Almost immediately, Walt, the aspiring director, began to visit the large studio lots throughout Hollywood, not only enamoured by the film culture but also looking for work. To appear more professional, he ordered business cards listing himself as the Kansas City representative of Universal and Selznick Newsreels. Donning the outfit he’d received from Mrs Rast, Walt confidently marched up to the front gates of Universal Studios, thrusting his business card at the attendant and asking for a pass to enter the studio. Walt seemed so official that he immediately received a pass unchallenged and spent many days, from morning to night, wandering the lot, entering sound stages, and watching productions. Over the next few weeks, he made his way into other studio lots, including Vitagraph, Paramount, and Metro-Goldwyn. Among the many films he saw being made were The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Lon Cheney, and Cecile B. DeMille’s The Ten Commandments, and he also rubbed shoulders with the likes of Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino. While each personnel department at the respective studios rejected the enthusiastic young man as a director, he was lucky to land a rare part as a film extra, riding a horse in a western film. Unfortunately, even that didn’t work out for him, as the shoot he was scheduled for got rained off and his role was quickly replaced. He somehow even ended up in the offices of film producers, his reel of Alice’s Wonderland tucked under his arm, petitioning them to distribute his animated short, but to no avail.
After several weeks of this, Uncle Robert was beginning to get frustrated with Walt’s idleness. While Roy usually defended his kid brother from adults’ unwarranted scolding, this time he agreed with his uncle: enough of wandering Hollywood chasing dreams, he wrote from his hospital bed in Sawtelle, “It’s time to find a job.”
The bankruptcy proceedings for Laugh-O-gram Films continued in Walt’s absence. With the folding of the Tennessee branch of Pictorial Clubs, Walt had been unable to pay off creditors or investors. Luckily for them, a law firm that had been hired by his creditors was able to extract some money from the New York branch, enough to restore investments by about 45 per cent. Lienholders sold off the remaining assets from the defunct Laugh-O-gram studio, and on 30 October 1923, Walt’s Kansas City studio ceased to exist.
Walt recognised that he hadn’t had much success with creating the animated fairy tales for Pictorial Clubs and didn’t have the manpower to make another short like Alice’s Wonderland. Instead, he decided to pursue in Hollywood what he’d found success with in Kansas City: creating gag reels like he’d done for Frank Newman’s theatres. Carrying some samples with him, Walt made his way to the office of Alexander Pantages, the owner of a chain of movie and vaudeville theatres throughout Los Angeles. Not wanting to be rejected outright by a secretary, he waited until he could waylay Pantages himself. However, after waiting a while, he resorted to stopping one of the executive’s assistants and began to pitch his idea.
“I’m sorry,” the assistant stated with exasperation, feeling like his time was being wasted. “I’m afraid Mr Pantages isn’t interested.”
“Who says I’m not interested?” roared a voice from a nearby open door. Suddenly, a towering figure filled the doorway. The assistant seemed to shrink back, colour draining from his face at the appearance of Pantages himself. The executive exuded authority with a serious look always showing on his face due to his heavy dark eyebrows and thick lips. The power he had was magnified by his obvious wealth, highlighted by his slicked hair parted down the middle and his expensive suit, the buttons of the pinstriped waistcoat straining behind the man’s girth.
“I’m interested in your idea,” Pantages explained as he stepped between his assistant and Walt. “Work up a sample reel and I’ll take a look. If it ends up being as good as you say, you’ve got yourself a deal.”
Walt held his composure, but inside he was brimming with excitement: this could finally be his door into the Hollywood film business! Within a few days, he had persuaded Uncle Robert to allow him to create a makeshift studio in the small garage on the property, paying a fee each week to use the space.
Walt purchased a Pathé camera and set up a camera stand using wooden fruit boxes and spare lumber that he found lying around the garage. He also set to work on animating the sample gag reel using simple stick figures with emoted faces. The characters in the reel told each other jokes, represented by text in speech bubbles above their heads.
In the meantime, Walt decided to reach out to Margaret Winkler one final time to update her on recent events. In a letter at the beginning of October 1923, Walt apologised for his lack of contact since June, explaining that he was no longer affiliated with Laugh-O-gram Films, instead establishing a new studio in Los Angeles in an attempt to create a series based on Alice’s Wonderland. She quickly wrote back saying that they had been corresponding over the film since May but was frustrated that Walt was all talk and no action: “It seems to me that [your letters] are all that this has amounted to.” Unbeknownst to Walt, Winkler was experiencing friction with Pat Sullivan over the distribution of his Felix cartoons and was desperate to secure a new series.
