Studio Geo: The Golden Oak Ranch

Walt Disney began his career as a filmmaker in January of 1920 when he took a job making animated advertisements for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. It was the beginning of a journey that would take a struggling young artist and entrepreneur and eventually mold him into one of the most celebrated icons of 20th century popular culture. The historical map of that journey is an extraordinary one.

Welcome to Studio Geo. These are the places where Walt Disney created his moving pictures:

The Golden Oak Ranch

Over the years, millions upon millions of movie and television viewers have looked upon and admired the beautiful outdoor landscapes and rustic scenery of the Golden Oak Ranch. It is a significant, though almost wholly unrecognized facet of Disney film history.

Movie ranches primarily emerged during the waning years of the silent film era and were widely used throughout the 1930s and 1940s. The popularity of western movies in particular, sent Hollywood producers looking for optimal outdoor shooting locations that were still within a convenient distance from Hollywood. If a film crew could remain within a thirty mile radius of their home studio, they did not have to pay their union workers an out-of-town stipend. Popular locations for the movie ranches included the Santa Monica Mountains, the Canyon Country of Los Angeles and the Simi Hills in Ventura County.

Walt Disney first made use of such a location in 1955 when he leased the 315-acre Golden Oak Ranch for the filming of The Adventures of Spin and Marty. Located in the Santa Clarita area approximately 25 miles north of Disney's Burbank studio, the ranch had earned a filmmaking pedigree more than two decades prior to its playing the role of the Triple R Ranch in the popular Mickey Mouse Club serial. Trem Carr, one of the founders of Monogram Studios, leased the same land for his own self-named studio in 1931, and had his set designer Ernie Hickson build a full scale western town on the property. When the lease ran out in 1936, Hickson purchased land two miles to the west and moved his sets and buildings to the new location. That facility became especially well known when singing cowboy Gene Autry purchased it shortly after Hickson's death in 1952 and turned it into his own Melody Ranch.

Following the exodus of Carr and Hickman, the Golden Oak property reverted to a traditional cattle ranch which was still occasionally used by Hollywood filmmakers. In 1959, Walt decided to purchase the property, seeing it as a valuable asset for his ever increasing slate of live-action productions. Bringing his theme park expertise to bear, he enlisted Disneyland master planner Marvin Davis to upgrade the property. Davis installed two man-made lakes (one of which could double as a river, complete with water pumps to simulate currents), a waterfall and an extensive irrigation system to keep the greenery as green as possible. In subsequent years, additional land surrounding the property was purchased, increasing the ranch to its present-day size of close to 700 acres.

Among the notable early Disney live-action films to use the Golden Oak Ranch: Old Yeller, Toby Tyler, or Ten Weeks with a Circus, The Shaggy Dog, The Parent Trap and Follow Me, Boys! The ranch has hosted countless other Hollywood productions, ranging from classic television programs such as Bonanza, The Virginian and Lassie, to contemporary shows such as Bones, Boston Legal and My Name is Earl.

The name of the ranch refers to the discovery of gold on the property, some seven years prior to the famed California gold rush of 1849. An oak tree close to where rancher Francisco Lopez dug up small gold flakes and nuggets in 1842 still purportedly remains on the ranch and is commemorated with a small plaque.

The Golden Oak Ranch continues to serve both the Walt Disney Company and entire film industry and remains one of the few surviving southern California movie ranches.  It has recently added a residential neighborhood set featuring thirteen different houses, each with their own unique architectural style.  Work is proceeding on an urban business district set that will include 43 different storefronts and will be complete sometime in 2011.

The Disney corporate web site currently features concept art of a new entrance to the ranch where it is identified as Disney-ABC Studios at the Ranch.  According to the site: "Walt Disney personally selected Golden Oak Ranch as the location for segments of his iconic television show, The Mickey Mouse Club. Now, 50 years later, the Disney-ABC Studios at The Ranch project will transform a small portion of Golden Oak Ranch into a state-of-the-art soundstage and production complex."  The proposed project would develop 56 of the ranch's 890 acres and include up to twelve soundstages, a warehouse, writers/producers bungalows and a commissary.

