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This short driving tour includes sites related to Walt Disney's five years in Kansas City including his home, the Laugh-O-Gram Studio, and the theater where his first commercial cartoons were screened. 

Walter Elias Disney was
born in Chicago on December 5, 1901 to Elias and Flora Disney. In 1906 the
family moved to a farm in Marceline, Missouri. Walt’s years in Marceline are
considered by many to be the happiest and most influential time of his
childhood. In 1911 Elias, having failed at farming, sold the property and moved
his family to Kansas City; Walt was nine years old at the time. Originally the
Disney family lived at 2706 East 31st Street, before moving to 3028
Bellefontaine Avenue in 1914. The home on Bellefontaine was a simple Builder’s
Vernacular style wood cottage built in 1905. Elias later expanded the house by
building a new kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, and a small garage. 

Much of Walt’s time as
a child in Kansas City was spent delivering newspapers for his father, who had
purchased a local paper route. Every day Walt (and his brother Roy) would wake
up as early as three-thirty in the morning to collect the papers and deliver
them to each house. He also had to leave school early each day to deliver the
afternoon papers. The work had a strong impact on Walt; decades later he would
still have nightmares about missing papers on his route. Because his father kept
most if not all of the money he earned delivering papers, Walt often worked odd
jobs in between for pocket change. Two doors down from the Disneys on
Bellefontaine lived Walt Pffeifer, who became a close friend of Walt Disney and
later worked for his studio. The pair would often perform makeshift comedy sketches
together. These early acts helped Walt develop an interest in becoming an
entertainer. 

It was in Kansas City
that Walt made his first forays into animation. As a teenager he took drawing
classes on Saturdays at the Kansas City Art Institute, and read books on
cartoons and animation at the Kansas City Public Library. In 1919, after
returning from a stint as a Red Cross ambulance driver in World War I, Walt worked
briefly as an apprentice with the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio. There he
became acquainted with fellow artist Ubbe Iwerks, and in 1920 the pair joined
the Kansas City Slide Company (later the Kansas City Film Ad Company), which
produced crude animated advertisements for local movie theaters. During this
time Disney borrowed a camera from his boss, A. V. Cauger, and began
experimenting with making cartoons in the family garage at Bellefontaine. 

In 1922 Disney and Iwerks
quit their jobs to open their own animation studio, Laugh-O-Gram Films. The
company operated out of a building near Troost Avenue and employed eleven
artists. Laugh-O-Grams was contracted to produce a series of fairy tale
cartoons, such as Jack and the Beanstalk and Goldilocks and the Three Bears,
for a company called Pictoral Clubs. They also produced an educational film for
a local dentist, and the pilot episode for a mixed live-action/animation series
called the Alice Comedies. The studio
became heavily indebted, especially when Pictoral Clubs refused to pay for its
cartoons, and in July 1923 Laugh-O-Grams went bankrupt. After selling most of
his possessions, Walt left Kansas City for Los Angeles, where he soon formed the
Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio and found success producing the Alice Comedies. 

The home on
Bellefontaine Avenue was sold around 1922 after Walt’s parents, along with his
brother Herbert and his family, moved to Oregon. Sometime during the 1940s it
was purchased by Booker and Rebecca Young, and it has remained in the possession
of their descendants to this day. Various alterations have been made to the
exterior of the home over the years. The garage still stands in the backyard,
although the original wood frame walls have been replaced with cinder blocks.
Both the house and the garage were added to the National Register of Historic
Places in 1977. The home remains a private residence and is not open to the
public.&nbsp;

This home on Bellefontaine Avenue was the residence of world famous film animator Walt Disney and his family from 1914 to around 1922. Disney, his parents, and his siblings moved to Kansas City after spending five years in Marceline. It was here that Disney first developed a passion for entertaining and an interest in becoming an animator. Using a borrowed camera, he set up a makeshift studio in the family garage and experimented with making cartoons. Disney also established his first (short-lived) film company, Laugh-O-Gram Films, before going bankrupt and leaving Kansas City for good in 1923. Today the house remains a private residence and is not open to the public. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1977. 

This home on 3028 Bellefontaine Avenue was the residence of the Disney family from 1914-1922. Image obtained from imabloggerdottie.com. 

