Ub Iwerks

Template:Infobox person Ub Iwerks (Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell; born Ubbe Ert Iwwerks,Template:Sfn March 24, 1901 – July 7, 1971) was an American animator, cartoonist, film director, film producer, character designer, inventor, and special effects technician. He was known for his early work with Walt Disney, especially for having worked on the creation of Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, among other characters.

Iwerks and Disney met in 1919 while working at an art studio in Kansas City. After briefly working as illustrators for a local newspaper company, they ventured into animation together. Iwerks joined Disney as chief animator on the Laugh-O-Gram shorts series beginning in 1922, but a studio bankruptcy would cause Disney to relocate to Los Angeles in 1923. In the new studio, Iwerks continued to work with Disney on the Alice Comedies as well as the creation of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. One of Iwerks's most long-lasting contributions to animation was a refined version of a sketch drawn by Disney that would later go on to become Mickey Mouse. Iwerks was responsible for much of the animation for the early Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons, including Steamboat Willie, The Skeleton Dance and The Haunted House, before a falling out with Disney led to Iwerks's resignation from the studio in January 1930.

Following his separation with Disney, Iwerks, operating under Animated Pictures Inc. (generally referred to as the Iwerks Studio), created the characters Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper series as part of a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, but the new studio failed to rival its competitors. An independent series of Cinecolor ComiColor Cartoons were also not successful in the long term. Iwerks later directed two Looney Tunes cartoon shorts for Leon Schlesinger Productions and over a dozen Color Rhapsody cartoons for Screen Gems from his studio as contract work before joining Disney again in 1940. As head of Disney's Special Processes and Camera department, Iwerks develops visual effects processes on productions such as Song of the South (1946), Mary Poppins (1964), and even Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). He also adapted the xerography process to be able to photocopy animation pencil drawings onto animation cels and contributed technical solutions to Disney's WED Enterprises group (now Walt Disney Imagineering) for Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and 1964 World's Fair attractions.

Iwerks had two children, Donald Warren Iwerks and David Lee Iwerks, with his wife Mildred Sarah Henderson. Iwerks died of a heart attack in Burbank, California, in 1971 at age 70. Iwerks was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 1989. His likeness has been featured in his granddaughter Leslie Iwerks's 1999 documentary The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story as well as the 2014 feature film Walt Before Mickey, in which he is portrayed by Armando Gutierrez. Iwerks received three nominations at the Academy Awards, for which he won two. He also posthumously received the Winsor McCay Award at the 1978 Annie Awards and the Hall of Fame award at the 2017 Visual Effects Society Awards. Iwerks is considered one of the greatest animators of all time.

Early life

Iwerks was born Ubbe Ert Iwwerks in Kansas City, Missouri.Template:Sfn His father, Ert Ubbén Iwwerks, was born in the village of Uttum in East Frisia (northwest Germany, today part of the municipality of Krummhörn) and immigrated to the United States in 1869 around the age of 14.^[1] The elder Iwwerks, who worked as a barber, had abandoned several previous wives and children. When Ub Iwerks was a teenager, his father abandoned him as well, forcing the boy to drop out of school and work to support his mother. Iwerks despised his father and never spoke of or saw him again; upon learning that he had died, he reportedly said, "Throw him in a ditch."Template:Sfn Years later, when Iwerks's son Don asked about his grandfather, Ub stopped Don, telling him "We don't talk about that."^[2]

Ub Iwerks attended Ashland Grammar School, graduating in 1914.Template:Sfn Ub's full name, Ubbe Ert Iwwerks, can be seen on early Alice Comedies that he signed. After moving to Hollywood in 1924, he began simplifying his name to "Ub Iwerks", sometimes written as "U.B. Iwerks"Template:Efn, and legally changed his name to "Ub Iwerks" in 1926.Template:Sfn

Career

Early work with Walt Disney (1919–1926)

Iwerks spent most of his career working with or for Walt Disney. The two met in 1919 while working for the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio in Kansas City,Template:Sfn and eventually started their own commercial art business together.Template:Sfn Disney and Iwerks then found work as illustrators for the Kansas City Slide Newspaper CompanyTemplate:Sfn (which was later named The Kansas City Film Ad Company).Template:Sfn While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, Disney decided to take up work in animation,Template:Sfn and Iwerks soon joined him.

