Walt Disney’s first animation studio

When the name Walt Disney is mentioned, it is impossible not to remember the company he co-founded alongside his brother, Roy: Disney, which has existed for over 100 years, as it was created in 1923.

Still, what some may not know is that, before the studio that brought to life stories that became great classics, such as ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs’, Walt he had another venture, where his first adaptations of fairy tales appeared.

Walt Disney’s first animation studio

The history of Walt As a businessman he began in 1921, when he was still a commercial artist for an advertising company called City Film Ad Company.

At the time, he taught himself the art of celluloid animation, that is, the first type of 2D animation, where drawings were made by hand, and trained to transform them into films with a camera borrowed from work, as explained by the blog The Walt Disney Family Museum.

After gaining experience, he decided it was time to turn his new skill into a business and, to do so, he enlisted the help of artists he worked with at City Film Ad Company and created Laugh-O-gram Films, a studio whose focus was adapt fairy tales and transform them into modernized animations.

It is worth remembering that the 1920s became known as the ‘Jazz Age’, so this musical style, which also reflected the fashion of the decade, ended up being implemented in animations, portraying the characters in the cultural context of the time.

The animations, produced in black and white and full of satirical jokes, were short and lasted an average of seven minutes. They were created for the prominent Kansas City theater owner, Frank Newmanto be shown before the films in their cinemas and, for this reason, the titles became known as “Newman Laugh-O-grams”.

In total, there were seven animations: “The Four Musicians of Bremen”, “Little Red Riding Hood”, “Puss in Boots”, “Jack and the Beanstalk”, “Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Jack the Giant Killer”, and “Cinderella”.

The end of Laugh-O-gram

As promising as the beginning seemed, the company came to an end in 1923 after a major default. It turns out that Laugh-O-gram’s first — and only — major contract was signed with Pictorial Clubs, whereWaltand its collaborators had to produce six short films.

The deal was for Pictorial Clubs to pay US$11,000 for the animations, but the company went bankrupt and the animation studio Walt He only received US$100 for these productions, paid in advance.

That way, Disney carried out several works in an attempt to save Laugh-O-gram from bankruptcy after Pictorial Clubs’ unpaid debt, such as a title on dental hygiene for the Dr. Thomas B. McCrum (Tommy Tucker’s Tooth), and an inventive film featuring a live-action girl in a cartoon world (Alice’s Wonderland), but to no avail, resulting in the company’s closure.

Even though the first attempt at business Walt failed, this opened the door for the creation of a new and promising studio: Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, with its first venture being the series ‘Alice Comedies’, the first animation from the company that would become The Walt Disney Company, one of the largest in the industry. of animated titles.