Disney Family Home

Young Walt Disney and his
family moved to Kansas City in 1914. In 1919, Disney returned from Red Cross
service in World War I to pursue a career as a cartoonist. After a temporary
job with the Gray Advertising Company, he joined with fellow artist Ubbe Iwerks
and formed a small business called Iwerks-Disney in 1920. They moved from location
to location, and did odd jobs drawing cartoons for various publications such as
Restaurant News. Just months later
the partnership folded when Disney and Iwerks each got jobs at the Kansas City
Slide Company, which produced short carton advertisements for area theaters. In
his spare time, Disney used a camera to experiment with making his own cartoons
in his father’s garage. On his own he produced a series of short animation
snippets called Newman’s Laugh-O-Grams, which he sold to local theater chain
owner Frank Newman. Encouraged by this first small success, Disney left the
Kansas City Slide Company in May 1922 and established Laugh-O-Gram Films Inc. 

To house his new
cartoon studio, Disney rented five rooms on the second story of the McConahay
Building at East 31st Street. It was a brand new building, having
just been completed that year. The two-story, Tapestry Brick Commercial Style
structure was designed by local architect Nelle E. Peters and constructed by
the Bliss Building Company. The first floor contained storefronts while the
second floor could house offices or other businesses. Disney was joined at the
studio by Iwerks and the staff also included Hugh Harman, Rudolph Ising, Carl
Stalling, Isadore Freleng, Carmen Maxwell, Walt Pfeiffer, Otto Walliman, Lorey
Tague, William Lyon, Adolph Kloepper, and Leslie Mace. He secured initial funds
for the company by soliciting investments from family, friends, and the popular
doctor John Cowles. 

Cartoons were not in
high demand in the early 1920s, and Laugh-O-Gram struggled. The entire staff,
Disney included, was relatively inexperienced in both animation and business
management. The studio’s first and only major project was when a Tennessee film
distribution company called Pictorial Clubs commissioned a series of six fairy
tale cartoons for $11,000 in September, 1922. Laugh-O-Grams created the six
films, Red Riding Hood, The Four
Musicians of Bremen, Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldilocks and the Three Bears,
Puss and Boot, and Cinderella. The studio, desperate for income, also
created an educational film called Tommy
Tucker’s Tooth for local dentist Thomas B. McCrum. The last work made by
Laugh-O-Gram was a mixed live-action/animated film called Alice's Wonderland. Featuring child actress Virginia Davis, the
short later became the pilot episode for the Alice Comedies series. 

Tragedy struck the
company when Pictoral Clubs went bankrupt without paying for the ordered
cartoons. Laugh-O-Gram would not be able to survive long enough for the
litigation process to recover the money owed. Soon Disney was forced to move
into the studio at the McConahay Building to save money. It was around this
time, allegedly, that Disney began seeing a mouse that would sit on his desk at
night and watch him while he drew. Its presence planted in Disney’s mind the
idea of a mouse cartoon character, which eventually would emerge as Mickey
Mouse. In May 1923 Laugh-O-Gram was evicted from the McConahay Building and
moved to a small space in the second story of the Wirtham Building, above the
Isis Theatre. In July, with all options exhausted, Disney filed for bankruptcy.
Shortly afterwards he bought a train ticket for California. Disney left with a
cardboard suitcase containing a borrowed suit, some animation equipment, and
the only finished copy of Alice's Wonderland. He would eventually find success in Hollywood when the Alice Comedies were picked up for
production, giving him a second chance at running a cartoon studio. 

Several decades after
Laugh-O-Gram, the McConahay Building became vacant and fell into disrepair. By
the early 2000s parts of the roof were collapsing. A non-profit group called
Thank You, Walt Disney Inc was established to save the building from demolition
and restore it. Thanks to donations and a grant from the Disney Family, Thank
You, Walt Disney was able to purchase the building, stabilize it, and rebuild
the collapsed portions. The group is working to refurbish the building into an
interactive museum that will preserve the history of Walt Disney in Kansas
City, revitalize the local neighborhood, and teach animation to future
generations. Currently the plans call for a recreation of the Laugh-O-Gram
Studio, a Welcome Center, a space for screening classic films, offices, and an
educational facility to teach art and animation.