Walt, who was terrified at losing this opportunity, decided to send Winkler his print of the Alice film. He first had to acquire permission from the sheriff of Kansas City due to the fact he didn’t officially own the print: it was still technically owned by the lienholder of Laugh-O-gram’s assets.
When Margaret Winkler screened Alice’s Wonderland for the first time, she was fascinated by what she saw. The opening scene featured little Alice, knocking on an open door marked ‘STUDIO’. The shot changes to show an animator hard at work, drawing a doghouse on a blank white board. Alice knocks again and the animator turns to look at her, revealing the artist to be Walt Disney, who motions to the girl to join him at his desk. Suddenly, the drawing comes alive as the doghouse begins to quiver and jump while a dog and cat fight with each other. Walt then shows the curious girl around the studio, where a number of Disney artists are hard at work at their drawing boards. One artist notices that the animated dog and cat from the previous scene have started a boxing match and rallies the other artists to his side where they begin to cheer on the match. Later that evening, as Alice dreams, the film changes to be fully animated. A cartoon train rushes through the countryside before arriving at a small town populated by a number of animals, all prepared to welcome the live-action Alice. The girl is whisked away to a parade in her honour atop the back of an elephant before attending a concert where she entertains her new friends by performing a dance. However, because the town’s citizens are at the girl’s celebration, they are unaware that a pack of lions has escaped from the Cartoonland Zoo. When they spot the little girl, they begin to drool and start chasing her into a tree, a cave, and a rabbit’s den. Unable to escape, Alice decides to jump off a cliff before the film fades to black.
Walt received an enthusiastic reply from Winkler on 15 October via telegram: Winkler accepted Walt’s proposal, ordering a six-film series with a payment of $1,500 for each film upon receipt. The contract also offered the option to renew the series for an additional six Alice films at an increased rate of $1,800 apiece. Walt only had two months to shoot his first film, which was due on 15 December. The biggest stipulation to accepting the contract, however, was that Winkler expected Virginia Davis to star in the film as Alice.
After receiving the telegram, Walt immediately left Uncle Robert’s house and boarded a bus for Sawtelle, one of the only passengers because it was a late hour. Walt walked from the bus stop to the VA hospital and crept across the grounds to the screened-in porches where the tuberculosis patients slept. He let himself into one of the porches and tip-toed around the beds until he found Roy. Gently sitting down on the corner of his brother’s bed, he shook him awake.
“What’re you doing here, Walt?” Roy asked, blinking and sitting up to make room. He noticed a piece of paper gripped in his younger brother’s hand and assumed the worst. “What’s the matter?”
“We did it, Roy! We got a deal!” Walt practically shouted his whisper.
Roy shushed his brother: not only did he not want to wake up those sleeping nearby, but he also knew they would both get in trouble if Walt was caught there. After a few minutes, Roy was able to calm Walt down enough to get him to explain his news.
“I can’t do this without you,” Walt explained. “Let’s go, Roy.”
Roy knew about Walt’s previous attempts in the animation business and how difficult it was to get into the film industry in Hollywood. He also recognised that it would be almost impossible for his little brother to become a successful animator in California with the entire industry located on the other side of the country in New York. After getting assurances from Walt as to how he could be successful in producing the Alice films, Roy agreed; he would check out from the hospital the next morning.
He would never return to the hospital with a relapse of tuberculosis again.
The signed contract with Winkler meant there was a necessity for capital, new equipment, and the establishment of a new studio. Unfortunately for the Disney brothers, none of the people Walt had borrowed money from to finance his pursuits in the past would be thrilled about the prospect of providing funds now that Laugh-O-gram had collapsed. Roy, who had ample experience in financial matters due to his previous employment at the First National Bank of Kansas City, visited local banks requesting loans. The answer was the same over and over: animation wasn’t terribly popular and as a result, the financing of animated films was too risky for the established financial institutions.
Instead, Roy resorted to phase two: requesting money from family. Taking advantage of the kindness he’d repeatedly shown the family, Roy went to Uncle Robert, asking for a loan of $500. The boys’ uncle, however, was reluctant, explaining that Walt had a history of not repaying creditors. “The boy is an irresponsible dreamer,” Uncle Robert argued. Roy, standing up for his brother, angrily retorted that they didn’t really need Uncle ‘Gold Bug’s’ money anyway and stormed out. Eventually, however, Robert relented, and his $500 was added to the coffers, joining the pension Roy received as a disabled veteran, which provided the brothers with enough capital to begin production of their first official Alice film.
