Disney Shorts

Disney began to have suspicions about his dealings with Pat Powers. For one thing, Powers had refused to back the fledgling "Silly Symphony" series, saying that all the movie-going public wanted was 'more mice.' This decision backfired on him later when "The Skeleton Dance" opened at New York's Roxy Theater to rave reviews. The biggest problem, though, was financial. As Mickey Mouse became more successful, the receipts Disney was receiving from Powers didn't seem to match up. And the cartoons were getting more and more expensive to make. Disney decided it was time for a showdown.

Disney hired an attorney, Gunther Lessing who had once advised Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, and headed to New York. The meeting was less than successful. Powers needed to resign Disney to promote his Cinephone system, but he also had an ace up his sleeve. Powers had secretly negotiated with Ub Iwerks to create a new series for him. The only way that Disney could keep Iwerks was to sign a contract with Powers.

Walt was crushed. He had always considered his relationship with Iwerks as more of a personal friendship than as business. But Iwerks had begun to have run-ins with Disney on more than one occasion and was beginning to feel a creative squeeze. One thing that irked Iwerks was Disney's habit of stealing into the studio at night and setting up the exposure sheets for the animators, a job which Ub liked to do himself. He also liked to do the complete job of animating himself; Disney preferred that his main people do the principle animation leaving the rest to a team of "in - betweeners." Iwerks might have been looking for an excuse to break out on his own. Irregardless of the reasons, Ub's departure hurt Walt worse than the possible financial scandal with Pat Powers.

Unsure of what to do next, Disney and Lessing decided to confront Powers one last time and demand to see the books. Powers countered by saying that they could see the books if they signed a new contract with him. Having completely lost their faith in powers, Disney simply walked away and began looking for a new distributor.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was approached first, but back away since Powers had threatened litigation against anyone attempting to sign with Disney. Another young filmmaker, Frank Capra, advised his boss at Columbia, Harry Cohn to get him on board. Columbia signed Disney to a distribution deal, along with providing funds to fight any lawsuits Powers might bring. Beaten, Powers backed off his threats and allowed Disney to resecure rights to his work for $100,000; an enormous sum at the time.

There may have been another contributing reason for Iwerks' departure; the comic strip. The Mickey Mouse comic strip's genesis began in 1929 when Walt was returning from one of his many trips into New York City that year. An entrepreneur had offered Disney $500 to put Mickey and Minnie's portraits on a set of school writing tablets. Walt said OK, he could use the money. On the way back to the west coast however, Walt reasoned, if Mickey was that merchendisable, why not do a comic strip? He could make up some samples, then try to interest a comics syndicator to distribute it. When Walt got back to L.A., he and Iwerks started to formulate the strip. At that point, King Features Syndicate called with exactly the same idea. Since Walt and King were thinking along the same lines, getting an agreement was a piece of cake. The strip strip was set up in this manner: Walt would write and plot the strip, Ub would do the pencilling, and Win Smith would handle the the inking and lettering. The rest of the year was spent in making enough strips ready for publication. Now in a studio that's geared for for producing animated films, combined with the talent Disney was bringing in from New York, and Ub confined to working on the comic strip, Iwerks may have felt that he was being consigned to a ghetto job, This by itself, would not be reason enough to leave, but combined with the disagreements Ub was having with Disney over other matters, made him an easy target for Pat Powers' blandishments.

The Mickey Mouse comic strip debuted on January 13th, 1930. Iwerks left one week after the first strips appeared. When Carl Stalling heard that Iwerks was leaving, he too turned in his resignation, leaving one week later. (Both Iwerks and Stalling had participating partnerships in the Disney studio; Iwerks' was 20%, Stalling's was 10%. Imagine what those partnerships would be worth today if the those had decided to stay). Stalling had believed that the studio would not survive without Iwerks, which is why he left.

Disney now had to replace two valuable employees; in place of Stalling he brought in two grads from UCLA's music school; Leigh Harline and Frank Churchill. As for the the comic strip, Iwerks assistant Win Smith took over but after a few months, he too became restive and Walt again had to look for a replacement, He found it in the person of 22 year-old Arthur Floyd Gottfredson who had expressed an interest in the strip when he arrived at the studio. But Gottfredson now was reluctant to take the strip on the rebound. Walt placated him by saying that the job would be temporary until he got a permenant replacement. That "temporary" job would last for 45 years.

As for Iwerks, Powers set him up in his own studio where he would produce the "Flip the Frog" series. For distribution Powers signed a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. It's little wonder that Powers howled like a stuck pig when Disney came to MGM in search of a distributor.