At Kansas City Film Ad, Iwerks displayed what became a life-long devotion to mechanics and invention. To make the process of photographing the animation drawings more efficient, Iwerks attached a motor drive to the animation camera with a switch that resembled a telegraph key. This allowed the camera to operated by a single seated person who could both photograph the drawings and switch out and adjust the drawings - without requiring a second person to stand and work the camera.^[3]

In 1922, when Disney began his Laugh-O-Gram cartoon series, Iwerks joined him as chief animator. The studio went bankrupt, however, and in 1923 Iwerks followed Disney's move to Los Angeles to work with Walt and his brother Roy on a new series of cartoons known as the Alice Comedies. The Alice shorts featured a live-action little girl (portrayed by Virginia Davis and later Dawn O'Day (Anne Shirley) and Margie Gay) superimposed into an animated cartoon world. The shorts, produced for Margaret Winkler of M.J. Winkler Productions (later Winkler Pictures), proved popular enough to remain in production through 1926.Template:Sfn

Oswald and Mickey Mouse (1927–1929)

After the end of the Alice series, Disney asked Iwerks to design a new character who would star in all-animated - and lower-budgeted - cartoon shorts.Template:Sfn Winkler Pictures had been taken over in 1924 by Margaret Winkler's husband, Charles Mintz, who had contracted to provide a cartoon series for release through Universal Pictures.Template:Sfn Disney asked Iwerks to design the character who became Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.Template:Sfn The first Oswald cartoon to be completed was Poor Papa animated entirely by Iwerks and featuring a heavyset and middle-aged version of Oswald.Template:Sfn Universal, who would own full rights to the prospective character, rejected Poor Papa and Mintz and Disney had Iwerks design a younger, thinner version of the character.Template:Sfn Trolley Troubles, featuring the redesigned Oswald, became the first cartoon in the series to be released, in September 1927.Template:Sfn

In February 1928, Walt Disney requested a budget increase for the Oswalds from Charles Mintz, who reejected the request and then informed the stunned Disney that he had secretly hired away most of Disney's animators to make Oswalds directly for Winkler Pictures instead.Template:Sfn These animators included Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising, and Friz Freleng, all of whom had also followed Iwerks and Disney from Kansas City to Los Angeles. Only Iwerks and a small handful of other holdouts - Les Clark, Wilfred Jackson, Johnny Cannon - had remained loyal to Disney and refused to sign with Mintz.Template:Sfn A stunned and angry Walt Disney vowed to never again work with a character he did not own.Template:Sfn

Disney asked Iwerks to start drawing up new character ideas - in secret, as the defecting animators would not leave for the new Winkler studio until May 1928. Iwerks tried sketches of frogs, dogs, and cats, but none of these appealed to Disney.Template:Sfn Mice characters had turned up periodically in the Alice and Oswald shorts, Hugh Harman, one the animators who had just defected to Mintz, had drawn some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney back in 1925.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn Template:Sfn With additional inspiration from the work of Life magazine cartoonist Clifton Meek,^[4] who'd drawn mice characters since the 1910s, Iwerks and Disney worked out a series of sketches that evolved into the character that would be named Mickey Mouse.Template:Sfn Iwerks drew the final designs the character, who resembled Oswald with round mouse ears instead of rabbit ears,Template:Sfn and animated the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy, by himself - mostly in secret behind a locked office door until Harman and the other animators left for Winkler.Template:Sfn

