Acquired
00:14:19 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:14:19] S0: amazing is this? In the first iWorks and Disney partnership, in Walt Disney's first business, he was not the main name on the door, or at least he was not the first one. [00:14:28] S1: Yes. Not the main name on the door, but he is the driving force Yep. Behind the business. So he goes out to pitch prospective clients around Kansas City for the services of this new iWorks Disney commercial artist firm. And one of the clients that he goes to pitch is a up and coming company called the Kansas City Slide Company, which happens to have become the country's largest producer of advertising slides and short commercials that would get shown in movie theaters before feature films. And the Slide Co has so much work at this point in time as films and movie theaters are are taking off around the country that they say, hey. You guys seem talented. We don't wanna just contract with you. Why don't you come work here full time? So Walt and Nubb's first entrepreneurial venture quickly comes to an end, they go join the slide company. Now the reason that they specifically wanted Walt and Ub is that they have a relatively new business line at the Slide Co, which is producing animated commercials to run-in movie theaters before films. And this is what Walt and Ub end up getting put to work doing. And they both just fall in love with this new art form of animation. It's like everything that Walt and UpTo loves about drawing, but it's more than
00:14:28 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:14:28] S1: Yes. Not the main name on the door, but he is the driving force Yep. Behind the business. So he goes out to pitch prospective clients around Kansas City for the services of this new iWorks Disney commercial artist firm. And one of the clients that he goes to pitch is a up and coming company called the Kansas City Slide Company, which happens to have become the country's largest producer of advertising slides and short commercials that would get shown in movie theaters before feature films. And the Slide Co has so much work at this point in time as films and movie theaters are are taking off around the country that they say, hey. You guys seem talented. We don't wanna just contract with you. Why don't you come work here full time? So Walt and Nubb's first entrepreneurial venture quickly comes to an end, they go join the slide company. Now the reason that they specifically wanted Walt and Ub is that they have a relatively new business line at the Slide Co, which is producing animated commercials to run-in movie theaters before films. And this is what Walt and Ub end up getting put to work doing. And they both just fall in love with this new art form of animation. It's like everything that Walt and UpTo loves about drawing, but it's more than [00:15:58] S0: just art. It's technology. You You need cameras. You need film. You need all these new inventions to make animation happen. Yep. And at this point, animation was really primarily used in advertising. Right? There wasn't really a successful thriving industry yet as entertainment of its own based on animation.
00:15:58 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:15:58] S0: just art. It's technology. You You need cameras. You need film. You need all these new inventions to make animation happen. Yep. And at this point, animation was really primarily used in advertising. Right? There wasn't really a successful thriving industry yet as entertainment of its own based on animation. [00:16:19] S1: It was, like, very, very early. And to the extent that it did exist as entertainment and shorts, short films, cartoons on its own, it was all based in New York, like, not in Kansas City. Right. But the whole industry is only, like, barely twenty years old at this point in time because you couldn't produce animation on any sort of scale until you had widespread commercially available film cameras and film projectors. Like, this whole art form is brand new. It it couldn't exist before the technological innovation of film. Yep. Exactly right. So part of the reason that cartoons are working well in advertising right now for the Slideco is that it's this novelty, you know, almost gimmick. It captures people's attention. Yep. Even though they have no color, no sound, no story, it's just a series of, like, visual novelties. [00:17:12] S0: It's something they've never seen before. Of course, it's interesting.
00:17:12 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:17:12] S0: It's something they've never seen before. Of course, it's interesting. [00:17:15] S1: Yep. And in Walt's mind, who really is always thinking about how can I, you know, make a business out of career out of this, this is also what makes it super attractive to him? Because the whole industry is so new of animation, he figures that he can quickly become as good or better than anyone else in the world at it. Unlike if he's gonna try and be the best commercial artist in the world, you know, good luck young Walt Disney in Kansas City, Missouri. [00:17:40] S0: Oil painting is thousands of years old. [00:17:41] S1: Right. Right. Right. But becoming the best cartoon animator Small pool. Yeah. P and Nub might have a shot here. Yep. So Walt and Nub start experimenting on nights and weekends with their own work, just trying out, creating their own animations using the Slideco equipment and cameras. And Walt puts together a few short cartoons that he creates all himself. He brands them as, quote, laugh o grams, and he ends up selling them on the side to a local movie theater chain to run before features. And the laugh o grams become a hit in Kansas City. Audiences love them. [00:18:19] S0: I love that the thing that led to the Walt Disney company is called laugh o gram. Like, laugh dash o dash gram. It reminds me of, what was the Rolex watch? The turnograph. [00:18:29] S1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a, like, hokey name for, you know, what ends up becoming well, this doesn't become Disney, but Right. The spirit of which becomes Disney here.
00:18:29 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:18:29] S1: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's such a, like, hokey name for, you know, what ends up becoming well, this doesn't become Disney, but Right. The spirit of which becomes Disney here. [00:18:38] S0: And the thing that they're doing, they're so primitive. There's no sound. There's no voices. There's no color. There's barely backgrounds. [00:18:46] S1: Yeah. It's so different from what you're used to today. Because of those limitations, you can't create a story or a real sense of character for any of the characters that are in there. Like, you can't build a relationship with the cartoons that are being made at this time like you can with Mickey Mouse or Donald or Goofy or Minnie. [00:19:04] S0: The only emotion you can invoke is humor, and the only real way to do humor is slapstick. So it's just these, like, super exaggerated they call them gags, like things that a character does that isn't necessarily consistent with anything else that they've done within a few minutes of starting gag happening and ending or or or sometimes even a few seconds. [00:19:25] S1: Yep. And, honestly, that's actually not that different than film itself overall at this point in time. Great point. Charlie Chaplin is the big star in America and around the world, the big movie star right now in the silent era, and most of his movies are exactly what you described, Ben. [00:19:43] S0: Honestly, it's all physical comedy, sort of slapstick. It's the stuff that my toddler laughs at. You could resummarize every scene of every comic and most movies by going, oh, he fell down.
00:19:43 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:19:43] S0: Honestly, it's all physical comedy, sort of slapstick. It's the stuff that my toddler laughs at. You could resummarize every scene of every comic and most movies by going, oh, he fell down. [00:19:55] S1: Exactly. So in May 1922, at 20 years old, Walt decides that these laughograms that he's making are having enough success that he's ready to leave the slide company, go out on his own again, and he founds Laugh O Gram Films Inc. And once again, he convinces, BiWorks to quit and come along too, along with a few other animators from the slide company. And it's another failure because despite the Laugh O Gram's local popularity there in Kansas City, by the time we get into twenty two, nineteen twenty three, animation and cartoons in general around the country are starting to lose their appeal. The novelty is wearing off. The fad is dying down. There's actually a survey of theater managers right around this time in, like, 1922 or 1923, where one of the questions is, what filler options do your audiences like to see around the feature film that you're showing? Because it also would be newsreels or live comedies or short serials. Remember, there's no television. There's not even really radio at this point in time. If you wanna get news or any kind of entertainment, you go to movie theater. [00:21:09] S0: Alright. I got a stat on this. In the nineteen twenties, the average American went over 40 times per year to the theater. Wow. This is what you did every week for entertainment. [00:21:21] S1: Wow. Yeah. Compare that to today where, like, maybe you go once a year.