Simple and naïve, they also indicate a remarkable progression. His Universal camera was mounted on a stand made by stretching a plank across four-by-fours.ĭisney made six more Laugh-O-grams in Kansas City, which all survive, thanks to the remarkable detective work of animation collectors and historians working in collaboration with the Walt Disney Archives, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Library of Congress. Working at first out of his garage, Disney improvised even with his equipment. It is very much a beginner’s effort-simple sketches of characters posed in front of minimal backgrounds, the animation derived from the slash-and-tear technique Disney was learning from Edwin Lutz’s classic animation textbook, the Paul Terry Aesop’s Fables, and John Bray’s Krazy Kat cartoons he and his friends cadged from a local film exchange. Little Red Riding Hood is a Jazz Age pastiche featuring a wolfish city slicker who drives a magic car, a grandma off to see the movies, and a hero who rescues his sweetheart from a wing-flapping airplane. With the help of high school student Rudy Ising, who later cofounded the Warner Brothers and MGM cartoon studios, and other local would-be cartoonists, Disney worked for six months putting together his first fairy tale cartoon. Influenced by New York animator Paul Terry’s spoofs of Aesop’s Fables, which had premiered in June 1920, Disney decided not only to parody fairy-tale classics but also to modernize them by having them playing off recent events.

Spurred by his success, the 19-year-old Disney decided to try something more ambitious: animated fairy tales. The Laugh-O-grams were a hit, leading to commissions for animated intermission fillers and coming attractions slides for Newman’s theaters.

It is one of the few surviving scenes he ever completed by himself. The last scene of the pilot, which editorializes on local police corruption headlines, was animated by Disney alone. Of these fillers, only the pilot survives, a two-and-a-half minute sample reel that reveals the format: the hand of a lightning sketch artist composes gently satirical drawings that come to life in a final animated sequence.

Tactfully called “Newman Laugh-O-grams,” Disney’s footage was meant to mix advertising with topical humor. He started by persuading Frank Newman, Kansas City’s leading exhibitor, to include short snippets of animation in the series of weekly newsreels Newman produced for his chain of three theaters. He made these cartoons by himself and with the help of a few friends. Disney’s first animated films began in 1920 as after-work projects when Disney was a commercial artist for an advertising company in Kansas City. Before Mickey Mouse, before the Fairbanksian moustache, and even before the Alice comedies, came Walt Disney’s Laugh-O-grams.

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