As with Oswald, Plane Crazy was not the first Mickey short to be released, as neither it nor the follow-up, The Galloping Gaucho, were picked up by a distributor.Template:Sfn With the arrival of sound films in the marketplace, Disney and Iwerks designed the third Mickey cartoon, Steamboat Willie, to be synchronized with music and sound effects.Template:Sfn Both the needed sound equipment and film distribution were provided by Pat Powers, an veteran film impresario looking for an market for his Powers Cinephone sound-on-film system (actually an unlicensed clone of Lee DeForest's Phonofilm system).Template:Sfn^[5] Credited as "A Walt Disney Comic by Ub Iwerks," Steamboat Willie was released in November 1928 and made Mickey Mouse an immediate sensation.Template:Sfn

Several of the other early Disney sound cartoons were animated almost entirely by Iwerks. These included Plane Crazy, Steamboat Willie, The Haunted House, and the inaugural Silly Symphony short, The Skeleton Dance.Template:Sfn As both adapted and original music became more integral to the Disney cartoons, Carl W. Stalling, an acquaintance of Iwerks and Disney from Kansas City, was hired as music director.Template:Sfn

Break from Disney (1929–1930)

Across 1929, Iwerks became increasingly resentful of Disney's leadershipTemplate:Sfn and felt his contributions to the success of Mickey Mouse were under-appreciated.Template:Sfn At a party, a child requested that Disney draw Mickey Mouse on a napkin, and Disney handed the pen to Iwerks, saying, "Why don't you draw Mickey and I'll sign it?" An enraged Iwerks snapped "Draw your own Mickey!" and stormed off.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn^[6] When Charles Giegerich, an associate of Pat Powers, surreptitiously approached Iwerks in September 1929 with an offer to started his own studio, Iwerks eventually accepted.Template:Sfn ^[7] At the time Iwerks signed with Powers in January 1930, Powers was still distributing the Mickey Mouse cartoons,Template:Sfn and had arranged distribution of the Silly Symphonies through Columbia Pictures.Template:Sfn However, his dealings with the Disney brothers had become increasingly tense and he decided to deal directly with Iwerks instead.Template:Sfn

Iwerks waited until January 21, 1930 - after Walt Disney had gone to New York to meet with Powers over financial disputes - to both tender his resignation to Roy Disney instead,Template:Sfn and to inform him of his new side deal with Powers.Template:Sfn The Iwerks deal and resignation triggered a business crisis that resulted in several months of acrimonious negotiations and business disputes.Template:Sfn Upon learning that Iwerks was leaving, music director Carl Stalling resigned as well, later joining Iwerks at his new studio.Template:Sfn

The situation was eventually settled by May 1930, with Columbia paying Powers to assume distribution of the Mickey Mouse shorts and Powers negotiating a deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) for Iwerks' new studio.Template:Sfn Roy Disney bought back Iwerks' 20% interest in Walt Disney Productions as part of his exit from the company.Template:Sfn The last Mickey Mouse cartoon Iwerks directed and animated on was Wild Waves (1929), and his final Disney film as a director was the Silly Symphony Autumn (1930).^[8] He also penciled the first strips of the Mickey Mouse comic strip.^[9]

Iwerks Studio (Animated Pictures Corp./Cartoon Films Ltd.)

Template:Main article

Flip the Frog, Willie Whopper, and ComicColor Cartoons

Ub Iwerks' studio, Animated Pictures Corp., opened in 1930.^[10] Financial backers led by Pat Powers suspected that Iwerks was responsible for much of Disney's early success.^[10] However, while animation for a time suffered at Disney from Iwerks's departure, it soon rebounded as Disney veterans such as Les Clark, Wilfred Jackson, and New York imports Norm Ferguson and Burt Gillett were joined by new recruits such as Art Babbitt and Fred Moore.^[10]

Despite a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) to distribute his cartoons, and the introduction of new characters Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper, the Iwerks Studio was never a major commercial success and failed to rival either Disney or Fleischer Studios. Newly hired animator Fred Kopietz recommended that Iwerks employ a friend from Chouinard Art School, Chuck Jones, who was hired and put to work as a cel washer.Template:Sfn Iwerks also lured Fleischer animators such as Grim Natwick, Shamus Culhane, Al Eugster, and Rudy Zamora from New York to Los Angeles to work for his studio.Template:Sfn

