MGM Cartoons Wiki
Advertisement
MGM Cartoons Wiki

Walt Disney Productions (previously known as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio and Walt Disney Studio) was an entertainment company founded by Walt Disney and his older brother Roy. Disney's association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer began as early as 1928.

Walt Disney Productions served as the top governance for all Disney-related operations until the 1980s, when a number of decisions were made that resulted in a restructure of the company. Disney's top governance became The Walt Disney Company while its feature animation studio became Walt Disney Feature Animation.[1]

History with MGM[]

The company was formed on October 16, 1923. In 1928, Walt Disney attempted to strike a distribution deal with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer since he was having issues with Winkler Pictures and its head, Charles Mintz, over the then-Universal Pictures-owned Oswald the Lucky Rabbit short film series. He took Oswald the Lucky Rabbit film reels and showed them to Fred Quimby. Quimby didn't strike a deal with Disney, and he had acted as if he had seen Oswald shorts before from someone else.

Hollywood Party, an MGM feature film containing Mickey Mouse and a Walt Disney Productions-animated short titled "The Hot Choc-Late Soldiers", was released to theaters in 1934.

Walt Disney Productions contracted out the production of three Silly Symphony shorts - "Merbabies", "Pipe Dreams", and "The Little Bantamweight" - to Harman-Ising Productions. Of the three, Disney only kept one ("Merbabies"). The other two were released by MGM as part of the Happy Harmonies series.

Several people that worked with Walt Disney Productions had moved to MGM-related cartoon series' - these include Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, and Rudolf Ising.

References[]

Advertisement