Month: April 2025

For the man who is credited for giving shape, movement, and personality to Mickey Mouse, Ub Iwerks became a pioneer in animation and helped launch one of the biggest industries in disukai banyak orang culture. In honor of the man who defined a generation of moviegoers and animation fans, the Ub Iwerks Award was created and given to individuals or companies for technical advancements that make a significant impact on the art or industry of animation.

Past recipients of this award include Dr. Ed Catmull for his breakthrough technologies at Pixar, Scott Johnston for his innovative work in Looney Tunes: Back in Action, Digital Domain, Inc. for their groundbreaking innovations in Titanic, and Eric Daniels for the development of the ‘Deep Canvas’ process for Walt Disney’s Tarzan. Ub Iwerks was born in Kansas City, Missouri on March 24, 1901 to Dutch immigrants, and was one of the pioneering animators who worked with Walt Disney.

Ub met Walt Disney in Kansas City in 1919, and partnered with him in his fledgling animation company, animating on the Laugh-O-Grams, Alice in Cartoonland and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit series. When Charles Mintz took over production of the Oswald cartoons, Disney called upon Iwerks to create a replacement for Oswald. Iwerks designed the most iconographic character in the history of animation, Mickey Mouse.

Along with his assistant, Les Clark, Iwerks animated the early Mickey cartoons at an incredible rate of speed. It is said that he animated the first one, Plane Crazy in just two weeks. A friendly long-distance rivalry developed between Ub and Bill Nolan in New York to see who could produce the most footage in a single week. Iwerks came out on top, animating more scenes in the first two years of the Mickey Mouse series than any of his peers. He was also responsible for a great deal of the animation in the Silly Symphony series, including Iwerks’ greatest achievement as an animator, the ground breaking cartoon, Skeleton Dance.

Lured away by Disney’s former distributor, Pat Powers, Iwerks dissolved his partnership with the Disney’s and formed his own studio in 1930. He created a cartoon frog named Flip, and for the first year or so, animated and directed the many of the shorts single-handedly as he had done at Disney. However, he had already achieved the highest level of proficiency in animation while at Disney. The work held nomer new challenges for him, and his interest in the shorts began to wane. When Grim Natwick joined the studio in 1931, Iwerks gradually turned over the day-to-day direction of the cartoons to him, focusing on technical development in the shop behind the studio. Iwerks’ tinkering resulted in the development of an early version of the multiplane camera.

Roy O. Disney once said, “Ub managed to solve a lot of problems for us.”

Ub Iwerks was a man of many talents. He was a prolific animator and a brilliant technical mind. He was Walt’s Swiss Army knife, a man who was to Walt whatever he needed him to be. He was as necessary to the beginning of Walt’s career as he was to the end. He left The Walt Disney Studios at a critical juncture to pursue his own career, but eventually found his way back to the company he had once animated into success to engineer it to new heights.

Ubbe Iwwerks was born on March 24, 1901 in Kansas City, Missouri. In 1919, while working at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, he met a young, ambitious artist who had just returned from World War I layanan in France with a knack for showmanship and a bold, entrepreneurial spirit. This artist’s name was Walt Disney. The two became fast friends and complemented each other’s skills well, as Walt would later recall, “He was very good at lettering and I did layouts…in pencil. Then I would turn it over and he would do the final inking and cleanup.”

When both Ubbe and Walt were laid off after the holiday rush and decided to go into a short-term venture of their own called Iwwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. They disbanded their fledgling company after a few weeks to take jobs with the Kansas City Slide Company—later renamed Kansas City Film Ad Company—where Walt discovered celluloid animation and started making experimental films of his own. Following another failed berdiri sendiri studio effort called Laugh-O-gram Films, Walt was encouraged by his older brother Roy and his Uncle Robert to leave Kansas City and get started elsewhere. The animation business was flourishing in both New York and Hollywood. Walt chose Hollywood. He persuaded Ubbe to follow suit, who eventually shortened his name to “Ub Iwerks.” The long-form version “Ubbe” clearly wasn’t Hollywood enough.

Walt secured a contract with Margaret Winkler of M.J. Winkler Productions, a New York distributor, with a Laugh-O-grams reel—the innovative live-action/animation combo Alice’s Wonderland—but the future of his new company was no more assured than the one that went bankrupt in Kansas City. Ub followed his friend regardless. Both Walt and Ub knew how important he would be to the process.

