Biography | Walt Disney — The Second Floor on East 31st That Went Bankrupt

People treat Burbank and Hyperion as the first Disney studio.

The first company with his name on the papers sat on this second floor.

On 23 May 1922, at age twenty, Walt Disney incorporated Laugh-O-Gram Films in Kansas City.

The office was a five-room suite upstairs in the new McConahay Building at 1127 East 31st Street, designed by Nelle E. Peters.

He had already drawn Newman Laugh-O-Grams for a local theater. Incorporation was the attempt to turn that work into a studio.

Staff who passed through this floor included Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and Friz Freleng. Several of them later founded other Hollywood cartoon units.

Money did not last. A Pictorial Clubs contract for fairy-tale shorts paid little up front.

Disney slept in the office, ate from cans, and paid a dime for a shower at Union Station.

Before the company collapsed he began Alice's Wonderland here, a live-action girl in a cartoon world. That reel became the sample he carried west.

He was evicted from this building for unpaid rent and shifted briefly to the Wirthman Building on Troost.

In late July 1923 he bought a first-class ticket at Union Station and boarded the California Limited.

Published bankruptcy dates for Laugh-O-Gram vary between mid-October and 30 October 1923. He was already in Los Angeles.

The brick building later stood empty and was nearly demolished. A nonprofit, Thank You Walt Disney, bought the shell and has been stabilizing it as an animation workshop and museum.

A visitor still finds a two-story block at 31st and Forest, under restoration, not a working camera room.

The failure on this floor is why the next studio was in California.

Photo: Gbleem, 2004, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.