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Walt printed fake Universal business cards
Broke in Hollywood
He had arrived that summer after his Kansas City cartoon company went bankrupt, taking with it money lent by friends and family. A survey of theater managers around then found only 23 percent showed cartoons and believed audiences liked them, the lowest of any filler option. His uncle Robert advised him to skip town, sound advice in an era when reputations did not travel. Walt boarded the Santa Fe train for Los Angeles with almost no belongings.
The studio lot
At 21, he believed he could land a directing job at a Hollywood studio, having decided he was too late to compete with New York's cartoonists. The cards got him past the Universal receptionist, and he spent at least a day roaming the lot and absorbing how films were made. Later he returned claiming to be connected with Universal and asked for a job, but he ran out of money without getting one.
Back to cartoons
After the studios turned him down, he pulled out his cartoon work again. Among his remaining assets was a short he had made in Kansas City that mixed a live-action girl with drawn cartoon characters.
What sank Walt's Kansas City studio?
Laugh-O-Gram Films made modernized fairy tale cartoons in Kansas City from 1921 to 1923. Its distributor failed to pay in full and then went under, leaving the studio short of cash. The company filed for bankruptcy in 1923. Walt left for Los Angeles that summer.
Why did film production move to Hollywood?
Southern California offered year-round sunshine, which mattered when film stock needed bright light. Within a short drive there were mountains, desert, and ocean for outdoor scenes. The location was also far from the patent enforcement that Thomas Edison's companies pursued on the East Coast. By the 1920s most major studios had set up in the Los Angeles area.
How could Walt just walk onto a studio lot?
Universal City opened in 1915, and its founder Carl Laemmle invited the public to watch filming from bleachers. Admission was cheap and visitors could eat lunch on the lot. Studio tourism was part of Universal's identity from the start. A confident visitor with a business card fit right in.
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