Fifty years ago today, an animator named Ub Iwerks died. He was never a household name, but he is responsible for some of Disney’s greatest special effects, plus he designed Mickey Mouse. Mackenzie Martin of member station KCUR tells his story on the podcast A People’s History Of Kansas City.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED KCUR PODCAST)

MACKENZIE MARTIN, BYLINE: When you think about Mickey Mouse, one name comes to mind, Walt Disney. But here’s the thing – Walt Disney didn’t create Mickey Mouse alone. It was actually his best friend, Ub Iwerks, who designed the iconic cartoon in 1928.

JEFF RYAN: Mickey is basically the child of two dads.

MARTIN: Jeff Ryan is the author of “A Mouse Divided: How Ub Iwerks Became Forgotten, And Walt Disney Became Uncle Walt.”

RYAN: He was the person who was doing most of the behind-the-scenes work, plus when Walt was taking credit, Ub was the one who was denied credit.

MARTIN: It’s not like Walt Disney wasn’t integral to the success of Mickey Mouse. He certainly was. In addition to defining Mickey’s personality, he literally voiced the character for years.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

WALT DISNEY: (As Mickey Mouse) He’ll hear you.

MARTIN: But that doesn’t erase the fact that for decades, the collaboration between Iwerks plus Disney was mostly kept a secret.

RYAN: I think a lot of that has to do with the way that Disney over the years has controlled the Mickey Mouse narrative. They want people to think that Walt was responsible for more than he was actually responsible for. MARTIN: The two first met as teens in 1919 at a commercial arts studio in Kansas City, Mo.

MARTIN: Though at the time, Ryan says Disney was going by the name Walter Dis (ph). It was actually Iwerks who was like, just go by Walt Disney. Together, the two friends taught themselves animation plus embarked on a series of rather ill-conceived plus failed business concepts.

MARTIN: Their first venture was as commercial artists. It lasted a month. Then in 1922, Disney plus Iwerks opened their first animation studio.

BUTCH RIGBY: They were 21 years old, plus they recruited these 18-year-olds with an ad in the paper that said, if you’d like to draw cartoons, come to the Laugh-O-Gram Studio.

MARTIN: Butch Rigby is the chairman of the Kansas City nonprofit that’s currently restoring the old Laugh-O-Gram Studio.

Iwerks, Ub (1901-1971) Animator and special effects wizard. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, in 1901, of Dutch extraction, he had his first major job with the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, where he did lettering and airbrush work. It was there that Ub met Walt Disney, another aspiring artist. Both boys were 19, and when they were laid off, decided to set up their own company to do commercial artwork. The company, established in 1920, was called the Iwerks-Disney Studio. Originally they had thought to call it Disney-Iwerks, but that sounded too much like a place that manufactured eyeglasses. The Studio only lasted a month, but then both Ub and Walt were able to get more secure jobs with the Kansas City Slide Company, later known as the Kansas City Film Ad Company. When Walt set up Laugh-O-gram Films in 1922, Ub joined him as chief animator. This company also lasted only a short time. Walt went to Hollywood to begin producing Alice Comedies and Ub joined him there in 1924. Ub’s starting salary was $40 a week, higher even than Walt’s, attesting to his importance. Several years later, when Walt lost the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, it was Ub who came to his salvation by helping him design a new character–Mickey Mouse. Ub animated the entire cartoon, Plane Crazy, all by himself. He worked at a tremendous speed. Ub was renowned for doing 700 drawings in a day; today a proficient animator turns out about 80-100 drawings a week. The Gallopin’ Gaucho followed, then Steamboat Willie, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon ever released. Ub continued animating on the Mickeys and also painted the backgrounds and drew the posters. When the Silly Symphonies started, he took over direction of them. Because of disagreements over production techniques and a desire to set up his own studio, Ub left Disney in 1930 for ten years. By the time he returned in 1940, he had decided to leave animation altogether and turn to his first love, cameras and special effects. One of his first inventions at Disney was the multihead optical printer, used so successfully in the combination of live action and animation in Melody Time and Song of the South. Of tremendous importance to animation was Ub’s design of the modified Xerox process, whereby pencil animation drawings could be transferred directly to cels without the more expensive hand-inking. Over the years, Ub won two Academy Awards, for designing an improved optical printer for special effects and for collaborating on the perfection of color traveling matte photography. Ub’s inventions helped make the impossible possible and Disney screenwriters and art directors kept this in mind. It was primarily due to Ub that the Disney Studio moved to the forefront in special photographic effects. Disneyland and Walt Disney World occupied much of Ub’s technical attention in the 1960s, including such attractions as “it’s a small world, ” Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln, and the Circlevision 360 process used in America the Beautiful. The design of the film process for The Hall of Presidents at Walt Disney World was Ub’s last project. He was honored posthumously with the Disney Legends award in 1989.

