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Walt directs Virginia Davis
in a scene for the
Alice Comedies. Roy is handling the camera.
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When Walt arrived in
Hollywood, he got a job as an extra in a western. But it rained the day Walt's
scene was to be filmed, and the studio replaced him. "That was the end of my
career as an actor," Walt said. He turned to his one real skill -- animation
-- and set up a tiny studio in his Uncle Robert's garage. He wrote to M. J.
Winkler, a film distributor, announcing that he was "establishing a studio
in Los Angeles for the purpose of producing a new and novel series of cartoons."
The studio, of course, was a garage. And the new and novel series was his
half-finished "Alice's Wonderland" cartoon, from Kansas City -- a combination
of a real little girl and a menagerie of animated characters. Winkler bought half a dozen Alice cartoons from Walt for $1,500 apiece, and Walt was off and running.
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Walt knew that he didn't
have a sterling record in running the financial side of his creative efforts.
So he convinced Roy to join him in California as a partner in his new business.
That may have been the best single decision of Walt's career. Walt was now
free to let his imagination run wild, while Roy made sure they both had enough
money to eat. In 1923 they launched the Disney Brothers Studio with $200 Roy had saved,
$500 borrowed from Uncle Robert, and $2,500 that Flora and Elias contributed
(and for which they had to mortgage their house in Portland). They bought
a used camera, rented a tiny studio in the back of a real-estate office, moved
into a one-room apartment together, hired a couple of assistants, and according
to Walt began the process of making "the name Disney famous around the world."
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Plan of the Disney Brothers Studio at 4649 Kingswell Avenue. The rest room had to double as a darkroom.
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Walt and his studio staff.
The young woman next to him
is Lillian Bounds. The photo was taken when she was still just an employee.
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On the way to international
fame, Walt fell in love. He had hired a sweet, gentle woman named Lillian
Bounds. At night he would drive her and another female employee home in a used pickup
truck he and Roy had purchased. He always dropped the other young woman off
first. Walt loved listening to Lillian's tales about her life as the youngest
of 10 children of a blacksmith. After a while they began taking long drives,
talking all the time. But Walt never accepted Lillian's invitations to meet
her family. Not until he saved up enough money to buy a new suit was he willing
to be introduced. He fit in immediately. Walt and Roy, meanwhile, were getting
sick and tired of one another as roommates. In early 1925, Roy asked his longtime girlfriend, Edna Francis, to marry him. And soon after, on June 13, 1925, Walt and Lilly got married.
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Lilly -- as Walt
always called her -- quickly came to understand that she wasn't the only
love in Walt's life; he had deep feelings for his work as well. They'd
spend a pleasant evening out together with friends or family, and
inevitably Walt would announce, "I've just got one little thing I want
to do at the studio." Next thing Lilly would know, she was being awakened
on the office couch in the middle of the night -- Walt had been working
for hours -- and it was finally time to go home. The Alice series was
pretty successful. But M. J. Winkler had turned over her company to her
husband, Charlie Mintz, and Mintz was a tough customer, frequently chastising
Walt. When the Alice series was no longer in sufficient demand, Walt started
to work on a new character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Ultimately, however, the rabbit
wasn't going to be so lucky for Walt.
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A poster for the first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon made
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