On this day in 1926, Walt and Roy Disney put down a $400 deposit on a lot at 2719 Hyperion Ave., where they plan to build a new animation studio in the Silver Lake district of Los Angeles, California.
Their neighbors were a gas station and an organ factory. The new studio included two small offices for Walt and Roy Disney, a camera room, and a large partitioned work area for the animators and ink and paint staff. The building will serve as the Disney’s base for the next fifteen years.
The original Disney Studio had been in the back half of a real estate office on Kingswell Avenue in Hollywood, but soon Walt had enough money to move next door and rent a whole store for his studio. That small studio was sufficient for a couple of years, but the company eventually outgrew it, and Walt had to look elsewhere. He found an ideal piece of property on Hyperion Avenue in Hollywood, built a studio, and in 1926, moved his staff to the new facility.
It was at the Hyperion Studio, after the loss of Oswald, that Walt had to come up with a new character, and that character was Mickey Mouse. With his chief animator, Ub Iwerks, Walt designed the famous mouse and gave him a personality that endeared him to all. Ub animated two Mickey Mouse cartoons, but Walt was unable to sell them because they were silent films, and sound was revolutionizing the movie industry. So, they made a third Mickey Mouse cartoon, this time with fully synchronized sound, and Steamboat Willie opened to rave reviews at the Colony Theater in New York November 18, 1928. A cartoon star, Mickey Mouse, was born. The new character was immediately popular, and, a lengthy series of Mickey Mouse cartoons followed.
As Walt and his animators became more creative and innovative technically and artistically, the studio had to grow to meet the demands of Walt’s vision. During the next four years the original studio building went through several renovations and additions until a two-story building called “Animator’s Building # 1” and a sound stage were added in 1931. Walt and Roy purchased additional plots of land surrounding the studio and built the “Animator’s Building #2/Shorts Building”in 1934, Ink and Paint and Annex buildings in 1935, and a “Features Building” in 1937. Several other smaller buildings were constructed on the property, including a Wurlitzer Organ building, warehouse, film vaults, sound stage monitor room, camera room, and a garage for Mickey Mouse’s car.
Walt started McKinley High School in 1917 and he began to draw for the student newspaper. During the fall of 1918, Disney attempted to enlist for military service. Rejected because he was only 16 years of age, Walt joined the Red Cross and was sent overseas, where he spent a year driving an ambulance and chauffeuring Red Cross officials. His ambulance was covered from stem to stern, not with stock camouflage, but with drawings and cartoons. After the war, Walt returned to Kansas City, where he began his career as an advertising cartoonist.
On December 21 of that same year, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated musical feature, premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles. Produced at the unheard of cost of $1,499,000 during the depths of the Great Depression, the film is still accounted as one of the great feats and imperishable monuments of the motion picture industry. During the next five years, Walt completed such other full-length animated classics as Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo and Bambi.
In 1940, construction was completed on Disney’s Burbank studio, and the staff swelled to more than 1,000 artists, animators, story men and technicians. During World War II, 94 percent of the Disney facilities were engaged in special government work including the production of training and propaganda films for the armed services, as well as health films which are still shown throughout the world by the U.S. State Department. The remainder of his efforts were devoted to the production of comedy short subjects, deemed highly essential to civilian and military morale.
Thus, Disney directed the purchase of 43 square miles of virgin land — twice the size of Manhattan Island — in the center of the state of Florida. Here, he master planned a whole new Disney world of entertainment to include a new amusement theme park, motel-hotel resort vacation center and his Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. It would be his brother Roy who would helm the project and see it through after Walt’s passing. One week after Walt Disney died, Roy spoke to a group of Disney Company executives and creative staff in a projection room at the Disney Studio. He was going to postpone his retirement. “We are going to finish this park [in Florida], and we’re going to do it just the way Walt wanted it,” Roy firmly stated. “Don’t you ever forget it. I want every one of you to do just exactly what you were going to do when Walt was alive.” After more than seven years of master planning and preparation, including 52 months of actual construction, Walt Disney World opened to the public as scheduled on October 1, 1971. Epcot Center opened on October 1, 1982.
