FROM: Squeak of the Week Published Fridays

How Walt Disney Was to Leave Missouri and Misery

One of the many things I like about John Donaldson's writing is that he chronicles the early Walt Disney, the mere man who was many years and much luck away from his stale, familiar role as icon and idol. Today, we find Walt sans nickels in his knickers...

- John Stanley Donaldson, April 15, 2011

Walt Disney arrived in Hollywood, with barely a nickel to his knickers. Biographies have been colorful with his packing of few belongings to a worn, cardboard suitcase, then setting west on a two-day, Santa Fe.

But, all have missed the reason why, of that July, 1923.

One month earlier, finding his film company, Laugh-O-gram, had lost its guffaw, Walt initially set sights on New York City, then cel central; center of animation in the nation. Being broke, living on beans, and bathing once a week at the train station, this would seem to have been the best thing to do.

But instead, he hopped a train out to hollow Hollywood. Except for my biography, Warp and Weft, not much more of that month has ever been mentioned, other than interest to enter the live-action faction of the motion picture business, figured as far fetched, or to be of bother to his brother Roy, then patient in a tuberculosis sanatorium; and not of much money himself.

Wait. What? Walt? Why?

Does that make sense, when down to last cents? The question is always unanswered. Go on. Take any tome off the shelf and see for yourself. We can wait.

And when you return, I will tell you the rest of the story.

One that any historian, worth their salt, could have easily found out about Walt.

Now, was there any mention of a Motion Picture Exposition? No?

You see, the motion picture business was then in boom. And I mean BOOM. After a slump, during which it nearly went bust, 1923 was becoming its biggest year.

No longer novelty, but industry.

No longer flickers, but film.

To celebrate this apex of cinema achievement, that summer would see a major exposition, first of its kind, set within and without the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. "An unprecedented gathering of Stars of the Silver Screen," as one ad proclaimed, "World Celebrities and Brilliant Personalities of Art, Science and Industry."

President Warren G. Harding was to preside over opening ceremonies.

Here, for five weeks, every step of the filmmaking process, from raw stock to screen, would be represented by every possible company; each, of own, meet and greet bungalow.

Opportunity aplenty, for anyone entering production.

City of Dreams it is called.

Now, see yourself, unsuccessful, in Kansas City. Missouri has become Misery.

You are Walt Disney.

You know where you need to be.

Hollywood.

"No single agency in any city," director Maurice Tourneur will say, on Exposition, opening day, "ever has proved so powerful a magnet in drawing together the talents of the world as that evidenced by the motion picture art here. New business brains will be attracted from all parts of the country.

"New blood, new ideas, and new enterprises."

Exactly why Walt Disney went there.

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