Now an enormous media conglomerate, The Walt Disney Company began as a small animation studio in 1923. But years before Walt Disney and his brother Roy started the Hollywood-based company, they produced lesser-known cartoons out of a short-lived studio, Laugh-O-Gram, in their hometown of Kansas City, Missouri. Walt Disney founded Laugh-O-Gram when he was just 19 years old. He’d been commissioned to produce a series of short, animated clips called “Newman’s Laugh-O-Grams” that appeared in the newsreels played in three local theaters. While the original snippets blended entertainment and advertising,…
