NETCOT.com

Ubbe Ert Iwerks was born to Dutch-American parents on March 24, 1901 in Kansas City, Missouri. During his early years, he lead life like any normal child: going to school, making friends, and drawing. Eventually, at the age of 18, Iwerks found a job at the Pesman-Rubin Commercial Art Studio. While working there, he ran into one of the new hires: Walt Disney. Both were around the age of 18 and while Iwerks was shy and reserved and Disney outgoing and visionary, both immediately formed a bond. About a year later, both men were laid off. 

While looking for a new job, both men decided to go into business together: the Iwerks-Disney Studio Commercial Artists Company (which lasted until both Disney and Iwerks were both hired at the Kansas City Film Ad Company). During their time at the company, both Iwerks and Disney started to take an interest in animation (they were inspired by Winsor McCay’s Gertie the Dinosaur). Since Iwerks was serious and nervous around women, Walt would play practical jokes on him (i.e. send him postcards signed with girls’ names, smuggling animals into Iwerks desk). This continued until the men moved on from the company. 

In 1922, Disney, who had grown bored at the Ad Company, formed Laugh-O-Gram Films and Iwerks joined him. It didn’t bring in a lot of money, so Iwerks left Disney to return to the Ad Company. He helped with Disney’s projects on the side, but ended up with little for his work when Disney had to declare Laugh-O-Gram bankrupt.

Once Laugh-O-Gram went under, Disney decided to leave Missouri and Iwerks behind and took his talents to California. Eventually, Iwerks received a letter from his friend that he was needed at Disney Brothers Productions in the animation department. He left and met up with his old friend once again.

Iwerks arrived in California in 1924 and started at the Disney studio for less pay, but owned 20% of the company. Their first series of cartoons were the Alice Comedies (starring Virginia Davis).  After the Alice shorts, Disney wanted to come up with a character that could capture viewers. Through this brainstorm came Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Iwerks helped create the character and the rabbit’s popularity rose. Due to the increased popularity of the Oswald, and the distributor’s greed, there was a dispute over the rights to the films. In the end, the distributor won and took most of Disney’s animators with him to continue on the cartoons. This is the story of how Universal took control of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

After losing the rights to the Rabbit, Disney, Iwerks, and the remaining Disney Brother’s staff left Universal and strove to come up with a character that could surpass Oswald in popularity. Among the characters thought about were frogs, dogs, horses (Horace Horsecollar), cows (Clarabelle Cow), and then, finally, a mouse-The Mouse. Together, Disney and Iwerks quickly thought up the idea, personality, and look of Mickey Mouse. Disney would come up with ideas and stories for Iwerks to bring to life. In order to do this, Iwerks had to crank out over 600 sketches per day. The third Mickey Mouse cartoon, “Steamboat Willie” catapulted Disney and the Mouse into households across America.

Eventually, Disney received a one year distribution deal from Pat A. Powers. His deal with the studio included paying $2,500 per Mickey Mouse cartoon. Iwerks was now the Chief Animating Director in charge of animating the “Silly Symphonies” series. In order to crank out the cartoons to gain more money, Iwerks and his staff worked long hours and were frequently the brunt of Disney’s anger and frustration at not getting the product out fast enough. Once Disney gave Powers the cartoons, the distributor kept over the agreed 10% and paid the studios less than their agreed payment. Disney became more frustrated which made the job less enjoyable for Iwerks (which lead to a deal behind Disney’s back in which Iwerks signed a separate contract with Powers to produce cartoons). In 1930, at the end of Disney’s agreement with Powers, Disney didn’t renew, bought out Iwerk’s 20% ownership, and parted ways with Iwerks and Powers. 

Under his deal with Powers, Iwerks formed the Iwerks Studio. During his time as his own boss, Iwerks came up with Flip the Frog, Little Negro, Don Quichotte and Willie Whopper, none of which reached the level of success of Mickey Mouse. From 1933 to 1936, Iwerks produced a few Comicolor Cartoons (i.e. Sinbad the Sailor), but none broke through the popularity barrier. In 1936, Powers stopped backing Iwerks, and the animator had to close his studio.

In 1937, Leon Schlesinger Productions contracted Iwerks to produce four Looney Tunes shorts starring Porky Pig and Gabby Goat. A year later, Screen Gems contracted the animator to work for them. After two years with Columbia Pictures (i.e. Screen Gems), Iwerks returned to work with Disney. Rather than work in the animation department again, Iwerks focused his attention on technical development. Some of his accomplishments include inventing the Multi-head Optical Printer, which blended live action and animation (i.e. “Song of the South”, “Mary Poppins”, and “Bedknobs and Broomsticks”), as well as the xerographic process for cell animation. He received an Oscar for his work in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds”.

Towards the late 1950s, Iwerks worked with Disney’s company to develop and invent the Circarama camera technology (aka Circle-Vision 360). During the 1960s, Iwerks spent the rest of his time at the Disney Studios working in the Walter Elias Disney Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering). Some of the attractions he helped develop include “it’s a small world”, “Great Moments with Mr. Lincoln”, and the “Hall of Presidents”.

In 1971, Ub Iwerks (whose name was shortened during his time at Disney) died of a heart attack in Burbank, California. He was posthumously awarded the Disney Legend Award in 1989, 2 years after the award’s conception.