The Flip the Frog cartoons, which lasted from 1930 to 1933, became Iwerks's most famous work^[11] outside of animating Mickey Mouse.^[12] Fiddlesticks, the first Flip short, was also the first individual sound cartoon short released in color^[13]^[14] (Walter Lantz's animated segment for King of Jazz earlier in 1930 was the first sound color animation to be released.)^[12]^[15]

Once the Flip series fell out of popularity by 1933, it was replaced by the Willie Whopper cartoons, which failed to catch on.Template:Sfn MGM ended its contract with Iwerks in 1934 and instead contracted with Hugh Harman & Rudolf Ising's Harman-Ising Productions to produce a new color series of Happy Harmonies cartoons.Template:Sfn The Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper cartoons were later distributed on the home-movie market in 8 mm and 16 mm prints by Official Films in the 1940s.^[16]

*Sinbad the Sailor*, a 1935 ComiColor cartoon

From 1933 to 1936, Iwerks produced a series of shorts using the two-strip Cinecolor process under the title ComiColor Cartoons. These shorts were released by Pat Powers through Celebrity Pictures. The ComiColor series mostly focused on fairy tales with no continuing character or star. Iwerks also experimented with stop-motion animation in combination with the multiplane camera, and made a short called The Toy Parade, which was never released in public.^[17]

The Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper cartoons were later distributed on the home-movie market in 8 mm and 16 mm prints by Official Films in the 1940s.^[18] The ComiColor cartoons received home-movie distribution through Castle Films and later Blackhawk Films.^[19]

In 1936, Pat Powers began working out a contract for a new series of cartoons based on the Reg'lar Fellers comic strip about a group of neighborhood kids. Powers wanted Iwerks to either move his studio to New York or allow Powers to set up a satellite studio in New York for the series;^[20] when Iwerks declined, Powers and Iwerks parted company and the Celebrity Productions backers withdrew their financial support from Animated Pictures.^[20] Only one Reg'lar Fellers cartoon, the ComiColor short Happy Days, was completed and released.^[20]

Contract work and Gran'Pop Monkey

The Iwerks studio continued on by doing advertising films and contract work for other animation studios.^[21] In early 1937, Leon Schlesinger Productions contracted Iwerks to produce four Looney Tunes shorts starring Porky Pig and Gabby Goat.^[20] Iwerks began the project with his own crew working from Schlesinger staff storyboards,Template:Sfn but when production fell behind, Schlesinger assigned Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, and Robert Cannon to report to the Beverly Hills Animated Pictures offices and help bolster the Iwerks staff.Template:Sfn

While Iwerks completed direction on the first two shorts, Porky and Gabby and Porky's Super Service, he quit the project during production of the third, Porky's Badtime Story. He had reportedly grown frustrated with the Porky Pig character,Template:Sfn and stopped reporting to work at his studio. Clampett, who'd resented both the Iwerks assignment and not being able to direct, took over direction of the short himself.Template:Sfn^[22] Only one more cartoon, Get Rich Quick Porky, was made by Clampett, with assistance from Jones, at Iwerks before he and his co-workers were returned to the main Schlesinger lot and Clampett was given his own unit.Template:Sfn.Template:Sfn^[20]

Iwerks also did contract work for Columbia Pictures' Screen Gems cartoon division. Between 1936 and 1940, fifteen of the Screen Gems Color Rhapsody were produced and directed by Iwerks with his facilities and staff.^[20]

In 1937, Iwerks worked out an arrangement with British producer and financier Lawson Harris to reorganize his animation studio.^[23] Now known as Cartoon Films Limited,^[23] Iwerks was named vice-president and continued his contract work for Screen Gems while also attempting to launch one final self-produced series, Gran'pop Monkey. Based upon the work of British cartoonist Lawson Wood, three Gran'Pop Monkey cartoons were made in 1938. Intended for release through Educational Pictures,^[24] the films were instead released through Monogram Pictures after Educational experience financial problems of its own.^[25]

