BGuthrie Photos: CA -- San Francisco -- Presidio -- Walt Disney Family Museum -- Gallery 02: Hollywood and Oswald, Mickey, and WD Studios

CA -- San Francisco -- Presidio -- Walt Disney Family Museum -- Gallery 02: Hollywood and Oswald, Mickey, and WD Studios:

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Description of Pictures: 1923–1928
Gallery 2
The Move to Hollywood

Alice Comedies:
While other moviemakers were animating characters to interact with live action, Walt had a uniquely different idea. “So I reversed it. I said, ‘That’s a new twist’ and it sold.” It was the beginning of the Alice Comedies, an ongoing series about a real girl living in a cartoon world.

Dear Mrs. Davis:
Walt landed a contract based on an unfinished film he had made earlier in Kansas City about a girl named Alice, portrayed by Virginia Davis. From it, he launched the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio with his older brother Roy, but he still needed his star to get going. So with a very persuasive letter, Walt convinced the star’s family to move out West.

It All Started with a Mouse:
Resilient after losing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit to an unscrupulous distributor in New York, Walt started toying with the idea of a mouse called Mortimer on the train ride home. His wife Lilly said, “I don’t think that would be good for a mouse’s name. Let’s call it Mickey.”

Walt Marries Lillian Bounds:
A year after Walt established the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, a lovely new inker caught his eye. A romance soon sprang up and by the following summer, Walt and Lilly were married. “I think that Dad was smitten with my mother almost immediately. It was probably mutual. It was a sweet courtship.”—Diane Disney Miller

