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The Laugh-O-Gram Studio (also called Laugh-O-Gram Studios) was a short-lived film 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 November 20, 1923. In the early years of animation, the studio was home to many of the pioneers of animation, brought there by
Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...
. It was the site of inspiration for Disney and
Ub Iwerks Ubbe Ert Iwwerks (March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971), known as Ub Iwerks ( ), was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Iwerks grew up with a contentiou ...
to create Mickey Mouse. Laugh-O-Gram is the subject of two feature films: ''As Dreamers Do'' and '' Walt Before Mickey''.


History

In 1921,
Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney (; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film p ...
was contracted by Milton Feld to animate twelve cartoons, which he called Newman's Laugh-O-grams. Source: Page 67. "Disney's World", by Leonard Mosley, 1985. 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.
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.
But encouraged by his shorts' popularity at the theatre, and inspired by, 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 "Little Red Riding Hood" is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a sly wolf. Its origins can be traced back to several pre-17th century European folk tales. The two best known versions were written by Charles Perrault and the Brot ...
''. Among Disney's employees on the series were several pioneers of animation:
Ub Iwerks Ubbe Ert Iwwerks (March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971), known as Ub Iwerks ( ), was an American animator, cartoonist, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Iwerks grew up with a contentiou ...
, Hugh Harman, Friz Freleng, and
Carman Maxwell Carman Griffin Maxwell (December 27, 1902 – September 22, 1987) was an American animator and voice actor. Maxwell was born in Siloam Springs, Arkansas, and later moved to Kansas City, Missouri. He began his career at Walt Disney, where Maxwel ...
. 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 A union station (also known as a union terminal, a joint station in Europe, and a joint-use station in Japan) is a railway station at which the tracks and facilities are shared by two or more separate railway companies, allowing passengers to ...
. 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 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. But 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, 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 ''Alice's Wonderland'' is a 1923 Walt Disney short silent film, produced in Kansas City, Missouri by Laugh-O-Gram Studio. The black-and-white short was the first in a series of Walt Disney's famous ''Alice Comedies'' and had a working title o ...
'', starring the youthful Virginia Davis. Disney had noted how popular the ''
Out of the Inkwell ''Out of the Inkwell'' is an American major animated series of the silent era produced by Max Fleischer from 1918 to 1929. History The series was the result of three short experimental films that Max Fleischer independently produced from 191 ...
'' 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. Source: page 49. Walt in Wonderland - The Silent Films of Walt Disney, by Russell Merritt and J.B. Kaufman, 1993. Looking for a distributor for ''Alice's Wonderland'' on May 14, Disney wrote to Margaret Winkler, a New York film distributor.
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.
After finishing the raw edits of ''Alice's Wonderland'',
Sources: 6 3 4 0.69 3.50/ref> the studio filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in July 1923.
Sources: 4.22 102.72(spring 0.71 (August 3.51
Disney finally made some money by shooting a film of a 6-month-old girl named Kathalee Viley and selling his
movie camera A movie camera (also known as a film camera and cine-camera) is a type of photographic camera that rapidly takes a sequence of photographs, either on an image sensor or onto film stock, in order to produce a moving image to project onto a movie sc ...
, earning enough for a one-way train ticket, moving to
Hollywood, California Hollywood is a neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Its name has come to be a shorthand reference for the U.S. film industry and the people associated with it. Many notable film studios, such as Columbia Pictures, ...
; 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''. 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 rit 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 to tell people and children about animation and to make their own animations inside the building. 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."


Inspiration for Mickey Mouse

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. 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.