One of the first things Walt did after signing his contract with Winkler was reach out to Mr and Mrs Davis in Kansas City to inform them of the distributor’s requirement. As part of his note, Walt offered the Davises a one-year contract for Virginia to star in twelve episodes of what would become the ‘Alice Comedies’, offering the family $100 per month with an escalating salary of up to $200 per month by the end of the contract year. Virginia’s parents quickly accepted the film-maker’s offer: Mr Davis was a travelling salesman and could conduct his work anywhere. Young Virginia had also had a few bouts of double pneumonia from which she almost died; as a treatment plan, her doctor suggested that the family move to a dry climate. As a result, Los Angeles was the perfect place for the young family who had hopes for their daughter in the film industry. Within a few weeks, the Davises gathered up their things and rode the train west from Kansas City to Los Angeles to join the Disneys in California.
Walt and Roy immediately began working on their first Alice Comedy for Winkler, titled Alice’s Day at Sea, with Walt completing all the animation and Roy operating the camera. Recognising that the small garage alongside Uncle Robert’s house was insufficient for the work they needed to accomplish, the brothers decided to rent an office at the rear of the Holly-Vermont Realty Company building at 4651 Kingswell Avenue, just a short distance from Uncle Robert’s home. Walt soon hired two additional staff to help produce the film: Kathleen Dollard and Ann Loomis, both of whom inked and painted Walt’s sketches onto cels.
Not only did the brothers move their studio down the street, but with Roy recently released from the VA hospital, he now needed a place to live. Walt decided it would be better to move in with his older brother rather than continuing to live with his uncle, especially after some recent disagreements. The two young men found an apartment at 4409 Kingswell, across the street from Uncle Robert’s and close enough for Roy to leave the studio in the afternoons while Walt was working on the animation to take a nap: Roy was still fairly weak from his bouts of tuberculosis. By the time Walt arrived at home, Roy had dinner ready before Walt got back to work.
In addition to singlehandedly doing the animation for Alice’s Day at Sea, Walt also directed the live-action, paying children in the surrounding neighbourhood 50 cents per day for work as extras. One of these children was Ruthie Thompson, who often spent her afternoons watching Walt and Roy pose Virginia and give her direction until they were ready to use her as an extra. What’s so special about her? young Thompson wondered, her arms crossed over her chest. Why did they pick her to be Alice and not me? So what if she has pretty blue eyes and naturally curly hair. However, all of this jealousy disappeared when Roy Disney arrived and began giving her directions. She enjoyed the man’s company and often spent time in the small office behind the realty company, watching Walt draw and Roy photograph. The process didn’t look very magical to her, but the whole operation seemed fascinating.
While Alice’s Day at Sea was his first film completed for Margaret Winkler, Walt had already missed his deadline, sending the print to her eleven days later than contractually agreed on 26 December 1923. Winkler was so pressed to get the film turned around in time for release to theatres that she requested he send all the raw footage he had so they could conduct the editing at their end.
Winkler was less than impressed by the film the Disney brothers produced. “You focus too much on story and not enough on gags,” she explained to Walt via telegram. “Try to include as much humour as you can in future films.”
Undeterred by Winkler’s criticism, Walt quickly began production on the second film in the Alice series, Alice Hunting in Africa, which was also submitted late to Winkler in January 1924. Once again, Winkler explained upon receipt of the film that it lacked humour and was too focused on plot. “I feel I have greatly improved on this film since Alice’s Day at Sea,” Walt wrote back to Winkler. “I assure you that I will do my best to inject humorous situations and as many humorous gags as possible in future productions.”
Walt recognised that in order to give the distributor what she wanted, he needed to expand his staff and resources. Using the money received from the first two Alice films, Roy and Walt moved to a storefront located just down the street at 4649 Kingswell Avenue to accommodate a larger team of staff. They also began paying rent on a vacant lot on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Rodney Drive, less than half a kilometre southeast from the studio. To make themselves more reputable as an animation studio in a city based on the film industry, the name of the new organisation, THE DISNEY BROS. STUDIO, was engraved on the front window.
With more space, the two film-makers were ready to welcome more staff. In addition to Dollard and Loomis, Walt hired another animator, Rollin ‘Ham’ Hamilton, to help carry the load of creating Alice’s cartoon world. With the recognition that animation quality and ‘humorous situations’ needed to increase, Walt determined that another ink-and-paint girl was needed on staff. He asked Loomis and Dollard if they knew of any girls looking for work, and Dollard reached out to Lillian Bounds, the younger sister of her friend, Hazel Sewell. Bounds had been interested in the production of the animated films, as she often watched the live-action production of Alice Hunting in Africa at the vacant lot across the street from her home located at 4618 Hollywood Boulevard. After speaking with Walt, she decided to take the job receiving a wage of $15 per week, officially coming on the staff on 14 January 1924.