By 1939, Iwerks had ceded most of the creative supervision and directorial duties to Paul Fennell, and was supplementing his income by teaching animation at an area vocational school.Template:Sfn The following year, Iwerks was offered an opportunity to return to Disney and resigned From Cartoon Films on September 9, 1940, and Harris and Fennell continued production at Cartoon Films Ltd. on their own through 1943.^[26]^[27]

Visual effects supervision at Disney (1940–1964)

Ben Sharpsteen, who had worked under Iwerks when he first came to the Disney studio in 1929, was by 1940 general manager of the Disney studio.Template:Sfn He hired Iwerks back to Disney in August 1940 as an animation checker after hearing of Iwerks' financial struggles.Template:Sfn Iwerks reconciled with Walt Disney over lunch, and after learning Iwerks was more interested in working on mechanical processes than working directly in animation, Disney assigned Iwerks to work on the development of a new visual effects optical camera.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn

In December 1945, Iwerks became the head of the Special Processes and Camera department at Disney.Template:Sfn His refined optical camera processes for combining two pieces of Technicolor film (often to combine live-action footage with animation, but also to composite pieces of live-action film as well) were used at Disney on films such Song of the South (1946), So Dear to My Heart (1949), and The Parent Trap (1961). Iwerks and his team at Disney would continue to refine these processes for decades, and Iwerks was given a 1960 Academy Award for Technical Achievement for his improved optical printer and matte process.Template:Sfn

Iwerks and his team also spent years adapting the xerographic process for cel animation, in order to directly photocopy animators' pencil drawings to animation cels, speeding up the animation process by minimizing the need to trace each drawing from paper to celluloid by hand via the "inking" stage.Template:Sfn Template:Sfn First used in primitive form for Fantasia (1940),Template:Sfn Iwerks developed a variety of patents for applying xerography for use in animation.^[28] The matured animation xerography process was first used in the climax of Sleeping Beauty (1959) before being used for most of the animation for One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). Xerography quickly became a standard procedure for the animation industry due to its cost-savings.Template:Sfn^[11] He also did work for WED Enterprises, now Walt Disney Imagineering, helping to develop many Disney theme park attractions during the 1960s.Template:Sfn

Iwerks's last major work for a Disney film was the further improvements of his visual effects processes for Mary Poppins. This included the purchase and re-developmentTemplate:Sfn of the sodium vapor screen filming process (informally referred to as "yellowscreen," despite being a different process from chroma key) to achieve improved visual effects compositing quality in scenes from Dick Van Dyke's "Jolly Holiday" dance with cartoon penguins to the "Feed the Birds" sequence.^[11]^[29]

While developing the sodium screen process for Poppins, Iwerks was tapped by Alfred Hitchcock to supervise the special effects for his 1963 film The Birds.^[30]^[29] Many of the visual effects shots for The Birds were devised and filmed by Iwerks at the Disney studio,^[29] and Iwerks was nominated for the 1964 Academy Award for Best Visual Effects. For his work on Mary Poppins, Iwerks and his team were awarded a second Academy Award for Technical Achievement in 1965.Template:Sfn

Personal life and death

Iwerks had two children with his wife, Mildred (née Henderson): Donald and David. Donald went on to work for the Walt Disney company and to found Iwerks Entertainment. His granddaughter is documentary film producer Leslie Iwerks.^[31] David Iwerks became a portrait photographer.^[32]^[33]

Iwerks died on July 7, 1971 from a heart attack in Burbank, California, aged 70, and his ashes are interred in a niche in the Columbarium of Remembrance at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills Cemetery. The last project he worked on was the Hall of Presidents.^[11]^[34]

Influence and tributes

The Ub Iwerks Award for Technical Achievement at the Annie Awards, the annual awards ceremony for the American animation industry, is named in his honor.

A rare self-portrait of Iwerks was found in a garbage bin at an animation studio in Burbank. The portrait was saved and is now part of the Animation Archives in Burbank, California.