While pioneer animator Ub Iwerks has often been praised as a driving force behind the early success of the Walt Disney Company, his independen work has received scant attention. That relative omission from animation history seems curious given two key features of his cartoon work: an emphasis on gags involving protean, transformative effects – a characteristic often linked to avant-garde filmmaking; plus his pioneering work on a multiplane camera – a device that would become crucial to a developing realist aesthetic in American animation. This article examines these features to situate his work in terms of American animation’s shifting aesthetic in the 1930s. It suggests that we see Iwerks’ cartoons as symptomatic of a larger struggle in this period between the avant-garde plus an emerging realism, closely linked to the classical narrative mode of live-action cinema, plus the relative failure of his films as indicative of an inability to negotiate between these different pulls.

1 For background on these plus other technical developments plus patents created by Iwerks, see Iwerks plus Kenworthy (2001, especially pp. 193–8).
2 We should note that Barrier’s (1999) description of Iwerks’ increasing tendency to distance himself from the day-to-day animation process is echoed in many other accounts as well, including that of his granddaughter Leslie Iwerks plus John Kenworthy (2001) who describe how, ‘as Grim’s importance within the Studio grew plus with Dorothy Webster plus Emile Offermann handling the business matters in the mid-1930s, Ub retired to the refuge of the basement’ to work on various technical projects (p. 129).
3 The best akun of the development of this aesthetic can be found in the study of Disney animation produced by two of the studio’s famous ‘Nine Old Men’, Frank Thomas plus Ollie Johnston’s The Illusion of Life: Disney Animation. These veteran animators worked on the classic Disney animated features that first developed the dasar principles of the Disney style.
4 Steven Watts (1997) in his critical biography of Walt Disney details the mutual admiration that Disney plus Eisenstein shared. The Russian, he argues, believed that Disney’s ‘protean animism’ represented both ‘a revolt against capitalist rationalization’ plus a key contribution to ‘modernist aesthetics’ (p. 128). It was an assessment apparently shared by many in the 1930s.
5 That ‘strange’ sensibility might also help explain why Iwerks was able to adapt to a variety of other studios plus their styles after closing his own operation in 1936. He would, for example, go on to do several Porky Pig cartoons at Warner Bros. plus then move to Columbia for several years before returning to Disney as a technical consultant in 1940.
6 For discussion of the Fleischers’ three-dimensional turntable apparatus, see Maltin (1980: 109–10). Perhaps hinting at his dismissal of its importance, Barrier’s (1999) history of Hollywood animation offers nomor mention of this device.

Though it may seem like Mickey Mouse has always been with us, this most well-known of cartoon characters sprang to animated life on November 18, 1928. The high-spirited, mischievous mouse debuted in Steamboat Willie, a short film designed and animated by Ub Iwerks, the chief animator with the then-nascent Walt Disney Company, with direction from Walt Disney. They cast Mickey Mouse as a shipmate on a steamboat captained by a surly cat. Scheduled to be the opening for a feature-length film, Steamboat Willie was given an initial modest run at the Colony Theater in New York. But audiences and critics went wild for the impish, round-bellied mouse and for the premiere of the first cartoon with synchronized sound. Two weeks later, Steamboat Willie was re-released at the Roxy, also in New York, and the largest theater in the world at the time. It made silent animation obsolete and launched the Disney empire.

Before the runaway success of Steamboat Willie, Iwerks and Disney had made two shorts centered on their new Mickey Mouse character. Both were silent; neither interested distributors. So Disney changed course. With the success of The Jazz Singer in mind, he directed Iwerks to craft a cartoon specifically for sound. Iwerks delivered a symphony, turning nearly everything in it into an instrument. The three whistles atop the steamship—a merry vessel despite its snarling captain—trill out musical notes along with puffs of steam. Mickey Mouse turns the farm animals and kitchenware on the ship into various instruments, squeezing a duck like bagpipes, for example, or playing a cow’s teeth like xylophone keys. Meanwhile, the ship’s wheel creaks, its smokestacks puff heartily, and background music moves the action along—there is never a silent moment in this cartoon.