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:

Studio Geo Part 1: Kansas City and the Laugh-O-Grams

Studio Geo Part 2: Kingswell and the Disney Brothers Studio

Studio Geo Part 3: Lightning in a Bottle - 2719 Hyperion 

Studio Geo Part 4: The House That Snow White Built

Studio Geo: The House That Snow White Built

Walt Disney began his career as a filmmaker in January of 1920 when he took a job making animated advertisements for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. It was the beginning of a journey that would take a struggling young artist and entrepreneur and eventually mold him into one of the most celebrated icons of 20th century popular culture. The historical map of that journey is an extraordinary one.

Welcome to Studio Geo. These are the places where Walt Disney created his moving pictures:

The Walt Disney Studios - Burbank, California

The success of Mickey Mouse was certainly the primary financial force behind the growth and expansion of the Hyperion Avenue studios. In much the same way, Disney's sprawling and meticulously designed Burbank complex was a house initially built by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Greatly expanded and dramatically modified over the past seven decades, it remains the home of the Walt Disney Company.

Walt wasted no time putting his Snow White profits to work. In August, 1938 he purchased 51 acres of land adjacent to Buena Vista Street in Burbank. Construction on the new studio began almost immediately thereafter and the new facilities were for the most part complete and being occupied by early 1940.

The Walt Disney Company's official history notes that, "Walt was personally involved with all aspects of designing the studio. From the layout of the buildings to design of the animators' chairs, nothing was left to chance. His main concern was to produce a self-sufficient, state-of-the-art production factory that provided all the essential facilities for the entire production process." The new studio, designed primarily by architect Kem Weber, was a graceful swan to the Hyperion studio's ugly duckling. But despite its attractive, campus-like setting and its sleek, streamline modern designs, many members of Disney staff, from artists to service workers, found the aesthetics of their new workplace cold, somewhat sterile and often overwhelming. Over time though, most adapted, probably due in part to numerous employee-friendly amenities that included recreational facilities, a popular commissary and even a full service gas station.

Although the Burbank facilities were designed specifically for producing animation, large soundstages were systematically added to the lot to accommodate gradual increases in live action productions. Stage One was built in 1940 as part of the original design and was used initially to film the live-action orchestra sequences for Fantasia. Stage Two was added in 1949 in an arrangement with actor/producer Jack Webb who filmed his Dragnet television series there for a number of years. That stage later became home to the original Mickey Mouse Club in 1955. Stage Three, complete with a water tank, was built in 1954 specifically for the filming of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. Stage Four was added in 1958 and first used for the film Darby O'Gill and the Little People.

Back-lot streets and sets began to emerge in the mid-1950s, at first to accommodate television productions such as Zorro, Elfego Baca and Texas John Slaughter, and then live action feature films that had become the lion's share of the company's output. The back-lot was comprised of four primary groups of exterior sets and facades: a western town, a traditional town square, a residential street, and the Zorro pueblo that was later converted into a French village. The back-lot was eventually phased out over time and replaced with an office building, a parking structure and two additional soundstages.

Far more so than the Hyperion studios, the Burbank studios became much more recognizable to the general public. Walt first showcased the studio in the 1941 feature The Reluctant Dragon, where comedian Robert Benchley bumbled through much of the lot in what amounted to a lighthearted documentary on the making of Disney cartoons. Later, the studio and its environs were frequent backdrops for the Disneyland, Wonderful World of Color and Wonderful World of Disney television programs.

The Walt Disney Company has dramatically expanded in recent decades into an international entertainment conglomerate, and so has the Burbank complex correspondingly enlarged and grown. Following extensive company restructuring in the mid-1980s, then CEO Michael Eisner commissioned architect Michael Graves to create the Team Disney building, an imposing structure that now dominates the studio lot, with its outsized Seven Dwarfs sculptures paying subtle homage to the film that financed Disney's move to Burbank. At roughly the same time, Walt Disney Feature Animation was ironically exiled to a warehouse in Glendale. The department returned to Burbank in 1995 in a new and larger building, replete with a giant Mickey Sorcerer's Hat, directly across the street from the main studio complex.

A street sign that still marks the corner of Mickey Avenue and Dopey Drive has become a company icon of sorts, although its attached pointers to studio departments such as LAYOUT, MULTIPLANE, INK & PAINT and IN BTWEEN have long lost their relevance as directional cues and now serve more as historical markers.

