Acquired
00:25:03 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:25:03] S1: a job. But amazing. I didn't know that story. So once he inevitably gets rejected at all the major Hollywood studios, he says later, when things began to look hopeless, I got my cartoon things out again. And he sets up shop animating again. He's like, well, as you said, Ben, this is the one thing I know how to do. I should try that. And at this point, pretty much the only popular cartoon left in the industry is Felix the Cat Yep. Which is created by Pat Sullivan out of New York and distributed by the pioneering Margaret Winkler, also in New York. So Walt has one thing, one asset left over from his failed Laugh O Gram days, which is a reel of a hybrid live action cartoon short that he had created with Ub right before he left Kansas City called Alice's Wonderland, about a real life little girl who interacts on screen with cartoons that they've drawn over the film. [00:26:15] S0: Which is like completely pioneering technology. The the other people who were doing animation this time were just doing cartoons. These Alice comedies, as they came to be called, were a new process by which you could go and film a real life actor and then have them interact on screen with cartoon characters and put them in the cartoon. [00:26:34] S1: Yes. Very cool. And also had the unique property of being cheaper to produce than full animation, because you only had to animate the characters, not all the backgrounds and everything. Right.
00:26:34 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:26:34] S1: Yes. Very cool. And also had the unique property of being cheaper to produce than full animation, because you only had to animate the characters, not all the backgrounds and everything. Right. [00:26:45] S0: Yeah. There is this funny counterintuitive thing that live production is much faster and cheaper than animation. You just have a film camera, and you point it at something in the world that exists, and you kinda get everything that you're pointing it at for free. Yep. Like, the actor is interacting with a bunch of stuff. And when you're making an animated film, you need to draw literally everything from scratch. It's it's much harder, and [00:27:07] S1: you need to do [00:27:07] S0: it frame by frame by frame by frame rather than the world just sort of happening around you and you taking these exposures in a video camera. [00:27:15] S1: Yep. So Walt sends Alice's Wonderland off to Winkler, and she likes it. So she commissions Walt to create 12 more Alice comedies for, like, 15 to $1,800 each. She does. And, David, did you know we have seen this contract? Was this in the documents that we saw in the Disney archives?
00:27:15 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:27:15] S1: Yep. So Walt sends Alice's Wonderland off to Winkler, and she likes it. So she commissions Walt to create 12 more Alice comedies for, like, 15 to $1,800 each. She does. And, David, did you know we have seen this contract? Was this in the documents that we saw in the Disney archives? [00:27:37] S0: Yes. So listeners for this episode, David and I went and spent a few days down in Burbank looking through the corporate archives. And one of the things that the archivist pulled for us was this contract, and I have a photo of it. I'm looking at it right now. Agreement entered into the October 1923 between Walt Disney of forty four zero six Kingswell Avenue, Hollywood, California, blah blah blah blah blah. And, yeah, you're exactly right. For 12 negatives of subject series, and then in all caps, Alice Comedies. [00:28:05] S1: And Amazing. [00:28:06] S0: This we I also have a picture of this. On the last page of this contract because this is effectively the contract that puts Disney in business. I mean, this becomes the Walt Disney Company. [00:28:15] S1: Yeah. This is the moment. This is the beginning of Disney. [00:28:18] S0: You can see his signature, which is much less flowery than the Yeah. Version that you see in the the Disney logo. He would sort of evolve it over time. [00:28:26] S1: But, yeah, this is the moment. Disney, Walt is in business. It's his first actual commercial big time deal. Yes.
00:28:26 · David Rosenthal, Ben Gilbert
[00:28:26] S1: But, yeah, this is the moment. Disney, Walt is in business. It's his first actual commercial big time deal. Yes. [00:28:37] S0: And I think when Walt sort of gets word from Margaret, he runs into his brother's room. His brother, Roy, actually has tuberculosis at this time. It is in, like, a hospital ward. And he sort of runs in, shows him the contract, says, we got it. We got it. We got it. We're in business. We're doing it. And, you know, 15 to $1,800 a film is a lot of money at this time. And Roy talks through with him and says, okay. Let's get right to work. And he literally stands up and leaves the hospital ward. It's like, alright. My tuberculosis is behind me. [00:29:02] S1: And the two of them found the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio right there in October 1923 as a true partnership between the brothers. Roy manages the business and the finance. Walt manages the creative, and they get to work. Yep. So Walt, of course, writes of iWorks back in Kansas City and several of the other talented animators that they knew there and says, alright, guys. I I got it this time. Come on out to California. We finally got a deal. We're gonna build a real company and a real animation studio. [00:29:41] S0: And they do. The behemoth we [00:29:43] S1: know crazy. [00:29:44] S0: As Disney today is the Disney Brothers cartoon studio and a whole bunch of Kansas City guys that moved out to join Walt to start crank it away.
00:29:44 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:29:44] S0: As Disney today is the Disney Brothers cartoon studio and a whole bunch of Kansas City guys that moved out to join Walt to start crank it away. [00:29:54] S1: Yep. And the Alice Comedy's become a moderate success in the marketplace. Again, I think the novelty of cartoons plus live animation, audiences are entertained for a few years. Ultimately, the Disney Brothers Studio produces 57 of the Alice Comedies from 1923 to 1927. And then in 1927, Winkler's relatively new husband, Charles Mintz, who actually got to start working for her in the business, by this point in time, he has taken over as sort of head of the business. He is no longer getting along with Pat Sullivan, the creator of Felix the Cat. Big opportunity. Big opportunity. And and he has brokered a little arrangement with Universal Pictures, the big New York film distributor, to on the sly create a new character to rival Felix. Now now mind you, he and Winkler are still the distributor for Felix, for Sullivan, and they're creating a new character to compete with him on the side. [00:31:02] S0: Sorta like they're building their own chips while still buying NVIDIA. Yeah. [00:31:07] S1: And so he turns around and taps Disney Says, hey, Walt. Can you make us a new series and a new character? You know, like Felix, but but not Felix. Like like, maybe not a cat. [00:31:20] S0: Right. We need it to be plausibly different while still having everything that made Felix successful.
00:31:20 · Ben Gilbert, David Rosenthal
[00:31:20] S0: Right. We need it to be plausibly different while still having everything that made Felix successful. [00:31:26] S1: Yes. So Walt and Ub cast about. What can we come up with? It's like a cat, but maybe shares a lot of the same recognizable attributes, like, you know, a lot of white fur, a tail, some big ears, easy to draw in black and white. And they come up not with Mickey Mouse, but with Oswald, the lucky rabbit. And Oswald is a big hit. It's got the backing of Universal distribution behind it. That's a big hit for Universal, big hit for Winkler and Mintz, and a big hit for the Disney Brothers cartoon studio. [00:32:02] S0: And it's not surprising because if you give the creative brief to Walt and Ub, take something that's kinda working, but apply your style. Their style was great. I mean, they were emotional animators. There's a great quote in the book Walt Disney, an American original by Bob Thomas that says, before Disney, cartoons were slapdash. Yeah. Two dimensional characters in bizarre movement before elemental backgrounds. Disney insisted on rounded, humanized figures. He wanted the humor to come out of the character, not the outrageous action. So it's sort of like, hey. Here's the template, but Disneyfy it or iWorkify it [00:32:40] S1: Yeah. [00:32:41] S0: In a way that really can speak to people.