As 2023 marks the milestone 100th anniversary of The Walt Disney Company, Disney Files columnist Jim Korkis celebrates with a look back to October 1923, when Walt Disney’s show-business career started, not with a mouse, but with an Alice.
The history books remember the year 1923 for many reasons. It was when Calvin Coolidge became America’s 30th President. When Time magazine published its first issue. And when archaeologists opened King Tut’s tomb. But for Disney fans, 1923 is best known as the birth year of the Disney Studio
Walt arrived in Los Angeles from Kansas City in August of that year, renting a room in his Uncle Robert’s home for $5 a week and paying an additional dollar a week to use the garage as a makeshift animation studio.
It wasn’t long before Walt looked for a more commercial base of operations, sparked by a contract to produce a 12-episode animated series, with an option for more. He’d find it just a couple blocks west of Uncle Robert’s house, in the Holly-Vermont Realty office.
Walt reportedly told the office’s owners that he only needed enough room “to swing a cat in” (an expression of the time meaning “limited space” – no actual cats were swung in the deal).
For $10 a month, he was given a room in the back of the real estate office, sectioned off by a curtain hung by Walt and his brother Roy. And just over a week later, the Disney Studio was officially born as California’s first animation studio (most were based in New York at the time).
As Disney Legend and Walt Disney Archives founder Dave Smith told me in March 1982, “Walt moved down the street on Oct. 8, 1923, to 4651 Kingswell Ave., and there in the back of a real estate office set up the first Disney Studio. A contract was signed for the ‘Alice Comedies’ on Oct. 16, 1923, and we consider that the official date of the beginning of the Disney Studio.”
(By the way, Members who played the Disney Vacation Club “Scenic Selfies” in-park games that launched in 2020 know that an homage to that first Disney Studio still exists in the Echo Park area of Disney’s Hollywood Studios at Walt Disney World Resort. Next time you’re there, look for a Holly-Vermont Realty Office logo on a door to the right of Peevy’s Polar Pipeline refreshment stand. You’ll even spot a sign advertising office space for rent.)
In February 1924, Walt and Roy moved to a larger space next door at 4649 Kingswell Ave., enabled by income from those “Alice Comedies,” a clever combination of black-and-white animation and live-action performances by child star Virginia Davis in the title role. Roy Disney added “camera operator” to his list of studio leadership responsibilities during production of the series, photographing both the animation and the live action.
Virginia, who was named an official Disney Legend in 1998 and sailed a decade later as a special guest aboard a Disney Vacation Club Member Cruise, sat down with me for an interview in 2007 and reflected on the groundbreaking series.
“When I saw it recently, I was amazed at how crude it really was,” she recalled of ‘Alice’s Day at Sea,’ the simple story of a girl at the beach, falling asleep with her dog and dreaming of adventures under the sea. “It’s amazing to think that, from this, comes the Disney entertainment empire. We filmed it at Santa Monica. It was the first time I had seen an ocean.
“I liked to play in the sand with Peggy, the dog they had [in the production]. That was Walt’s uncle’s house, and Peggy was the uncle’s dog, and she knew all these tricks, so Walt would have her do those tricks.
“Walt loved children, and he was very gentle with me. There was no script. He would tell me the story, but it was exciting because I was in the story. There was no rehearsal at all. Since it was silent, he would tell me off camera where to look and how to react.
“Those fishermen in the film were not actors. They were just there at the beach, and Walt convinced them to be in the film, because he thought they looked like good characters.” Recalling Roy’s role as camera operator, Virginia told me, “In those days, there was a crank on the side of the camera, and you did it by hand. If you cranked too slow, people looked like they were moving fast, and if you cranked too fast, they looked like they were moving very slowly. He had trouble doing it, and they finally got a motorized camera.”
And that, I suppose, marked the end of Roy’s career as a cinematographer – freeing him up to help Walt take his Disney dream to new heights, paving the way for 100 years of wonder.
Jim Korkis shares more stories in Call Me Walt: Everything You Never Knew About Walt Disney, available wherever books are sold.