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:

Studio Geo Part 1: Kansas City and the Laugh-O-Grams

Studio Geo Part 2: Kingswell and the Disney Brothers Studio

Studio Geo Part 3: Lightning in a Bottle - 2719 Hyperion

Studio Geo: Lightning in a Bottle - 2719 Hyperion

Walt Disney began his career as a filmmaker in January of 1920 when he took a job making animated advertisements for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. It was the beginning of a journey that would take a struggling young artist and entrepreneur and eventually mold him into one of the most celebrated icons of 20th century popular culture. The historical map of that journey is an extraordinary one.

Welcome to Studio Geo.  These are the places where Walt Disney created his moving pictures:

The Walt Disney Studios - 2719 Hyperion Avenue

Flushed with the success of the Alice Comedies, Walt and Roy decided it was time to move beyond their very confined quarters on Kingswell Avenue. In July of 1925, they placed a deposit on a vacant tract of land in the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, a mile or so away from 4649 Kingswell Avenue. Construction on a studio building was completed in early 1926, and the Disney Brothers Studio relocated to its new address at 2719 Hyperion Avenue. The operation also had a new name: the Walt Disney Studios. Ironically, it was Roy who suggested the change, noting that since Walt was the creative force in the partnership, it was his name that deserved the studio moniker.

During the studios' earliest of years, the area surrounding 2719 Hyperion Avenue was a generally quiet, empty place. Disney veteran Ben Sharpsteen remembered visiting for the first time in 1929: "I walked through what was mainly a residential development, a section of town which had been laid out with streets and curbs, but which had very few homes at the time. It was late March and the grass and weeds were very tall and they were growing up through the sidewalk in places. It was not a street that was very much used at the time."

In the decade that followed, the studio grew, in what many observers described as an almost organic expansion. Existing buildings were expanded and extended; nearby buildings were absorbed and additional facilities emerged on the opposite side of Hyperion Avenue. The Disney Annex was added to the studio sometime around 1936. Disney desperately needed more artists at this time due to the production demands of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and it was in the Annex that aspiring artists were typically given tryout periods to prove their talent and skills, working mainly as in-betweeners under the watchful and often harsh supervision of studio manager George Drake. Part of the training process also involved art classes taught by Don Graham.

By the late 1930s, the studio was literally bursting at the seams. A nearby apartment building was appropriated and became the home of the Story Department. Artists preparing Bambi were located several miles away in rented offices in Hollywood. Plans to further expand the Hyperion Avenue location ultimately proved unrealistic and Walt and Roy began considering ideas for a brand new studio complex.

It is near impossible to overstate the importance and significance of the Hyperion Avenue Studios. In just a little over a dozen years, Disney-produced films moved from the gag-driven antics and primitive rubber-hose drawings of the silent Alice Comedies and Oswald the Rabbit cartoons to the story-centric and visually stunning animation demonstrated in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Pinocchio. It was a spectacular, and in many ways, miraculous evolution. In later years, numerous studio veterans would fondly reminisce of 2719 Hyperion and the creative energy and dynamic atmosphere that was contained within its myriad of jumbled buildings and constrained work spaces.

No remnant or relic of the Walt Disney Studios remains at the Hyperion Avenue location. A number of its buildings and components were actually moved to the studio's new Burbank location, most notably the Publicity and Comic Strip bungalow. The fate of its iconic rooftop sign that identified 2719 Hyperion as the home of Mickey Mouse and the Silly Symphonies is sadly unknown. Affixed to a nearby light pole is The City of Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Board Monument No. 163 which reads:

Point of Historical Interest

Site of Walt Disney's original

Animation studio in Los Angeles

2719 Hyperion Avenue

1926 -1940

A supermarket now occupies the area. History and memories supplanted by produce, canned goods, cigarettes and shopping carts.

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:

Studio Geo Part 1: Kansas City and the Laugh-O-Grams

Studio Geo Part 2: Kingswell and the Disney Brothers Studio

Studio Geo: Kingswell and the Disney Brothers Studio

Walt Disney began his career as a filmmaker in January of 1920 when he took a job making animated advertisements for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. It was the beginning of a journey that would take a struggling young artist and entrepreneur and eventually mold him into one of the most celebrated icons of 20th century popular culture. The historical map of that journey is an extraordinary one.

