Ub Iwerks

Ub Iwerks (right) with Walt Disney

Ub Iwerks was an animator, inventor and special effects technician who famously worked closely with Walt Disney, and designed Mickey Mouse. He and Disney had a falling out, only to make up again later.

Ubbe Iwwerks was born on March 24th, 1901 in Kansas City, Missouri. He first worked at the Union Bank Note Co. in 1914 while attending Northeast High School. After a brief stint at a farm in Arkansas in 1918, Iwwerks returned to Kansas City to work at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio in 1919. There he met Walt Disney, who was also working there. The two got along well, and their talents meshed together great. In fact, it was Iwwerks who chose the name Walt Disney (Walt's real name was Walter.). Walt and Ubbe were laid off after the holidays in 1920, the two decided to found a business of their own, the Iwerks-Disney Studio Commercial Artists (Disney-Iwerks "sounded too much like an eyeglass manufacture" according to D23). However, after only a month, they closed the company to work at the Kansas City Slide Company. There Walt and Ubbe found out about cels. Walt and Ubbe left to found their own company again, Laugh-O-gram Films, in 1922. Some other names from this blog, including Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising came along too, and the building is currently being restored. While lasting longer than Iwerks-Disney, the studio folded in 1922, and Walt decided to go west to California, with Iwwerks following suit.

Upon reaching Hollywood, Walt convinced Ubbe to shorten his name too, to just Ub Iwerks. In California, Walt founded the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio with his brother Roy, and Iwerks joined Walt once again. Walt signed a deal with Margret Winkler of M.J. Winkler Productions to distribute his Alice Comedies, and Iwerks would produce the cartoons. After making Alice cartoons for a good few years, Walt and Iwerks decided to create their own character (Alice being heavily inspired by Alice in Wonderland). In 1927, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, designed by Iwerks, was created for their new series, to be distributed by M.J. Winkler again, now under the control of Winkler's husband Charles Mintz. The series was fairly successful, but in 1928, the Disney studio would lose the rights to Oswald. After the initial run of Oswald cartoons, Walt met with Mintz to discuss the renewal of the series. Walt expected a pay increase to cover costs and because of the popularity of the series, but Mintz actually wanted him to take a pay cut. What Walt didn't know was that Mintz had sent his brother-in-law to Disney's studio to sign deals with the employees so Mintz could take over the series if Walt refused. Walt did not take a paycut, and left without the rights to Oswald, the cartoons he already made, or a distribution deal with Winkler. Additionally, most of his staff left to work on the new Oswald cartoons. Iwerks did not leave however, and he and Walt worked to create a new character to rival Oswald.

Disney, Iwerks and

Les Clark (who would become one of Walt's Nine Old Men) got to work on a new character, a mouse character very similar to Oswald in design. Ub would

once again design the character, and Mickey Mouse was created. The first Mickey Mouse cartoon produced, Plane Crazy was originally silent and was produced in the summer of 1928. Iwerks himself animated a large amount of the cartoon in only three weeks, over 700 drawings per day. The third produced Mickey cartoon (but the first released) would be the most important however: Steamboat Willie. This cartoon was one of, if not the first, to feature synchronized sound. Ub also animated a majority of the cartoon, receiving an on-screen credit for doing so. Following the monumental success of Steamboat Willie, the previous two Mickey cartoons were also given sound and released. Iwerks would continue working on the Mickey cartoons, as well as the other series of cartoons created by Disney, Silly Symphonies. However, Iwerks would leave the company in 1930 to create his own studio. This, along with who he was working with, would cause Walt and Ub to have a falling out.

Flip the Frog's original design.

In 1930, Iwerks left Disney after hearing of an opportunity to found his own studio. This studio would
be through Pat Powers, who had already been in a legal battle with Disney. Iwerks did not know Powers was behind this, and said to Roy Disney that if he had known, " he would never have gone into this.” Nevertheless, Walt was distraught by this. The shorts made by Iwerks' studio, Animated Pictures Corporation, would be distributed by MGM, who at that point didn't have any cartoons to offer. The first cartoon series to be made by Iwerks' studio, Flip the Frog, would be released later that year. Flip was relatively similar to Mickey, albeit more risque. (Characters would say "Damn." and the humor was a bit more akin to what was being made on the East Coast at Fleischer) He was not, however, as successful as Mickey. Reviewers complained that the cartoons were the "same old stuff" and that "while expertly produced and set to music, has the same line-up of stuff as every other cartoon (...) in the current season’s group."  Even after a redesign by Grim Natwick, audiences weren't flipping over Flip. In fact, none of the cartoons produced by Iwerks' studio were very successful, let alone more successful than Disney's cartoons. After financial backers pulled their funding, Animation Pictures Corporation closed in 1936. All of their cartoons have since fallen into the public domain, and can be found on numerous cheap home video releases, with Thunderbean Animation releasing a high quality Blu-Ray of the Flip the Frog cartoons very soon as of the time of this post.

After brief stints at other studios, Iwerks would return to Disney in 1940 and patch things up with Walt. Preferring to work with special effects at this point, Iwerks invented many different things for Disney, such as the multi-head optical printer, which improved upon the concept of combining live action footage with animation. This would be used in films like Song of the South, Melody Time, and Mary Poppins. It also allowed more complex visual effects, like creating the twins in The Parent Trap. He also developed the xerography process used at the studio, to limit the cost and time needed to take the animator's pencil drawings and put them onto animation cels, at the cost of the animation looking more scruffy. This would be used in a number of Disney films, in particular the ones released from 1961 to 1989. Iwerks would also be heavily involved with creating things for Disneyland after that opened, such as working on "it's a small world" and The Hall of Presidents. Besides Disney, he worked on films like The Birds. Iwerks would die on July 7th, 1971 at the age of 70, a little over four years after the death of Walt.

Sources

Mullen, Chris. “Ub Iwerks: Master of Animation and Technology.” The Walt Disney Family Museum, 23 Mar. 2017, https://www.waltdisney.org/blog/ub-iwerks-master-animation-and-technology.

“Ub Iwerks.” D23, The Walt Disney Company, 3 Apr. 2018, https://d23.com/walt-disney-legend/ub-iwerks/.

Foust, Barry. “Biography: Ub Iwerks.” AnimationResources.org - Serving the Online Animation Community, 31 Oct. 2011, https://animationresources.org/biography-ub-iwerks/.

Burnes, Brian. “Iwerks Gave Mouse His Perky Character.” The Kansas City Star, 9 Mar. 1987, pp. 29–34. 

Yowp, Don. “He Wasn't Quite Mickey.” Tralfaz, 25 Jan. 2020, https://tralfaz.blogspot.com/2020/01/he-wasnt-quite-mickey.html.