With the larger staff and workspace, the studio began working on its next film, Alice’s Spooky Adventure. While this film also experienced a delayed submission to Winkler due to unfavourable weather conditions, she was very happy with the final product, explaining that the quality of the humour was what she had been waiting for. Winkler was so pleased with the quality of Alice’s Spooky Adventure that it became the first of the series she released to theatres in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Washington, D.C. on 24 March. It was agreed that Virginia Davis herself would be flown to the east coast for appearances to draw audiences into theatres. After performing a little dance and bowing to the audience, she would introduce the film as the title card flashed onto the screen.
This new-found confidence began to embolden the young Walt Disney. As he moved into the next three Alice films in his first contract, he strayed away from the slapstick humour typical of animation at the time, turning instead to a more ‘dignified’ form of humour, which included puns, cultural references, and mischief that aligned to the overarching plots of the films. Upon submitting the films to Winkler, Walt included short notes defending his decision to focus more on incorporating comedy-driven plot rather than just a routine string of gags. Winkler was too focused on the accolades of Alice’s Spooky Adventure to care: as long as the Disney Bros. continued turning out films of the same quality, she felt confident in the decisions Walt was making.
Not only was Walt flying high on the success of his Alice Comedies, he’d found love. Every day after work, he would offer to drive the ink-and-paint girls home in his Ford runabout, going out of his way to stop at the Sewells’ last. As he pulled up at Lillian’s door one evening, he got out of the car and walked around to open the door for her.
“So I’m thinking about buying myself a new suit,” he explained. “When it comes in, would it be okay if I called on you?”The girl, who had found her boss handsome, creative, and enthusiastically outgoing, agreed that this would be alright.
A few days later, Walt purchased his new suit, a grey and green double-breasted deal, complete with a hat. He hopped in his car and drove down Hollywood Boulevard to the Sewells’. When he knocked on the door, Lillian’s brother-in-law answered and welcomed the dapper young man inside, where the two men conversed in the foyer, the former introducing Walt to his wife. Soon Lillian appeared and, taken aback by her beauty, Walt awkwardly asked her how she liked his new suit. Everyone laughed, thinking that he was making a joke, but he had simply not known what to say in front of her sister and brother-in-law. The couple bid the Sewells a good night and climbed into Walt’s car before making their way to a nearby theatre for a showing of the stage musical, No, No, Nannette.
With more expenses, such as increased rent and more staff members on the payroll, finances began to become strapped. Roy, who acted as bookkeeper in addition to operating the camera, explained to his brother that something needed to change if the studio was to afford to continue. Walt suggested that they reach out to their friends and family for loans, which Roy, knowing his brother’s history of repaying such loans, was against. Behind Roy’s back, Walt wrote to Carl Stalling and Edna Francis in Kansas City for funds, receiving $275 and $25 from them, respectively.
Roy wasn’t happy when he learned of his younger brother pressuring his fiancée for finances. This was one instance in a string of recent disagreements between the two young men who were spending almost all of their time together, including living in tight proximity in their shared apartment. Things came to a head one night when, exhausted after a long day at the studio, Walt returned to the apartment to find dinner prepared by Roy on the table.
“How was the rest of the day?” Roy asked.
“Fine,” Walt explained, stabbing at the food on his plate. “No thanks to you.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“We ran into a jam and you weren’t there to help out. You were here sleeping and cooking this mush instead. Speaking of work,” the frustrated Walt ejaculated, pushing the plate away and standing up from the table, “there’s more to do. I’ll see you later.”
“The hell with you!” Roy yelled, standing up as well. “If you don’t like the effort I put into dinner every night, then we can quit this business of living together!”
Walt stormed out of the apartment, the sound of his shoes clunking down the stairs to the street below. Roy carried the plates over to the sink and threw on a light jacket before making his way down to the telegram exchange. In a heated moment of frustration, he jotted out a telegram to Edna Francis, suggesting that she come to Los Angeles as quickly as possible – he was ready to get married. Edna, who had been waiting for Roy to commit to marriage since before he’d gone off to fight in the First World War, immediately accepted.
The wedding was held at Uncle Robert’s home in Los Angeles on 11 April and both Roy and Edna’s parents were in attendance. Roy and Walt had patched things up by the day of the wedding, with the groom’s younger brother serving as his best man. Because Edna didn’t know anyone in Los Angeles, Lillian was her maid of honour, much to Walt’s delight.
Lillian and Walt spent much of the wedding festivities draped over each other, with Walt even going as far as planting a kiss on the girl’s lips in front of the rest of the family. It had quickly become apparent that the couple were more than just co-workers and that Walt had begun courting his latest employee. As their relationship progressed, Lillian quickly learned to love her boyfriend’s quirky sense of humour and the way his mind worked. Never at any point did her boss take advantage of her through unwanted advances, as their relationship evolved in a healthy, organic way.