After World War II, much of Iwerks's early animation style was imitated by legendary manga artists Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori.Template:Cn

In 1989, Iwerks was named a Disney legend.

In the 1996 The Simpsons episode "The Day the Violence Died", a relationship similar to Iwerks's early relationship with Walt Disney is used as the main plot.

A documentary film, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, was released in 1999, followed by a book written by Iwerks's granddaughter Leslie Iwerks and John Kenworthy in 2001. The documentary, created by Leslie Iwerks, was released as part of The Walt Disney Treasures, Wave VII series (disc two of The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit collection).^[35]^[36]

A feature film released in 2014, Walt Before Mickey, showed how Ub Iwerks, portrayed by Armando Gutierrez, and Walt Disney, portrayed by Thomas Ian Nicholas, co-created Mickey Mouse.

The sixth episode from the second season of Drunk History ("Hollywood") tells about Ub's work relationship with Disney, with stress on the creation of Mickey Mouse. Iwerks was portrayed in the episode by Tony Hale.

Filmography

1922

Title	Release date	Company
Little Red Riding Hood	July 29	Laugh-O-Grams
The Four Musicians of Bremen	August 1
Jack and the Beanstalk	September 4
Jack the Giant Killer	September 12
Goldie Locks and the Three Bears	October 4
Puss in Boots	November 3
Cinderella	December 6

1923


Title	Release date	Company	Notes
Alice's Wonderland	October 16	Laugh-O-Grams

1924


Title	Release date	Company
Alice's Day at Sea	March 1	Walt Disney Productions
Alice's Spooky Adventure	April 1
Alice's Wild West Show	May 1
Alice's Fishy Story	June 1
Alice and the Dog Catcher	July 1
Alice the Peacemaker	August 1
Alice Gets in Dutch	November 1
Alice Hunting in Africa	November 15
Alice and the Three Bears	December 1
Alice the Piper	December 15

1925


Title	Release date	Company
Alice Cans the Cannibals	January 1	Walt Disney Productions
Alice the Toreador	January 15
Alice Gets Stung	February 1
Alice Solves the Puzzle	February 15
Alice's Egg Plant	May 17
Alice Loses Out	June 15
Alice Is Stage Struck	June 23
Alice Wins the Derby	July 12
Alice Picks the Champ	July 30
Alice's Tin Pony	August 15
Alice Chops the Suey	August 30
Alice the Jail Bird	September 15
Alice Plays Cupid	October 15
Alice Rattled by Rats	November 15
Alice in the Jungle	December 15

1926


Title	Release date	Company
Alice on the Farm	January 1	Walt Disney Productions
Alice's Balloon Race	January 15
Alice's Orphan	January 15
Alice's Little Parade	February 1
Alice's Mysterious Mystery	February 15
Alice Charms the Fish	September 6
Alice's Monkey Business	September 20
Alice in Slumberland	September 29
Alice in the Wooly West	October 4
Alice the Fire Fighter	October 18
Alice Cuts the Ice	November 1
Alice Helps the Romance	November 15
Alice's Spanish Guitar	November 29
Alice's Brown Derby	December 13
Alice the Lumberjack	December 27

1927


Title	Release date	Company	Notes
Alice the Golf Bug	January 10	Walt Disney Productions
Alice Foils the Pirates	January 24
Alice at the Carnival	February 7
Alice at the Rodeo	February 21
Alice the Collegiate	March 7
Alice in the Alps	March 21
Alice's Auto Race	April 4
Alice's Circus Daze	April 18
Alice's Knaughty Knights	May 2
Alice's Three Bad Eggs	May 15
Poor Papa	May 15		The first Oswald The Rabbit short produced by Walt Disney and distributed by Universal Studios.
Alice's Picnic	May 30
Alice's Channel Swim	June 13
Alice in the Klondike	June 27
Alice's Medicine Show	July 11
Alice the Whaler	July 25
Alice the Beach Nut	August 8
Trolley Troubles	September 5
Oh Teacher	September 19
The Mechanical Cow	October 3
Great Guns!	October 17
All Wet	October 31
The Ocean Hop	November 14
The Banker's Daughter	November 28
Rickety Gin	December 26