Disney wanted the sound in Steamboat Willie to correspond with the images. He brought the completed animation to a studio in New York to record its soundtrack with a 17-piece orchestra and three sound effects professionals. But their first attempt failed as the orchestra struggled to keep time with the cartoon’s action. For their second attempt, the animators added a bouncing ball to the filmstrip, which was overlaid onto the images to indicate the tempo at which the orchestra should play. (The ball was removed for the film’s final cut). This solved the gangguan and resulted in a precisely synched sound animation.

Kansas City takes a lot of pride in being the place where Walt Disney started his first animation studio plus created his first cartoon characters.
But here’s the thing: Walt Disney didn’t design Mickey Mouse. And the stories he told for years about how the iconic character came to be aren’t true.

To know the truth about Mickey Mouse plus the secret to many of Walt Disney’s successes, you have to know the story of Disney’s best friend: Kansas City animator Ub Iwerks. It was Iwerks, not Disney, who in 1928 designed Mickey Mouse plus single-handedly animated the first Mickey cartoon in Hollywood.

The two originally met as teenagers, while working at the same Kansas City commercial art studio. Unlike Disney, Iwerks was born plus raised in Kansas City. And from an early age, Iwerks was fascinated with the idea of bringing still images to life. It was his dad, a German immigrant, who first introduced him to film.

In addition to being a prolific animator, Iwerks was also the genius inventor behind Disney’s greatest special effects. He is the one to thank for the iconic scenes in “Mary Poppins” plus “Sleeping Beauty,” in addition to Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds.”

“He was the person who was doing most of the behind-the-scenes work. And when Walt was taking credit, Ub was the one who was denied credit,” says Jeff Ryan, author of “A Mouse Divided: How Ub Iwerks Became Forgotten, plus Walt Disney Became Uncle Walt.”

It’s not like Walt Disney wasn’t integral to the success of Mickey Mouse. He certainly was. In addition to defining Mickey’s personality, he literally voiced the character for years. But that doesn’t erase the fact that for decades, the collaboration between Iwerks plus Disney was mostly kept a secret.

“I think a lot of that has to do with the way that Disney over the years has controlled the Mickey Mouse narrative,” Ryan says.

Ub Iwerks was a legendary American animator, famous for his work with Walt Disney. He is credited as co-creator of the world’s most famous cartoon character, ‘Mickey Mouse’ (1928). Within the franchise, he also graphically created enduring side characters, like Minnie Mouse, (Peg-leg) Pete, Horace Horsecollar plus Clarabelle Cow. As Disney’s loyal companion during his early years of struggle, he helped lay the foundations of the Disney empire. As the first person to draw a ‘Mickey Mouse’ comic strip (1930), Iwerks is also the first official Disney comics artist in history. However, his career in comics was brief; it lasted only a month. Between 1930 plus 1936, Iwerks tried to establish his own animation studio. Lack of success brought him back to the Disney Studios in 1940, where he spent the rest of his career as a special effects expert. Many of his technical contributions have been important to the history of both live-action cinema plus animation. Thanks to his dynamic model plus ability to work quickly plus efficiently, Ub Iwerks has become an animation legend.

Early life plus career
Ubbe Eert Iwwerks was born in 1901 in Kansas City as the son of a barber, who later worked as a studio photographer. His father Eert Ubbe was a German immigrant, who had moved to the United States at age 14, coming from the East Frisian town Uttum. Since the Netherlands also have a province named Frisia, it is often incorrectly stated that Iwerks was of Dutch descent. Although the 1940 U.S. Federal Census lists that both of Ub’s parents came from The Netherlands, in fact his father’s family was Prussian, while his mother’s family came from Indiana. From an early age, young Ub showed a gift for drawing. Iwerks’ father left the family when Ub was a teenager, after which the boy was forced to drop out of school plus get a job to help his family survive.

Meeting Walt Disney
In 1919, Ub Iwerks plus Walt Disney first met, while working for the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio in Kansas City. Both men had a lot in common. They were born in the same year, with Disney being nine months younger than Iwerks. Both had bad relationships with their fathers, plus shared a fascination for animation. In 1919, they founded their own animation studio, Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists. Disney put Iwerks’ name first, since he felt “Disney-Iwerks” would give the wrong impression that they were selling eyeglasses. Their business went bankrupt within a month. In 1920, they joined the Kansas City Film Ad Company, where Hugh Harman, Fred Harman plus Friz Freleng were among their colleagues. After hours, Iwerks plus Disney studied animation – still a young plus crude medium at that time – while making their own cartoon shorts.