One evening, while Lillian sat next to him at the drawing board watching him work, she leaned close to him. Sensing her, Walt turned to his inker and kissed her. Their relationship moved quickly after that, with the young film-maker teasing her playfully as the main form of courting. Knowing that she preferred to work at the ink-and-paint table on animation cels, Walt would often ask her to fill in as the receptionist, not only because he knew she hated it, but also because it would give him a chance to work closer to her. When she playfully disagreed with his decision to have her work as the receptionist, Walt explained that the only way to relieve the studio of the terrible job she’d do as receptionist was to marry him. While it was not uncommon for the studio to miss pay checks for the staff due to low funds, Walt also joked that he would have to marry Lillian in order to pay off his debt to her. However, it soon became obvious that he was becoming more serious in progressing their relationship to the next level. Walt, who often lacked tact in stressful situations, explained to his steady girlfriend that “I really enjoy your sister’s fried chicken and eat there with you often, so we might as well get married” and presented her with an engagement ring with a small diamond. Little time was wasted as Lillian, her sister and her mother began planning the wedding, which was set for July.
The last film of the first series of Alice Comedies was completed and sent to Winkler for distribution on 24 May 1924. Negotiations quickly began to renew the contract with the Disney Bros. Studio for the next six shorts in the initial series of Alice Comedies. However, rather than sign a deal with Margaret Winkler, Walt had to negotiate with her new husband, Charles Mintz, whom she had married in the late autumn of 1923 and who had taken over the duties of distributor. Mintz was critical of what the Disney brothers had sent thus far with the first six Alice films, complaining that the animation was ‘jumpy’ and lacked gags, focusing too much on story. For the remaining six films of the first series, Mintz wrote that he would only be paying the studio $900 rather than the agreed-upon payment of $1,800, citing that the first six Alice Comedies hadn’t made enough in theatres to justify a full payment.
It was clear to Walt that he once again needed to produce higher-quality shorts to justify Mintz paying him full price. While he had felt that the quality of the animation, plot and gags of his films were great, no one would see them without the distributor’s approval. Recognising that he needed to step back from animating to focus instead on developing stories, scenarios, and humorous situations, Walt turned to the one person he trusted to replace him by providing quality animation: Ubbe Iwwerks.
When he received the note from Walt on 1 June, Ubbe was at first hesitant to join his friend and former business partner in California, recollecting how both Iwwerks-Disney and Laugh-O-gram had gone under. However, with enough persistence and an offer of a salary of $40 per week, Walt was able to convince his friend to move west. Not wanting to leave his mother alone in Kansas City, Ubbe convinced her to join him, and the two began to pack their things up for their new life in Los Angeles. Before long, Walt had another favour to ask his friend: when the Davises moved to California, they were so eager to get Virginia to work that they’d taken the train, leaving the family car in Missouri. Would Ubbe be willing, Walt wondered, to drive their car to California? He agreed, and together Ubbe and Mrs Iwwerks took seven days to drive the Davises’ Cadillac west to California.
While Mrs Iwwerks began to unpack and settle things in the small house she and her son rented near the Disney Bros. Studio, Ubbe quickly got to work producing the animated sequences for the latest Alice Comedies. One of the first things he decided was to anglicise his name as much as possible to make himself more acceptable to the American film crowd, changing the spelling of his name to Ub Iwerks.
Walt and Mintz immediately saw a change in the animation and content of the Alice Comedies as Ub came on board. With Walt more able to focus on coming up with scenarios for the films, Ub and Hamilton focused on lengthening the animated sequences so that the films were only bookended by live-action. Ub also came up with an improvement on taping Virginia in front of a white backdrop. Instead, he chose to place a Virginia-shaped matte cut-out over the camera lens so that only the girl was photographed for live-action, allowing more mobility through different settings rather than being confined to the white sheet hung in the vacant lot. Iwerks also developed a new character that accompanied Alice through the cartoon world and eventually eclipsed the girl’s role: Julius the Cat. As the Alice Comedies continued to be released, the live girl began to be seen less often as Julius started to become the star of the shorts, popularised due to his ability to use his body parts for gags, such as turn his tail into a unicycle, much in the same way the Fleischers did with Felix.