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. WDFM02_180714_001.JPG: Hollywood "I came to Hollywood and arrived here in August 1923 with forty dollars in my pocket and a coat and a pair of trousers that didn't match. And one half of my suitcase had my shirts and underwear and things and the other half had my drawing materials. I was a little discouraged with cartoons at that time. I thought I was getting into it too late. In other words, I thought the cartoon business was established in such a way that there was no chance to break into it. So I tried to get a job in Hollywood, working in the picture business so I could learn it. I would have liked to have been a director, [but] before I knew it I had my drawing board out. I started back at the cartoons and I was able to secure a contract for twelve of these short films." -- Walt "He was always worried, but always enthusiastic. Tomorrow was always gonna answer all his problems." -- Roy Arriving in Hollywood and finding no openings in the major movie studios, Walt continued to pursue his idea for the Alice Comedies. Soon he had sold the series to a national distributor, and he and his brother Roy established their new animation studio. The Alice Comedies were a modest success and led to the creation of a new character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit -- and then, at the end of the 1920s, the event that would prove to be the turning point for the Walt Disney Studio: the birth of Mickey Mouse.
2. WDFM02_180714_008.JPG: The Cartoon Industry
3. WDFM02_180714_018.JPG: First Runs
4. WDFM02_180714_023.JPG: Gag shot outside the Kingswell studio, 1925 Left to right: Thurston Harper (front), Walker Harman (standing on curb), Roy (pouring into Harper's mouth), Ham Hamilton (drinking), Rudy Ising (brandishing bottle over Roy's head), Ub Iwerks (partially hidden), and Hugh Harman. At the time of this photo, Prohibition was in force.
5. WDFM02_180714_027.JPG: Members of Disney staff, 1929 Standing: Johnny Cannon, Wilfred Jackson, Les Clark, Jack Cutting. Front row: Ub Iwerks, Walt, Carl Stalling
6. WDFM02_180714_035.JPG: Walter Elias Disney letter to Ubbe Iwerks June 1, 1924 Facsimile Disney letter to Ubbe asking him to join the studio staff. Iwerks arrived in July 1924. Within a few years in Hollywood, he had streamlined the spelling of his name to Ub Iwerks.
7. WDFM02_180714_038.JPG: Walt, at the Pathe camera, ca 1923
8. WDFM02_180714_042.JPG: The Boys from Kansas City -- and a New Role for Walt
9. WDFM02_180714_043.JPG: "I reached a point that I had so many working with me and there was so much time and attention demanded that I had to drop the drawing end of it myself."
10. WDFM02_180714_044.JPG: The Cartoon Industry
11. WDFM02_180714_046.JPG: Walt, summer 1923
12. WDFM02_180714_048.JPG: "Back to That Drawing Board" The Alice Comedies
13. WDFM02_180714_050.JPG: Getting Started
14. WDFM02_180714_053.JPG: The Disney Bros. Studio
15. WDFM02_180714_058.JPG: Creative Differences
16. WDFM02_180714_060.JPG: Virginia Davis with Peggy, Robert Disney's dog, 1924
17. WDFM02_180714_061.JPG: Virginia Davis sitting on Walt's Ford Model T
18. WDFM02_180714_064.JPG: Walt, Margie Gay, and Roy
19. WDFM02_180714_072.JPG: Oswald, Mickey, and The Walt Disney Studio
20. WDFM02_180714_075.JPG: Family Story
21. WDFM02_180714_082.JPG: Letter from Walt to Carl Stalling, September 16, 1925 A letter to Carl Stalling, dictated to Lillian, in which Walt refers to a song reel Stalling had requested and tells of his recent marriage.
22. WDFM02_180714_086.JPG: Outside the Kingswell Studio Mike Marcus, Lillian, Walt, Thurston Harper, Ub Iwerks, Rollin "Ham" Hamilton, and Roy
23. WDFM02_180714_088.JPG: Marjorie Sewell, Lilly's niece
24. WDFM02_180714_096.JPG: Lilly, Walt, Ruth, Roy and Edna in front of the Disney Brothers Studio, ca 1928
25. WDFM02_180714_103.JPG: Mr. and Mrs. Roy Disney
26. WDFM02_180714_108.JPG: Roy and Edna's home
27. WDFM02_180714_111.JPG: Walt and Lilly on their honeymoon at Mount Rainier
28. WDFM02_180714_114.JPG: Walt and his mother, Flora, ca 1925
29. WDFM02_180714_126.JPG: Animating Steamboat Willie
30. WDFM02_180714_138.JPG: Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
31. WDFM02_180714_140.JPG: 2719 Hyperion Avenue The Walt Disney Studio
32. WDFM02_180714_150.JPG: Rough animation sketch Rival Romeos, 1927
33. WDFM02_180714_172.JPG: Earliest known drawing of Mickey Mouse, 1928 Facsimile When Walt returned to California, the idea for Mickey Mouse still fresh in his mind, he immediately met with Roy, Ub Iwerks, and Les Clark to discuss and establish the new character. Two pages of drawings, a rough original and a "cleaned up" tracing, came out of that meeting and are believed to be the earliest drawings of Mickey Mouse. This page, shown in facsimile, is the rough original. Authorship of the individual drawings has never been definitively established; Ub Iwerks certainly had a hand in them, but Walt and possibly Les Clark also contributed. The two pages were later placed in a safe at Retlaw Enterprises, the family company, by veteran Disney writer (and Walt's brother-in-law) Bill Cottrell. They were not discovered by the family until years after Bill's death.
34. WDFM02_180714_179.JPG: "I was coming back after this meeting in New York, and Mrs. Disney was with me on the train. I said, 'We've got to get a new character.' " -- Walt
35. WDFM02_180714_180.JPG: "Let's Go After Sound"
36. WDFM02_180714_195.JPG: Pat Powers and Sound Recording
37. WDFM02_180714_218.JPG: Synchronizing Sound
38. WDFM02_180714_221.JPG: "It Hit!"
39. WDFM02_180714_224.JPG: Telegram, Bill Depperman (in Buffalo) to Walt (in New York City), December 5, 1935 Western Union inaugurated its new "facsimile" service by sending this telegram.
40. WDFM02_180714_227.JPG: Walt's notes on synchronizing sound to Steamboat Willie, September 30, 1928
41. WDFM02_180714_232.JPG: Letter from Walt to Lilly, February 10, 1929
42. WDFM02_180714_238.JPG: Walt with actor Toots Novello from the Fanchon & Marco Mickey Mouse stage show publicizing Mickey Mouse, 1930
43. WDFM02_180714_244.JPG: Walt and Ub, ca 1929
44. WDFM02_180714_250.JPG: Success
45. WDFM02_180714_260.JPG: Mickey Mouse merchandise of the 1930s
46. WDFM02_180714_267.JPG: The (First) Mickey Mouse Club
47. WDFM02_180714_270.JPG: Mickey Merchandise
48. WDFM02_180714_272.JPG: Walt with Kay Kamen Kamen successfully built up the studio's character merchandise program during the early 1930s.
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Wikipedia Description: The Walt Disney Family Museum
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Walt Disney Family Museum is an American museum that features the life and legacy of Walt Disney. The museum is located in The Presidio of San Francisco, part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in San Francisco. The Museum retrofitted and expanded three existing historic buildings on the Presidio’s Main Post. The principal building, at 104 Montgomery Street, faces the Parade Ground, and opened on October 1, 2009.

