Two talented people who worked with Walt Disney at the beginning and at the end of his incredibly productive career as a filmmaker will be in Kansas City, Missouri on Saturday, October 8 to help raise funds to save the building where it all began.
Laugh-O-Gram Films, Inc. was the first Walt Disney company, founded by Walt when he was only 20 years old. It operated in a two-story brick building near 31st and Forest Streets. There Walt and his staff of young men who would soon revolutionize the industry produced movies which set the pattern for Walt’s entire career.
Walt’s last film made in Missouri starred 4-year old Virginia Davis who he had met while working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. Walt created a process which allowed Virginia to appear as a live-action little girl in a cartoon world.
He took that one-reel epic with him on the train to Los Angeles. He had already begun a correspondence with Margaret Winkler, then the nation’s foremost distributor of animated films, while still in Kansas City. A few weeks after his arrival in L.A., he received an offer of a contract from Winkler to produce the “Alice Comedies,” but she required that the same actress continue in the title role.
The Walt Disney Company dates its founding from the date of the signing of that contract on Ocober 16, 1923. Walt persuaded Virginia’s parents to move to the west coast where he and Roy were the entire staff of the studio. Ub Iwerks joined them shortly after, driving Virginia’s parents’ car. As the studio grew, Walt called on other young men from the Kansas City, Missouri operation to also go west.
In 1998, exactly 75 years after the signing of the Winkler contract, Michael Eisner and Roy E. Disney presented the Disney Legend Award to Virginia Davis at the Studio she helped found.
Floyd Norman is well known to readers of this web site. He began working at the Disney Studio in the late 1950’s. He was one of the first African Americans hired there.
He worked as an artist and story man during the last ten years that Walt personally oversaw production there. He remains active in the creation of books and television programming.
Floyd was interviewed for the biographical documentary film, “Walt: The Man Behind the Myth,” which was released by the Walt Disney Family Foundation.
The Foundation has also been among the most important supporters of the effort to preserve and restore the building where Walt operated Laugh-O-Gram Films. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places, but was also on the register of buildings to be demolished by the City until it was purchased by two friends of mine and I who formed a not-for-profit corporation called “Thank You Walt Disney.”
For the past several years, we have been working to raise the money to transform the site into a museum which will tell the story of Walt’s life and work. We have stabilized the structure, removing material that had accumulated over the decades, poured a new first floor, installed steel framing and supports for the new second floor. We have removed and reinstalled portions of the front facade which had bowed outward and restored the brickwork around the exterior. We are restoring the terra cotta trim and leaded glass panels and we hope to soon have a new roof on the building as well as new windows installed.
If you would like to join us in this effort, send a contribution to “Thank You Walt Disney, Inc.” c/o Dan Viets, 15 N. 10th St., Columbia, MO 65201 or join us in Kansas City, Missouri this Saturday for an evening with Virginia and Floyd and a live and silent auction to save Disney history.
Editor’s note: Dan Viets is the author of arguably one of the better Disney history books to be published in the past few years, “Walt Disney’s Missouri: The Roots of a Creative Genius.” So if you’d like to learn more about Walt’s formative days in Marceline & Kansas City (Not to mention detailed information about Disney’s aborted indoor theme park project, “Riverboat Square”), then I urge you to pick up a copy.