Luckily Walt’s plan panned out: the improved animation that resulted from Ub’s work appealed to more audiences, which pleased Mintz enough to begin paying the studio the agreed-upon price of $1,800 per film. With the initial run of twelve films drawing to a close, Mintz agreed to renew the series with the Disney Bros. for twenty-six films with a new instalment to be delivered to the distributor approximately every two weeks. With this new contract, the studio actually lost money per film submitted, with Mintz reducing the per film price to $1,500 rather than the $1,800 agreed upon during the previous series. Financial difficulties would be increased even more for the studio when the contract stipulated that they would only receive a payment of $900 upon receipt of the print, with the remaining $600 to be paid within three months.
With the larger contract and the expectation from Mintz that films be delivered bi-weekly, Walt had more work than artists and decided to once again hire his best from his Laugh-O-gram days. Shortly after sending word to Kansas City to Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, the two young men accepted their friend’s offer due to the lack of opportunities in the medium in Missouri. A new cameraman was also hired, allowing Roy the opportunity to focus instead on the business side of the enterprise, as well as picking up odd jobs around the studio to help facilitate the ease of creating the films. Two new ink-and-paint girls were brought in to assist the animation process: Ham Hamilton’s sister Irene and Ruth Disney, the younger sister of Walt and Roy, newly arrived from Portland.
It was also around this time that the studio developed a technical innovation which at first seemed insignificant. While many in the industry had a series of pegs across the top of the artists’ tables to hold the drawings in place, someone at the Disney Bros. Studio came up with the idea of putting the pegs across the bottom of the board. This made it easier for the artists to check their drawings for accurate and lifelike movement of their drawings by putting the papers between each finger and ‘rolling’ them back and forth to check the animation. While the standard top pegs allowed artists to flip between two or three drawings at a time, the bottom peg system allowed for flipping between four and five drawings, saving precious time and making the animation process easier and more advanced.
Within a month of Ub joining his pal in Los Angeles, the studio released its most popular entry to the series of Alice Comedies, Alice Gets in Dutch. After he was able to preview the film at the Bard’s Hollywood Theater, Walt ordered a few minor changes and improvements be made to the film before enthusiastically sending the print to Mintz at the end of the month. Evidently, Mintz shared Walt’s excitement for the film as a few months later, he wrote to the young studio executive that the film had premiered on 20 October at Broadway’s Piccadilly Theater in New York alongside the Warner Bros. feature film This Woman.
Mintz soon recognised the promise that the Disney Bros. had in producing quality animation. In addition to the remaining five Alice shorts, he charged the studio with reworking the first two Alice Comedies, Alice’s Day at Sea and Alice Hunting in Africa, claiming that they had served as a financial liability to Winkler. He also complained that the films were too plot-driven and while Walt used extended and complex gags, the shorts lacked the slapstick gags that audiences craved. Ub quickly got down to business, reanimating some of the scenes from the initial prints in an effort to get increased payment from the distributor.
With less money immediately coming into the studio due to the new contract stipulations, Walt and Roy began to look at ways to cut costs. Walt, who had greatly expanded his art staff, petitioned the ending of the live-action portions of his films that occurred at the beginning and end of the shorts. Mintz, however, argued that the live-action sequences provided context to audiences.
With the distributor not allowing him to save money by eliminating live-action and refusing to cut costs to his animation department, Walt decided to issue a new deal to Virginia Davis. Rather than placing the girl under contract and paying her a salary as he’d done in the past, he explained to her parents that he would only pay her for the days she was shooting. Mr and Mrs Davis read between the lines to discern what was really being said: Virginia’s shooting schedule would likely decrease and Walt was unwilling to pay the girl the same amount for less footage. The young film executive went on to explain that all of the live-action would be shot over a total of eighteen days during the next year, meaning that the Davises would only receive payment and their daughter would only work for two and a half weeks. After petitioning Charles Mintz in vain to pressure Walt to change his mind, Virginia’s parents decided to withdraw her as the headlining character of the Alice Comedies, leaving the Disney Bros. Studio without a star.
Walt quickly found a new young girl named Dawn O’Day to replace the original Alice. However, when it became obvious to the girl’s parents that Walt was unable to pay their daughter what they desired, they withdrew her services from the studio at the completion of filming Alice’s Egg Plant.
With one last shot at solving his problems with the live-action character that drew audiences to his Alice Comedies, Walt reached out to the parents of 4-year-old Margie Gay, who had filled in for Davis in Alice Solves the Puzzle when the studio was negotiating with Virginia’s parents. Gay’s parents immediately accepted Walt’s proposal, providing the studio with its new face beginning with April’s Alice Loses Out and lasting until December 1926. While these contract negotiations over the character of Alice were a struggle for the studio, it did allow Walt to cut back on the length and number of the live-action sequences, as well as give him an opportunity to expand the quality and complexity of the animation. Julius the Cat became more of a central character, with Alice in a mere supporting role, joining other increasingly regular characters including a police dog, a skinny dachshund, and a villain named Bootleg Pete.
