The very first animated shorts produced by Walt Disney, the Laugh-O-Grams were a short lived series of theatrical cartoons, with the studio and series lasting from 1921 to 1923, built off the heels of Disney's previously failed companies, Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists and Kaycee Studios.
The first handful were a series of 1 minute long newsreels that were exclusively screened at the Newman Theatre in Kansas City, Missouri, featuring topical gags and advertisements, before upgrading to a series of gag cartoons loosely inspired by well known fairy tales, but given a then contemporary spin. Walt Disney himself drew and animated on these films, along with artists Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Friz Freleng and Carman Maxwell. During this time, the company also created Lafflets which were smaller shorts (normally about 20-30 seconds long) that were an early example of commercials. However, the Lafflets have been lost to time.
After completing a couple of films, he sent his studio's sales manager to New York to find a distributor, as the local theaters and events were not bringing in enough income. Walt was able to sign with Pictorial Clubs, Inc. of Tennessee. Pictorial agreed to pay $11,000 for the cartoons, which were supposed to be shown at schools and other non-theatrical places, but only paid $100 in advance and was to deliver all of the shorts by 1924 to be paid the rest. While the rest of the shorts were being made, almost no income coming in and the company was failing.
To make matters worst, Pictorial Clubs went bankrupt only a few months after signing up for distribution and never delivered the rest of the payment, causing Walt to declare bankruptcy in July 1923, just after completing the raw edits of his pilot for his next proposed series, the Alice Comedies. After selling his movie camera and moving to California, Walt managed to get distribution for the new Alice series via Winkler Pictures.
Fortunately, a good collection of the longer short films produced by the short lived studio (which includes "Alice's Wonderland", the pilot for Disney's eventual Alice Comedies series) have survived the ravages of time and exist to this day.
- Newman Laugh-O-Grams
(1921) - Little Red Riding Hood (1922)
- The Four Musicians of Bremen (1922)
- Jack and the Beanstalk (1922)
- Jack the Giant Killer (1922)
- Goldie Locks and the Three Bears (1922)
- Puss in Boots (1922)
- Cinderella (1922)
- Gold in Slow Motion: Lost Film
- Descha's Tryst with the Moon: Lost Film
- Aesthetic Camping: Lost Film
- Reuben's Big Day: Lost Film
- Rescued: Lost Film
- A Star Pitcher: Lost Film
- The Woodland Potter: Lost Film
- A Pirate for a Day: Lost Film
- Tommy Tucker's Tooth (1922): A mostly live action educational film for Kansas City Dentist Thomas B. Mccrumb. One of the rare shorts to have a sequel, Clara Cleans Her Teeth, produced in 1926 by the Walt Disney Company.
- Martha (1923): Lost Film, billed as 'Song-O-Reel', only title card and behind the scenes photos of the live action parts are known to exist.
- Alice's Wonderland (1923): The pilot for the Alice Comedies, made before the studio closed shop. It's important to note that this film was never publicly screened; it was made as a way of attracting potential distributors and investors.
Tropes:
- Alice Allusion: Alice's Wonderland takes its name from the story Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, but it otherwise has little to nothing in common with that story.
- Ambiguously Gay: The series started pairing the main cat and dog in Puss in Boots and Cinderella. Puss in Boots reveals the dog's name to be James, and while the cat could be female, promotional material refer to it as Peter.
- Animated Adaptation: The first seven shorts are loose adaptations of classic fairy tales Little Red Riding Hood, The Four Musicians of Bremen, Jack and the Beanstalk, Goldie Locks and the Three Bears, Puss in Boots, Cinderella and Jack the Giant Killer.
- Animated Anthology: The first short, Newman Laugh-O-Grams, is really a pilot for the local Newman Movie Theater Chain. Walt Disney was doing experiments in his father's garage with animation and created the short by putting together the animation that he created during the experimental. However, this is even questionable if "Newman Laugh-O-Grams" is even an anthology as that is all that is left of the shorts he created for the Newman Movie Theater by himself. He kept a copy of this film
- This is how some of the Laugh-o-grams films were found years later. Pictorial Clubs, the distributor, had some shady sister companies in different states sold the Laugh-o-grams under different titles in a Anthology collection but used A Walt Disney Film in the film title cards to capitalize on Walt Disney's success of Mickey Mouse.
- Covers Always Lie: The poster for Little Red Riding Hood looks nothing like the short. As the poster shows an anthropomorphic wolf as the villain. Anyone who has watched the short knows that the wolf is human in this version. Most of the other Laugh-O-Grams films were also like this but not as bad as Little Red Riding Hood. This cover was also the only known evidence of Little Red Riding Hood until 1998.
- Creator Cameo: Walt himself appears in the first film, drawing his cartoons. He also appears in "Alice's Wonderland".
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The look, movement, and tone of the cartoons is a far cry from the better-known films Disney would eventually produce, and there are no real recurring characters to speak of, unlike the Classic Disney Shorts. Also, the very first short was a series of topical gags and advertisements for the local theatre for which it was made, with no real story. On top of that, while one of the shorts is based on Cinderella, it's vastly different from the Cinderella that Disney would produce later on.
- Interspecies Romance: In Puss In Boots and Cinderella, a cat (most likely Julius) and a dog in a romantic relationship.
- Limited Animation: The films often used cutouts or very crude hand-drawn animation. Justified, since Disney was working on low budgets and lacked experience making cartoons.
- This includes the first 2 works, Newman's Laugh-o-Grams and Little Red Riding Hood as they were not animated with cels but normal paper as Disney did not have the budget at the time for creating animation on cels.
- Mickey Mousing: Walt made Martha, billed Song-o-Reel, a live action film that incorporated on stage sound effects and music in a very early attempt of what he would later perfect with Steamboat Willie a decade later. However, the film has been lost.
- Multiple-Choice Past: Due to how long ago the shorts were made, there is multiple answers to who worked on some of the shorts.
- Little Red Riding Hood for example, is known to have been worked on mainly by Walt and Hugh Harman. Hugh has said that Ub Iwerks worked on lettering & a few others such as Rudolf Ising & Carman Maxwell worked on the short while Walt has said Hugh and his brother, Fred, were the only ones working on it but does admit that Ub could have worked on the lettering. This isn't helped as Walt was known to show his work in progress to his co-workers from his job at Kansas City Film Ad Company.
- Public Domain Animation: With the exception of a couple of titles not leaked onto the internet, the Lafflets and Martha, the rest cartoons are in the Public Domain.
- Stop Motion: Newman Laugh-o-Grams is Cut-out Stop Motion, as the hand that is shown in the film is not Walt's real hand but a picture of his hand. The drawing that starts to appear is him doing one frame at a time filling in the ink and moving his hand during each frame.
- Setting Update: The majority of the shorts were updated to the 1920s.