Filmography

Of the original seven Laugh-O-grams fairy tales, four were long known to have survived, and have been restored for DVD: ''
Little Red Riding Hood "Little Red Riding Hood" is a European fairy tale about a young girl and a sly wolf. Its origins can be traced back to several pre-17th century European folk tales. The two best known versions were written by Charles Perrault and the Brot ...
'' (1922), ''
The Four Musicians of Bremen This is a list of animated short films produced by Walt Disney and Walt Disney Animation Studios from 1921 to the present. This includes films produced at the Laugh-O-Gram Studio which Disney founded in 1921 as well as the animation studio now o ...
'' (1922), ''
Puss in Boots "Puss in Boots" ( it, Il gatto con gli stivali) is an Italian fairy tale, later spread throughout the rest of Europe, about an anthropomorphic cat who uses trickery and deceit to gain power, wealth, and the hand of a princess in marriage for ...
'' (1922), and ''
Cinderella "Cinderella",; french: link=no, Cendrillon; german: link=no, Aschenputtel) or "The Little Glass Slipper", is a folk tale with thousands of variants throughout the world.Dundes, Alan. Cinderella, a Casebook. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsi ...
'' (1922). These shorts later became available on Blu-ray Disc as bonus features for Disney's ''
Beauty and the Beast ''Beauty and the Beast'' (french: La Belle et la Bête) is a fairy tale written by French novelist Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve and published in 1740 in ''La Jeune Américaine et les contes marins'' (''The Young American and Marine ...
''. '' Tommy Tucker's Tooth'' (1922) and ''
Alice's Wonderland ''Alice's Wonderland'' is a 1923 Walt Disney short silent film, produced in Kansas City, Missouri by Laugh-O-Gram Studio. The black-and-white short was the first in a series of Walt Disney's famous ''Alice Comedies'' and had a working title o ...
'' (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) is available on some DVDs too. Due to their date of publication, all 11 shorts produced by the studio have defaulted into the
public domain The public domain (PD) consists of all the creative work to which no exclusive intellectual property rights apply. Those rights may have expired, been forfeited, expressly waived, or may be inapplicable. Because those rights have expired, ...
. The missing fairy tale cartoons were ''
Jack and the Beanstalk "Jack and the Beanstalk" is an English fairy tale. It appeared as "The Story of Jack Spriggins and the Enchanted Bean" in 1734 4th edition On Commons and as Benjamin Tabart's moralized "The History of Jack and the Bean-Stalk" in 1807. Henry Co ...
'', '' Jack the Giant Killer'', and '' Goldie Locks and the Three Bears'' (all 1922). On October 14, 2010, animation historian
David Gerstein David Gerstein (born February 6, 1974) is an American comics author and editor as well as an animation historian. Gerstein has five books and countless comic book credits to his name. He has written many Disney comics stories, usually featuring ...
announced that copies of all three had been found. 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.The Hand Behind the Mouse by John Kenworthy page 18


See also

*
List of points of interest in Kansas City, Missouri The list of points of interest in Kansas City, Missouri includes businesses, museums, historical monuments, and theme parks. Arts * American Jazz Museum, in the 18th and Vine Historic District * Community Christian Church, designed by Frank Ll ...
* Walt Disney Hometown Museum, located in his hometown of
Marceline, Missouri Marceline is a city in Chariton and Linn counties in the U.S. state of Missouri. The population was 2,123 at the 2020 census. History Marceline was laid out in 1887, and named after the wife of a railroad man. A post office called Marceline h ...
*
List of Disney animated films based on fairy tales Fairy tales have provided a significant source of inspiration for the Disney studio. Sometimes, Walt Disney Pictures alters gruesome fairy tales in order to make them more appropriate for different age groups, specifically children and adults. ...
*
Studio system A studio system is a method of filmmaking wherein the production and distribution of films is dominated by a small number of large movie studios. It is most often used in reference to Hollywood motion picture studios during the Golden Age of Hol ...


References

*


External links


thankyouwaltdisney.org
Thank you Walt Disney - Restoring Laugh-O-Gram Studios
Fairy Tale Flappers: Animated Adaptations of Little Red and Cinderella (1922-1925)
{{Animation industry in the United States American companies established in 1921 American companies disestablished in 1923 Mass media companies established in 1921 1921 establishments in Missouri 1923 disestablishments in Missouri Mass media companies disestablished in 1923 American animation studios Walt Disney History of animation History of The Walt Disney Company Defunct American film studios Companies that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 1923 History of Kansas City, Missouri Companies based in Kansas City, Missouri Buildings and structures in Kansas City, Missouri Walt Disney Animation Studios The Walt Disney Company Articles containing video clips