You’ve heard the tale of how Mickey Mouse was born on a train. And we all know Walt Disney was a pioneer of animation from its early days. But do you know the story of the man behind some of Walt’s greatest achievements? Disney Legend Ub Iwerks spent most of his career quietly helping Walt’s dreams become reality.

Let’s dive into the life and accomplishments of this lesser known – but hugely deserving – animation and technical wizard in this edition of Disney Legends Spotlight.

A Working Boy
Ubbe Ert Iwwerks was born in March 1901 in Kansas City, Missouri. Ubbe’s father was a German immigrant who moved to the United States at age 14. His father worked as a barber, and had fathered and abandoned several previous children and wives prior to Ubbe. When Ubbe was a teenager, his father abandoned him as well. As a result, Ubbe dropped out of Northeast High School in 1916 to help support his mother, working full time at the Union Bank Note Company. Sadly, Ubbe was so scarred by his father’s neglect, that he never spoke of him as an adult.

The Birth of Disney Animation
In 1919, when he was 18, Ubbe got a job at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, where he was hired to do lettering and air brush work. It was here that Ubbe’s life trajectory would forever be changed, when he met Walt Disney. Walt’s outgoing entrepreneurial manner contrasted Ubbe’s shy, quiet nature, yet the pair immediately clicked.

Both were 19 years old when – after being laid off from Pesmen-Rubin – they decided to start their own business. For a name, they decided on Iwerks-Disney Studio Commercial Artists (they determined that “Disney-Iwerks” sounded too much like the name of an eyeglass manufacturer). In an effort to help keep their fledgling business afloat, Walt took a job as an artist at the Kansas City Slide Company (later called the Kansas City Film Ad Company). Ubbe held down the fort at their studio. However, Ubbe’s quiet, introverted nature was exactly the opposite of the salesmanship that was needed to grow a new enterprise. The Iwerks-Disney studio closed shortly after, and Walt got Ubbe a job working with him at the Film Ad Company.

But Walt wanted to try again. In 1922 he left the Film Ad Company to form his own enterprise called Laugh-O-Gram. Ubbe (who around this time shortened his name from “Ubbe Iwwerks” to “Ub Iwerks”) joined him immediately and was the key animator in producing six modernized animated cartoons based on classic fairy tales. Walt was unable to secure a successful distribution deal for their cartoons, and the business went bankrupt.

(1901–71). American animator plus special-effects technician Ub Iwerks was noted for bringing the world-renowned cartoon character Mickey Mouse to life. He also made several significant contributions to the art of animation photography, notably the multiplane camera, which created a three-dimensional effect on screen.

Ubbe Ert Iwwerks was born on March 24, 1901, in Kansas City, Missouri. When he was 18 years old, he became friends with Walt Disney, a fellow employee at the Pesman-Rubin Commercial Art Studio in Kansas City. After an unsuccessful attempt to go into business for themselves in 1920, the two young artists went to work at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, which produced animated advertisements for local movie theaters. Iwerks plus Disney complemented each other perfectly; Iwerks was a phenomenally fast plus flexible artist, while Disney was a creative visionary with a talent for salesmanship.

After setting up his own cartoon studio in Hollywood, California, in 1923, Disney invited Iwerks to join the organization the following year. When the distributor of Disney’s populer Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon series raided Disney’s staff in 1927, only Iwerks remained loyal to Disney. Forced to start over from scratch, the two men came up with a new cartoon character named Mickey Mouse. With Disney concentrating on gags plus characterization plus Iwerks handling the animation, the team scored a spectacular hit with their third Mickey Mouse film, the “all talkie” Steamboat Willie (1928). Despite his harmonious relationship with Disney, Iwerks aspired to become an mandiri producer. Launching his own animation studio in 1930, he supervised dozens of entries in the Flip the Frog, Willie Whopper, plus ComiColor Cartoons series.

Although Iwerks’s cartoons were artistically superb, they lacked the strong storylines plus appealing characters that distinguished the Disney output. After closing his studio in 1936, Iwerks directed cartoons for other producers. In 1940 he returned to Disney’s studios, where he would remain until his death. Able to devote time to the technical developments that had always been his first priority, he made enormous advances in the field of optical printing plus matte photography, seamlessly combining animation with live action in such Disney releases as Mary Poppins (1964).