Trivia / Newman Laugh-O-Grams

• Edited for Syndication: After Disney unearthed a longer version of the Cinderella Laugh-O-Gram in 2010, the next time the short received an official Walt Disney Home Video release (as a bonus feature for the 1950 Cinderella movie's 2012 Diamond Edition Blu-Ray), it still ran only 7.5 minutes, due to Disney using the same edited print included on past releases of the 1950 Cinderella.
• Keep Circulating the Tapes: Disney has only given five Laugh-O-Grams official DVD and/or Blu-Ray releases, and some of the discs in question have gone out of print.
  • The Beauty and the Beast 2010 Diamond Edition Blu-Ray included Little Red Riding Hood, The Four Musicians of Bremen, Puss in Boots, and Cinderella. However, the 2016 25th Anniversary Edition Blu-Ray contains none of them, and they also became some of the few Diamond Edition extras absent from the Disney Movies Anywhere website and app.
  • Alice's Wonderland often gets included with Alice in Wonderland, but only in an 8-minute presentation, with a Cliffhanger ending. The longest surviving version (which runs 12.5 minutes, and provides an actual resolution), only became available on the 2005 Walt Disney Treasures DVD Disney Rarities: Celebrated Shorts: 1920s–1960s.
  • While all the cartoons are in Public Domain, the copies that are shared are very poor quality. Higher quality video of the unreleased shorts are known to exist but have never had a physical release. The D23 website does have high quality videos of Newman Laugh-o-Grams^note  Which was never released on home media., The Four Musicians of Bremen & Puss in Boots on their website.
• Missing Episode: Martha, Disney's 2nd to last film, has been lost. It was billed as "Song-O-Reel" and only an image of the title card is known to exist along with some behind the scene photos. There is also Lafflets, which were small 20-30 seconds animation shorts that have all been lost. The only information that is known are the title of the series along with interviews of some of the animators who worked on the shorts.
  • There are also a number of shorts and scenes that are missing in the completed works. Interviews with Walt and the other artists confirm some scenes that are not present in the found footage.
  • The first short Newman Laugh-o-Grams has missing scenes and there are also other shorts that Walt made for the Newman's theater before he started Laugh-O-Gram Studio that are missing. Interviews with residents of Kansas City at the time confirmed that Walt made at least 12 shorts, including his very first recurring named character called Professor Whosis.
  • Jack and the Beanstalk and Goldie Locks and the Three Bears full movie have never been leaked online. Jack the Giant Killer footage that is online is a pirated copy that someone took at a movie theater. All of the shorts has been shown at museums throughout the years and at D23.

• Post-Release Retitle: When Walt Disney hit it big with Mickey Mouse, most of the shorts were re-released under different package titles, called Whoopee Sketch. What makes this more surprising is that the shorts were not released by Walt Disney Productions, but from different companies, that had ties with Pictorial Clubs. Thanks to these re-releases, it is the reason the films were found almost a century later.
  • Little Red Riding Hood = Grandma Steps Out
  • Four Musicians of Bremen = The Four Jazz Boys
  • Jack and the Beanstalk = On the Up and Up
  • Jack the Giant Killer = The K-O Kid
  • Goldie Locks and the Three Bears = The Peroxide Kid
  • Puss in Boots = The Cat's Whiskers
  • Cinderella = The Slipper-y Kid

• Short-Lived, Big Impact: Only eight cartoons were released, but they also provided the earliest foundation for Walt Disney's animated cartoons, and everything else beyond.
• What Could Have Been: Walt was originally wanted to make 12 films, he had 8 completed before the studio went belly up.
• Working Title: Newman's Laugh-o-Grams was originally going to be called Local Happenings. Walt changed the name to try and get Newman's Movie Theater to show the shorts. Laugh-o-grams was also misspelled as Laugh-a-Gram early on before it was corrected.