Welcome to Studio Geo.  These are the places where Walt Disney created his moving pictures:

Walt Disney, Cartoonist – 4406 Kingswell Avenue
Upon arriving in California during summer of 1923, Walt took up residence with his uncle, Robert Disney, who lived at 4406 Kingswell Avenue in the Los Feliz neighborhood of Los Angeles.  His brother Roy was nearby in Sawtelle, staying at a veterans' hospital while attempting to recuperate from a relapse of tuberculosis.

Los Feliz was situated at the heart of southern California's then burgeoning motion picture industry.  Hollywood was just to the west and Silver Lake a few blocks east.  Vitagraph, one of the earliest of the Hollywood studios and well known for hosting film pioneers such as Douglas Fairbanks, Lillian Gish, Rudolph Valentino, Mary Pickford, D.W. Griffith and Cecil B. DeMille, was located just a block away from Robert Disney's home.

In short order, Walt erected a camera stand in a wooden shed behind Uncle Robert's house and effectively created his second "garage studio."  He had a letterhead printed that recycled his Walt Disney, Cartoonist design, amending it with the 4406 Kingswell Avenue address.  While staying at this location, Walt finalized a deal in October, 1923 with New York film distributor Margaret Winkler for a series of Alice cartoons based on Alice's Wonderland.  On October 16, 1923, Walt used 4406 Kingswell as his return address when he wrote the family of Virginia Davis in Kansas City, requesting that they come to Hollywood so Virginia could star in the new series of Alice Comedies.  Virginia had played the title role in Alice's Wonderland.  At roughly the same time, Walt convinced his brother Roy to leave the hospital and join him in his new venture.  The Disney Brothers Studio was about to be born.

Robert Disney's home still exists in Los Feliz.  The garage was saved from demolition in the early 1980s and relocated to the Stanley Ranch Museum in Garden Grove, California, just a few miles away from Disneyland.

The Disney Brothers Studio – Kingswell Avenue
Anticipating the Winkler deal, Walt quickly found a space to rent for his fledgling operation in the rear area of a real estate office in Los Feliz, near the corner of Vermont Avenue and Kingswell Avenue, just a few blocks west of Robert Disney's home. The studio opened for business on October 16, 1923, the day after Walt accepted Margaret Winkler's offer to distribute the new Alice Comedies.  The newly christened Disney Brothers Studio shared space with Holly-Vermont Reality at 4651 Kingswell Avenue.  The initial rent for the location was $10/month.   Walt and Roy, and newly hired ink and paint girl Kathleen Dollard comprised the entire staff of the operation.  On January 14, 1924, Lillian Bounds, the future Mrs. Walt Disney, was added to the staff as a cel painter and occasional secretary.  Walt and Lillian's daughter, Diane Disney Miller, remembered her mother speaking of the couple's first kiss that happened at Kingswell Avenue.  "It was very sweet . . . she was taking dictation from him, and he leaned across the desk and kissed her.  I find that very romantic."

In February of 1924, the studio moved into larger quarters directly next door at 4649 Kingswell where they were able to display the Disney Brothers name on a storefront window.   Further expansion included renting a vacant lot on Hollywood Boulevard as a location to film the live-action sequences of the Alice Comedies.

A small copy store now occupies the location of what most Disney historians and the Disney Company itself, considers to be the very first Disney Studio.

Studio Geo is a five part series.  Subsequent parts will be published every Monday here at 2719 Hyperion.  Coming next week:  Lightning in a Bottle - 2719 Hyperion.

Explore the 2719 Hyperion Archives:

Studio Geo Part 1: Kansas City and the Laugh-O-Grams

Studio Geo: Kansas City and the Laugh-O-Grams

Walt Disney began his career as a filmmaker in January of 1920 when he took a job making animated advertisements for the Kansas City Film Ad Company. It was the beginning of a journey that would take a struggling young artist and entrepreneur and eventually mold him into one of the most celebrated icons of 20th century popular culture. The historical map of that journey is an extraordinary one.