1928


Title	Release date	Company	Notes
The Ol' Swimming Hole	February 6	Walt Disney Productions
Africa Before Dark	February 20
Rival Romeos	March 5
Bright Lights	March 19
Sagebrush Sadie	April 2
Ride 'Em Plowboy	April 16
Ozzy of the Mounted	April 30
Hungry Hobos	May 14
Plane Crazy	May 15		First Mickey Mouse cartoon ever produced.
Oh What a Knight	May 28
The Fox Chase	June 25
Tall Timber	July 9
Sleigh Bells	July 23
High Up	August 6
The Gallopin' Gaucho	August 7
Hot Dogs	August 20
Sky Scrapper	September 23
Steamboat Willie	November 18		* Music composed by Wilfred Jackson and Burt Lewis.

1929


Title	Release date	Company	Notes
The Barn Dance	March 14	Walt Disney Productions
The Opry House	March 28
When the Cat's Away	April 11
The Barnyard Battle	April 25
The Karnival Kid	May 23
Mickey's Choo-Choo	June 20
Mickey's Follies	June 26
The Plowboy	June 28
The Jazz Fool	July 5
Wild Waves	August 15
The Skeleton Dance	August 29		The first "Silly Symphony"
El Terrible Toreador	September 26
Springtime	October 24
Jungle Rhythm	November 15
Hell's Bells	November 21
The Haunted House	December 2
The Merry Dwarfs	December 19

1930

Title	Release date	Series	Notes
Fiddlesticks	August 16	Flip the Frog	First Flip the Frog cartoon Filmed in both two-strip Harriscolor, but widely released in B/W
Little Orphan Willie	October 18		Filmed in both two-strip Harriscolor, but only intact in B/W
Flying Fists	September 6
The Village Barber	September 27		First non-woodland cartoon
The Cuckoo Murder Case	October 18		First Halloween-themed cartoon
Puddle Pranks	December		Final woodland-themed cartoon This and Little Orphan Willie were never copyrighted Only appearance of Flip's frog girlfriend

1931

Title	Release date	Series	Notes
The Village Smitty	January 31	Flip the Frog	First appearances of Flip's cat girlfriend and Orace
The Soup Song	January 31		Bandmaster Paul Whiteman is caricatured
Laughing Gas	March 14		Only appearance of the walrus
Ragtime Romeo	May 2		First time Flip wears a hat
The New Car	July 25		Starting with this cartoon, Flip's design slowly changes Some plot elements in this cartoon are reused from a Disney Oswald cartoon, Trolley Troubles
Movie Mad	August 29		Caricatures include Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin
The Village Specialist	September 12		Only appearance of Mrs Pig
Jail Birds	September 26		First time Orace is Flip's horse
Africa Squeaks	October 17		No longer shown on American television due to offensive black stereotypes
Spooks	September 21		Second Halloween-themed cartoon

1932

Title	Release date	Series	Notes
The Milkman	February 20	Flip the Frog	First appearance of the orphan boy
Fire! Fire!	March 5
What a Life	March 26		First time Flip interacts with humans
Puppy Love	April 30		First appearance of Flip's dog
School Days	May 14		First appearance of the spinster
The Bully	June 18		Final appearance of the orphan boy
The Office Boy	July 16		The secretary is a caricature of Joan Crawford Contains inappropriate content
Room Runners	August 13		Contains inappropriate content
Stormy Seas	August 22		Possibly a withheld 1931 release Final appearance of Flip's cat girlfriend
Circus	August 27		Copyrighted on September 7, 1932
The Goal Rush	October 3		In the beginning, there is a scene considered inappropriate where the bandmaster shoots the clarinet player just for playing wrong First appearance of Flip's human girlfriend
The Phoney Express	October 27		First "official" appearance of Flip's human girlfriend. She bears a strong resemblance to Fleischer Studios's Betty Boop. The original title for the cartoon was "The Pony Express", but later changed to "The Phoney Express" by Pat Powers
The Music Lesson	October 29		Only appearance of Flip's friends
The Nurse Maid	November 26		This cartoon has two racist scenes that do not appear on TV. There is an angry "Chinaman–Fu Man Chu" type with long fingernails trying to scratch the eyes out of Flip. Later, a cigar store Indian has gags with runaway animals.
Funny Face	December 24		In the public domain