The Walt Disney Family Museum, LLC is owned, operated and funded by the Walt Disney Family Foundation, a non-profit organization established by Disney's heirs (including Diane Marie Disney, co-founder of the Museum). It is not formally associated with The Walt Disney Company, the media and entertainment enterprise. Museum co-founders are Diane Disney Miller, Walter E.D. Miller, and Joanna Miller Runeare; executive director is Richard Benefield.

Exhibits:

Exhibits in the museum focus on Walt Disney's life and career. The lobby displays 248 awards that Disney won during his career, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom and many Academy Awards.

There are ten permanent galleries:
1. Beginnings -- Material on Disney's ancestors, childhood and early adulthood. Included are early cartoon drawings and a replica of the ambulance he drove in France after World War I. The beginnings of his animation career are explained.

2. Hollywood -- Disney's California partnership with his brother Roy led to the success of Mickey Mouse.

3. New Horizons in the 1930s. -- Disney's success led to fame and significant improvement in animation techniques.

4. The move to features -- Original art from the production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is on diplay.

5. "We were in a new business" -- Additional animated features follow, including Pinocchio, Fantasia and Bambi. Disney builds a new studio in Burbank.

6. "The toughest period in my life" -- Labor unrest and Disney's response to World War II.

7. Postwar production -- Disney moves into live action feature films, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

8. Walt + the natural world -- Disney concentrates on nature documentary films.

9. The 1950s + 1960s: The big screen and beyond -- Disney branches out into television and theme parks.

10. December 15, 1966 -- Worldwide response to Disney's death and his legacy.

Artifacts on display include Walt's original 1/8 scale Lilly Belle train (formerly on display at the Disneyland Railroad's Main Street Station), a series of still drawings demonstrating one-minute footage of Steamboat Willie and an underwater camera used for filming 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. An early conceptual scale model of Disneyland is another feature.

Critical reception:

"It's a collection of ideas and documents, a diverse array of archival, filmic, and pop-cultural texts that historicizes Disney's work and compels us to think twice about how we appraise it. The museum energizes the fascinatingly charged scholarly debate that the Disney phenomenon has provoked, shaking the worn, staid, sometimes cynical images we have of Disney and his empire, bringing to them renewed color and motion."

"Given the heritage of the place, you expect to see a ride at the Walt Disney Family Museum . . . And in a way, there is one, since the museum does just what Disney thought a ride should do when he created Disneyland more than half a century ago: it tells a story. And while the museum is almost leisurely in relating its narrative, only here and there veering into uncharted terrain, and while children will quickly pass by many sections that will fascinate their elders, there are more than enough thrills for everyone."
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