Walt Disney's Hollywood Studios

Previously, I talked about the homes where Walt lived in and around Hollywood. For this column, I am going to share the locations of the various Disney Studios where Walt worked.

Again, let me remind readers that these are privately owned places, not tourist locations, even though two of them gladly welcome customers.

Uncle Robert Disneys Garage, 4406 Kingswell Avenue, Los Angeles, California 90027

In September 1923, Walt was living with his Uncle Robert (the younger brother of Walts father, Elias) and was unable to find any type of work at the Hollywood live action motion picture studios.

Frustrated, Walt decided to try to get back into doing animation as he had in Kansas City.

Walt bought an old used camera that was not in the best of shape, for $200 from a local Los Angeles camera shop.

His older brother Roy had given Walt $10 to make up some business cards and letterhead paper proclaiming Walt Disney, Cartoonist and using Uncle Roberts address as the location for his art studio.

Walt asked Uncle Robert if he could set up his studio in the garage adjoining the house. Robert charged Walt an additional $1 a week to use the garage, in addition to the $5 a week rent.

Walt had to tear up dry-goods boxes and find spare lumber to build a very crude camera stand and animation set-up. The equipment would not accommodate anything more complicated than the simplest of animation.

Walt went to see Alexander Pantages, who owned a theater named after him, the Pantages, in downtown Los Angeles, as well as several other theaters. Walt pitched the idea of doing a series of short 30-second joke reels, like the Laugh-O-grams he had done for the Newman theaters in Kansas City. These reels would be weekly exclusives to run during the newsreel that would help publicize Pantages theaters.

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Walt Disney's Hollywood Studios