1933

Title	Release date	Series	Notes
Coo Coo, the Magician	January 21	Flip the Frog	Cameo of the spinster at the beginning
Flip's Lunchroom	March 4		Only Flip the Frog cartoon to have Flip's name in the title
Technocracked	May 8		Possibly filmed in two-strip Technicolor or cinecolor
Bulloney	May 30
A Chinaman's Chance	June 24		No longer shown on American television due to offensive Chinese stereotypes Final appearance of Flip's dog
Paleface	August 12		Final appearances of Orace, Flip's girlfriend, and the spinster
The Air Race	n/a	Willie Whopper	The first Willie Whopper cartoon, though it was never released due to a plot hole. A remake, Spite Flight, was released.
Play Ball	September 16	Willie Whopper	The first official Willie Whopper cartoon
Soda Squirt	October 12	Flip the Frog	Final Flip the Frog cartoon Caricatures include Laurel and Hardy, Jimmy Durante, Buster Keaton, Rasputin, the Marx Brothers, Mae West, and Joe E. Brown.
Spite Flight	October 14	Willie Whopper	A remake of the unreleased Willie Whopper cartoon, The Air Race
Stratos Fear	November 11	Willie Whopper
Jack and the Beanstalk	December 23	Comicolor	First Comicolor cartoon

1934

Title	Release date	Series	Notes
Davy Jones Locker	January 13	Willie Whopper	The first of two Willie Whopper cartoons to be filmed in Cinecolor
The Little Red Hen	February 16	Comicolor
Hell's Fire	February 17	Willie Whopper	The only cartoon made by Ub Iwerks to have a curse word in the title. This is the last of the two Willie Whopper cartoons filmed in Cinecolor.
Robin Hood, Jr.	March 10	Willie Whopper
The Brave Tin Soldier	April 7	Comicolor
Insultin' the Sultan	April 14	Willie Whopper
Puss in Boots	May 17	Comicolor	Two other prints exist.
Reducing Creme	May 19	Willie Whopper
Rasslin' Round	June 1	Willie Whopper	Working title: Rasslin' Around
The Queen of Hearts	June 25	Comicolor
Cave Man	July 6	Willie Whopper	Music composed by Bennie Moten and his orchestra
Jungle Jitters	July 24	Willie Whopper	No longer shown on American television due to offensive black stereotypes
Aladdin and the Wonderful Lamp	August 10	ComiColor
Good Scout	September 1	Willie Whopper	Music composed by McKinney's Cotton Pickers Stereotypes of ethnic (Chinese, Jewish, Black) boy scouts
Viva Willie	September 20	Willie Whopper	Final Willie Whopper cartoon. After this cartoon, the rest are Comicolor cartoons.
The Headless Horseman	October 1	Comicolor
The Valiant Tailor	October 29
Don Quixote	November 26		Preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 1998^[37]
Jack Frost	December 24

1935

All Comicolor shorts

Title	Release date	Notes
Little Black Sambo	February 6	No longer shown on American television due to offensive black stereotypes
Brementown Musicians	March 6
Old Mother Hubbard	April 3
Mary's Little Lamb	May 1
Summertime	June 15
Sinbad the Sailor	July 30
The Three Bears	August 30
Balloonland (aka The Pincushion Man)	September 30	This is known as both Balloonland and The Pincushion Man
Simple Simon	November 15
Humpty Dumpty	December 30

1936