An expanded staff and a larger focus on animated sequences in the Alice films led to a greater emphasis on technical improvements. While earlier animated films produced by the Disney Bros. used tracing of characters, especially by less experienced animators, this often left the movement of the characters jerky and less lifelike. Walt soon asked Ub to develop character model sheets, which depicted the various characters from different angles and with different expressions, that served as reference points for those animating the characters. Almost immediately, the quality of animation improved as the lack of tracing and the increase of free-handed drawing allowed for more lifelike and fluid movement on screen.
With more artists producing the animation, Walt was finally able to focus on scenario work, including the development of stories and gags. Gathering his artists together, the young creative held story meetings where they discussed the plot of the story being told. Everyone was welcome to contribute, and often gags suggested by the various artists made it into the final cut of the film. As the story developed, Walt would often stand before his staff and act out the scenes, demonstrating the movements and expressions that he wanted shown in the films, much to the delight of the artists.
With the staff once again increasing and producing films for Mintz more often, the small studio space on Kingswell quickly became too small for day-to-day operation. Walt and Roy found space available at 2719 Hyperion Avenue, a little less than 2.5 kilometres west of the current studio. On 6 July 1925, the brothers paid $400 as a deposit on the lot.
Things had begun to move very quickly for Walt Disney, not only professionally, but personally as well. Less than a week after purchasing the land for the Hyperion studio, Walt and Lillian married on 13 July 1925. The bride wore a lavender dress as the two became man and wife in the living room of Lillian’s uncle in Lewiston, Idaho, her hometown. After the small ceremony, the newlyweds boarded a train and headed north. Poor Walt found himself unable to enjoy his wedding night: he had developed toothache, which prevented him from sleeping. Rather than wake his bride, he went to the back of the train and stayed up all night, helping the sleeping car porter polish shoes before returning to wake Lillian as the sun rose. After getting his tooth pulled upon disembarkation at a dentist in Seattle, Washington, the couple was able to enjoy their honeymoon exploring the city before moving on to Mount Rainier, Washington, and stopping to see Flora and Elias in Portland before returning home to Los Angeles.
Once back in the city, Walt secured a small apartment for which he paid $40 per month. True to his word, upon marrying Lillian, Walt requested that she no longer work at the studio in an attempt to keep his private and professional life separate. However, not wanting to confine his new bride to the small apartment, Walt suggested to Roy that they purchase adjoining lots to build homes somewhere near the new studio. Roy agreed, and the brothers paid $16,000 to build neighbouring homes on Lyric Avenue, a mere 10-minute walk from the Hyperion lot. The houses were identical and were prefabricated, measuring approximately 185 square metres. Walt quickly gave Lillian a budget to fit out the house, a task she absolutely adored, while her husband was hard at work at the studio.
While things were looking up for Walt’s studio as 1925 progressed, contractual relations with Charles Mintz had once again begun to break down. Rather than send the payments for the Alice Comedies directly to Walt, Mintz had started sending the cheques to George Winkler, the brother of his wife who lived in Los Angeles, to deliver to the studio. This gave the distributor the opportunity to receive insider information and keep an eye on production, as well as the chance to influence money-saving measures. This new procedure prevented royalty cheques from arriving at the studio as often as Walt would like, leading to a series of angry exchanges between the young film executive and his distributor in New York.
“I have lived up to my end of the contract,” Walt explained. “It is my expectation that you do likewise. I will continue to deliver the pictures to you every sixteen days as agreed upon in our contract and expect immediate remittance in return. Your failure to do this will result in a breach of contract and will result in me looking for another distributor.”
“Don’t you have a grateful bone in your body?” Mintz retorted a few days later. “The first seven pictures you sent to us were a failure, a total loss to us, even though we paid you the agreed-upon amount. You should be ashamed of yourself asking for more money when we haven’t made a single dollar off any picture we have received from you.”
Quickly realising that he was at the mercy of the distributor and that he wouldn’t make any money from his films without Mintz, Walt began to negotiate a new contract. Once again, it decreased the amount of money he would receive from the distributor, offering $1,500 per film, but also extending the offer of a 50 per cent share in all movie theatre rentals of the Alice films after the distributor had made the first $3,000 from rentals. Mintz explained to Walt that he was distributing the Alice Comedies on what was called a ‘states-rights basis’ for the Film Booking Office. Essentially, this meant that a distributor was renting film reels to individual theatre chains, who had the option to screen the film as many times as they liked to make as much money as possible, paying a portion of sales back to the distributor. At the end of a film’s run, or in the case of a film that didn’t draw audiences, the theatre owner would return the reel to the distributor, who would look for another theatre to rent the films to. If the distributor was unable to find a theatre interested in the film, it often meant that the film was a financial loss to the distributor as the fee paid to the studio had already been issued. As a result, because, Mintz argued, the previous Alice Comedies hadn’t made him enough money on rentals, he was unable to justify paying Walt more per film, as it didn’t guarantee a good return for himself. After much negotiating, a version of the contract was signed in February 1926 and the next series of Alice Comedies began production.
