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<!doctype html public "-//w3c//dtd html 4.0 transitional//en"> <HTML> <HEAD> <title>AuctionBytes TV Internet Television Video - Collecting Stuff with Gary Sohmers - Disney Marks, Part 1</title> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1"> <meta NAME="Author" CONTENT="Ranson's Scripts"> <meta NAME="description" CONTENT="Collectors of Disneyana are some of the most avid collectors in the world. Gary Sohmers gives a brief history of the "Man behind the Mouse" and explains how to date a Disney item by its markings."> <meta NAME="keywords" CONTENT="academy, access, actionanimation, alice, allanimated, allowed, allowing, ambulance, american, animation, artist, artists, award, bankrupt, bankrupted, based, began, born, bread, breakfast, brother, brothers, brought, burbank, business, california, called, campaigns, candy, career, cartoon, cartoonfilm, cartoons, cereal, changed, channel, character, characters, chicago, childhood, city, click, collect, collectors, color, comedies, commercial, companies, company, competing, contracted, cookies, crazy, cream, create, created, creation, crossover, culture, deal, debut, devastated, develop, disney, disneyana, disneys, distribution, dolls, drawing, drawn, driver, dwarfs, earned, easier, edition, elias, encyclopedia, enterprises, entitled, expanded, fact, facts, factspeople, featuring, film, finished, flip, flowers, frames, freleng, friz, frog, garage, gary, germany, government, greatest, harman, heartland, herman, history, hugh, idea, identify, illustrator, included, including, info, initially, instant, invited, ising, issues, item, items, iwerks, japan, kamen, kansas, knowing, largest, leaving, left, licensed, licensing, lillian, live, lucky, made, majority, makes, manufacturing, marked, markings, masters, merchandise, merchandising, mickey, military, milk, million, missouri, mouse, move, movie, named, necessities, office, open, page, pals, period, pictures, plane, point, premiered, prior, proceed, produce, produced, producer, producing, product, production, productions, products, propaganda, provided, rabbit, received, reel, rejoined, release, released, renaming, representative, returned, revenue, rudolph, series, service, short, silly, snow, sohmers, sold, sound, spending, spent, sponsors, staff, started, stay, steamboat, studio, studioin, studios, subject, success, successful, symphonies, symphony, taking, team, technologiesthe, toothpaste, toys, trees, tuned, twothis, uncles, units, universal, unscrupulous, valuable, valueand, values, view, voice, volunteering, walt, walts, white, wife, willie, wonderlandthey, world, wristwatch, year, years, "> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR="FFFFFF"> <CENTER><H2>Collectors of Disneyana are some of the most avid collectors in the world. Gary Sohmers gives a brief history of the "Man behind the Mouse" and explains how to date a Disney item by its markings.</H2></CENTER> <BR><BR> Hi … I’m Gary Sohmers and this edition of the Collectors Channel Encyclopedia of Useful Facts is brought to you by the sponsors you have access to on this page … click and view more Useful Facts. <BR><BR> People who collect Disneyana identify when an item was made by the markings on the item and the history of Walt’s career.   <BR><BR> Walt Elias Disney was born in 1901 in Chicago, spent his early childhood in the American Heartland in Missouri, until volunteering for military service in World War One as an ambulance driver.  After the War, Walt returned to Kansas City to form his first company with illustrator Ub Iwerks called “Iwerks Disney Commercial Artists” in 1920.   <BR><BR> In 1922, Disney started “Laugh-O-Grams, Inc.,” which produced short cartoons and included Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudolph Ising and Friz Freleng, all of whom would go on to be masters of animation. The studio went bankrupt in 1923, and Walt’s brother Roy invited him to move to California, leaving his staff behind, but taking with him the finished reel of his last short, a live action/animation cross-over entitled “Alice's Wonderland.” <BR><BR> They began the “Disney Brothers Studio” in their Uncle's garage, got a distribution deal for their “Alice Comedies” and in 1926 changed the name to “The Walt Disney Studio.”<BR>In 1927, a new all-animated series was put into production for distribution through Universal Pictures featuring a character created by Ub Iwerks called “Oswald, The Lucky Rabbit” which was an instant success. The Disney studio expanded, and Walt brought his Kansas City team of Harman, Ising and Freleng from Kansas City to produce the new product. But in 1928, an unscrupulous producer took part of the team and “Oswald,” leaving Walt and Ub to come up with something new. <BR>Mickey Mouse was first drawn and created by Ub Iwerks, named by Walt’s wife Lillian, and made his film debut in a short called “Plane Crazy” in early 1928. Disney created the very first sound cartoon/film which was release at the end of 1928, a Mickey Mouse cartoon called “Steamboat Willie.” Walt himself provided the voice of Mickey Mouse until 1947.<BR>But Ub Iwerks was the artist, drawing the majority of the Disney Studios cartoons in the years 1928 and 1929, including the “Silly Symphonies,” and Walt was devastated when Ub left him to open a competing studio producing his successful “Flip The Frog” series in 1930. He rejoined Walt in 1940 to develop new animation technologies.<BR>The first color “Silly Symphony” was “Flowers and Trees” in 1932, and won the first Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons, the same year that Walt received a special Academy Award for the creation of Mickey Mouse. <BR>In 1932, Walt contracted Herman "Kay" Kamen as the merchandise licensing representative for his new company, “Walt Disney Enterprises” and started the largest character licensing business in history. Prior to this, merchandise of Disney’s characters, often made in Japan or Germany, were marked “Walt E. Disney,” or “W.E.D.” to identify licensed products.  Kamen licensed “Walt Disney Enterprises” (WDE) Mickey Mouse and pals to companies manufacturing candy, cookies, toothpaste, toys, dolls and all childhood necessities into ad campaigns for bread, milk, ice cream and breakfast cereal.  In 1933, he came up with the idea to create a Mickey Mouse wristwatch which sold more than two million units between 1933 and 1935. <BR><BR> At this point Walt started on “Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs” which took two years and nearly bankrupted the Studio. It premiered in Feb. 1938 and earned over $8 million at the box office, along with over $10 million in merchandising, allowing Walt to proceed with production of “Pinocchio,” “Fantasia” and “Bambi” all released within 5 years into World War Two. <BR><BR> This revenue allowed the Disney Brothers to open their Burbank studios, renaming the company “Walt Disney Productions” (WDP) and spending much of the War years doing propaganda cartoons for the government.   <BR><BR> WDP is marked on all licensed merchandise made after 1940, with most of the “Fantasia” and “Pinocchio” items marked “WDE,” and most of the “Bambi” items marked “WDP.”   <BR><BR> The greatest values for Disney items are based on the items being made during the time period that the cartoon or movie was initially released.  “Snow White” items are best if marked WDE, with those marked WDP being later issues and not as valuable.   <BR><BR> Knowing the time frames that items were made, based on the markings, makes it easier to be clear about value. <BR><BR> And that’s another useful fact ... stay tuned for more info on Disney and other Pop Culture.<BR> </BODY> </HTML>