The McConahay Building on East 31st was home to Walt Disney's first professional cartoon studio, Laugh-O-Gram Films. The fledgling studio consisted of Walt, Ubbe Iwerks, and a handful of other artists from the Kansas City area. They operated from rooms in the second story of the building and produced several cartoons. It is said that around this time Disney met a mouse that would later provide the inspiration for Mickey Mouse in 1928. Laugh-O-Gram Films was short-lived, opening in May 1922 and filing for bankruptcy in July 1923. Disney and several of his employees would later go on to become pioneers in the animation industry. Today the building is owned by the non-profit group Thank You, Walt Disney Inc., which is working to convert it into an interactive museum. 

The Laugh-O-Gram Studio today. Thank You, Walt Disney Inc. plans on converting it into an interactive museum. 

Laugh-O-Gram Studio, First Studio of Walt Disney

The Newman Theater was
built in 1919 by Frank L. Newman, the premier exhibitor in Kansas City. While
the Newman was his flagship theater, he also owned and operated at least two
other others, the Royal and the Regent. The Newman was built on 1114-1118 Main
Street at the site of the Brady Building, which had been destroyed by a fire in
1918. The theater was designed in the Colonial Revival style by popular local
architect Alexander Drake. It was built using steel and concrete to render it
fire-proof and cost up to $400,000; it was reportedly the most expensive
theater ever built in Kansas City at the time. Newman included many lavish
features in his theater. It boasted Italian tapestries, hand-painted murals,
and Greek figures. It had seating for an audience of 2,000, a 35-piece
orchestra pit, a mezzanine floor promenade, lounges, and even a nursery. The
Newman Theater opened to much fanfare in June of 1919; each year the
anniversary of its opening was celebrated with a week of special acts. &nbsp;&nbsp;

The Newman Theater is
believed to be the first site to screen a production by animator Walt Disney.
Disney had lived in Kansas City for several years and after returning in 1919 following
service in the Red Cross during World War I he decided to pursue a career as a
cartoonist. He briefly worked for the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio at the
Gray Advertising Company, where he drew the covers for several issues of Newman’s
weekly Newman Theatres Magazine. In
1920 Disney got a job at the Kansas City Slide Company (later the Kansas City
Film Ad Service) which produced short animated advertisements for local
theaters. These animated snippets promoted local businesses and were screened
before the films. They were very primitive, with basic drawings and stop motion
techniques. 

In his spare time,
Disney drew and filmed a short set of cartoons he called Local Happenings. They were primarily satirical works addressing
current social issues in Kansas City such as crime and ladies’ fashion among
other things. At the suggestion of his boss, Disney showed the cartoons to
Frank Newman, who agreed to screen them in his Newman Theater and asked for a
new one each week. Now renamed Newman
Laugh-O-Grams, the cartoons were included in a newsreel called Newman News and Views, which covered
topics relevant to the Kansas City community. Disney’s Newman Laugh-O-Grams debuted on March 20, 1921 during a screening
of the film Mamma’s Affair; it was
the first recorded airing of a Walt Disney production in history. Disney
created Newman Laugh-O-Grams for the
next several months, before leaving the Kansas City Film Ad Service to open his
own short-lived Laugh-O-Gram Studio. &nbsp;

Frank Newman sold his
theaters and left Kansas City in 1925 after being offered a job managing
theaters for the Famous Players-Lasky Film Corporation in Los Angeles. Around
1941 the Newman Theater was acquired by Paramount Pictures Inc., which renamed
it the Paramount Theater in 1947. Business declined, and in 1969 the theater
changed ownership and briefly operated as the Towne Theatre before finally
closing. It was demolished in 1972. Today the site is occupied by City Center
Square, which was built in 1977.

The Newman Theater was a popular movie theater that existed on Main Street from 1919 until 1972. It was one of several built by local exhibitor Frank L. Newman. The Newman Theater was known for its opulence and extravagant features, such as Italian tapestries and hand-painted murals. The theater is also noteworthy for being the first site to air a production by Walt Disney, a series of short satirical cartoons called Newman Laugh-O-Grams. They were fully animated by Disney himself and screened during newsreels in 1921. In the 1940s the Newman became a Paramount Theater, and was eventually closed and demolished in 1972. Today the site is occupied by City Center Square.

The Newman Theater around 1928. Image courtesy of the Missouri Valley Special Collections. 

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Walt Disney's Kansas City

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