In mid-February, shortly after signing the new contract with Mintz, Walt moved his artists into their new studio home at 2719 Hyperion Avenue. Roy quickly suggested that the new studio be named the Walt Disney Studio, explaining to his little brother that it would be less confusing for audiences if they could associate the films with a single name. Roy also secretly recognised the passion that Walt had for the films and wanted his brother to revel in the success he’d finally achieved after his numerous previous failures.
Finally having a studio complex of their own, the staff began to embrace a familial lifestyle as professionalism and camaraderie became intertwined. The artists were constantly playing jokes on each other and spent time together outside of work. Athletic fields were installed on the studio campus, allowing the staff to not only exhibit friendly competition, but also giving them a chance to exercise after working a job that required them to sit hunched over an artist’s desk for hours. Walt often participated in these athletic events, acting as a formidable opponent on the polo and baseball fields and badminton courts.
Throughout 1926 and 1927, it became obvious that the occasional successes the studio had experienced with the Alice Comedies had begun to wane. Walt spent late nights at the studio in an attempt to meet Charles Mintz’s ever-increasing demands for more gags; not wanting to spend the night at home alone, Lillian often sat with her husband, falling asleep on the couch in his office while he worked, often until 2.00 am.
Not only was it difficult to create quality films that met the distributor’s expectations in the allotted timeline, it was difficult to do so with the limited finances Mintz provided. Walt once again reached out to Dr McCrum in Kansas City, offering to make another film similar to Tommy Tucker’s Tooth. McCrum agreed, working with the studio to write a story that would educate youngsters in how to practise good dental hygiene. The result, Clara Cleans Her Teeth, starred Walt and Lillian’s niece, Marjorie Sewell, in the starring role, who in a dream is chased by animated dental tools which scares her into practising improved brushing techniques. While Walt didn’t make much money from this contract compared to the Alice films, it was enough to help for the moment.
The stress of financial constraints and the constant barrage of insults by Mintz began to wear on the staff at the Walt Disney Studio. In late 1926, Ham Hamilton left the studio after experiencing disagreements with Walt, and was replaced by another artist from Kansas City, Isadore ‘Friz’ Freleng. Hamilton’s departure and replacement resulted in a souring relationship between Walt and his artists, including Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising.
Mintz soon began to realize that the Alice Comedies had started losing their steam, as well. In January 1927, Margie Gay’s contract as Alice ended and Walt hired a new actress, Lois Hardwick. He immediately received an angry note from the distributor, demanding to know why the star of the series had been replaced. Walt calmly explained that George Winkler had done a screen test with Hardwick and liked her in the role better than Gay, authorising her replacement. While this answer seemed to satisfy Mintz, it soon became obvious that moviegoers were less than satisfied. Mintz began to demand that the length of the films be shorter to compensate for lower returns, decreasing the length from 183 metres to 169 metres. In a panic, he soon began to threaten to not release some of the shorts at all, including Alice Chops the Suey and Alice’s Circus Daze, placing blame for the lack of success on the studio.
After an examination of the declining interest in the Alice Comedies, Walt, Roy, Mintz, and George Winkler decided that the current season, which ended with Alice in the Big League on 22 August 1927, would be Alice’s last. The blending of live-action and animation was no longer considered ‘fresh’ or ‘new’, mainly due to the success of the Fleischers’ Out of the Inkwell series. New animated series had begun to be popular, including those developed by Paul Terry and Pat Sullivan. As a result, Walt, Roy and their distributor began to look for new ideas.
Luckily for the Walt Disney Studio, Mintz already had something lined up. In early 1927, he received word from Carl Laemmle that Universal was interested in distributing a new cartoon series. Laemmle suggested that the new series feature any kind of creature except a cat as the animation world seemed to have an overabundance of cat characters, including Felix and Julius, but left the development of the character up to Mintz.
Mintz soon reached out to Walt, suggesting that his team develop some sketches of a rabbit character as a proposal for Universal, but with one of the Big Five studios interested in distributing a series created by Walt Disney, he included an important caveat in his note.
You’re in the big leagues now, the tone of his note suggested. Don’t screw this up.