Welcome to Studio Geo.  These are the places where Walt Disney created his moving pictures:

31st Street, Kansas City

Walt Disney was nine years old when he and his family moved from the small, idyllic town of Marceline, Missouri to Kansas City during the spring of 1911. Their first residence was a rented house at 2706 East 31st Street, in a neighborhood a few miles southeast of the city's downtown area. In the ensuing years, Walt would spend a year in Paris with the Red Cross and live briefly again in Chicago, the city of his birth. But before the end of the decade, he would return to Kansas City, where very significant events in his life would transpire within a twenty-block stretch of that particular boulevard. 

In the fall of 1914, Walt's parents, Elias and Flora Disney, purchased a small house several blocks east at 3028 Bellefontaine Street just off 31st Street. Frequently a carpenter and craftsman by trade, Elias Disney built a garage behind the house sometime in 1920. It was in this garage that Walt, with a borrowed camera, produced the Newman Laugh-O-Grams, a series of short, topical cartoons for the Newman Theatre, and later Little Red Riding Hood, the first independent Laugh-O-Gram cartoon. At around this time, Walt created the now somewhat iconic design of a cartoon artist at drawing board that identified him as Walt Disney, Cartoonist and listed his specialties of Comic Cartoons, Advertising Cartoons and Animated Motion Picture Cartoons.

Disney family members on the front porch at 3028 Bellefontaine Street.

In 1921, Walt's oldest brother Herbert moved his family to Portland, Oregon. Elias and Flora Disney sold the house and followed Herbert west a few months later, forcing Walt from the Bellefontaine Street residence and his garage studio. He took to renting rooms and set up studios in a few different locations in an area surrounding the intersection of 31st Street and Troost Avenue, about 20 blocks west of his childhood neighborhood. The aforementioned Walt Disney Cartoonist design graced an envelope that showed the 3028 Bellefontaine address scratched out and replaced with a handwritten "3241 Troost," undoubtedly the first of those locations.

The house and garage at 3028 Bellefontaine Street still stand and are privately owned.

Laugh-O-Grams Films and the McConahy Building

In May of 1922, Walt incorporated Laugh-O-Grams Films and set up a new studio on the upper floor of the McConahy Building located at 1127 East 31st Street in Kansas City. Walt often took his meals at the Forest Inn Cafe on the first floor of the building, the restaurant's owners frequently extending him much needed credit. It was at this location that Walt and his staff produced the Laugh-O-Grams series as well as Tommy Tuckers Tooth and the "Song-O-Reel" Martha, a live action sing-along. The studio was just beginning production of the first Alice comedy, Alice's Wonderland in June of 1923, when a lack of rent money forced them from the building. 

The McConahy Building at 1127 East 31st Street in Kansas City.

The names of Walt's colleagues and associates in Kansas City read like a who's who of animation industry pioneers. Ub Iwerks, Hugh Harman, Rudolf Ising and Max Maxwell all worked with Walt at the Laugh-O-Grams studio. One block away from the McConahy Building at the corner of 31st and Troost was a large imposing edifice known as the Wirthman Building. It was home to the elaborate Isis Theater, whose resident organist was a gentleman named Carl Stalling. A well known and popular Kansas City musician, Stalling would be briefly employed by Disney in Hollywood at the dawn of the Mickey Mouse era, but fame would come most notably from his tenure at Warner Bros. a number of years later, composing music for the Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons. Stalling allowed Walt to show some of his commercial films at the Isis, and he even commissioned him to produce a number of short "song films" for the theater. 

Walt Disney (in the back seat) with members of the Laugh-O-Grams staff.

Following his eviction from the McConahy Building, it is likely that Walt returned to a location he had previously occupied at 3239 Troost Avenue. It would have been there that the studio completed production on Alice's Wonderland, and the company that was Laugh-O-Grams Films subsequently went bankrupt. Shortly thereafter, former colleagues Harman, Ising and Maxwell launched their own studio, renting space in the Wirthman Building. Arabian Nights Cartoons would purchase and employ many of the assets and equipment of the former Laugh-O-Grams studio. Broke, discouraged, but still driven to succeed, Walt boarded a train for California in July of 1923.

The McConahy Building survives still, but it is severely deteriorated and has become the focus of a grass roots restoration effort entitled Thank You Walt Disney. The Wirthman Building and the Isis Theater experienced tragedy and adversity in ensuing decades. The theater survived fires in 1928, 1939 and 1954. In March of 1970, the Isis became the center of racial unrest and rioting, and closed permanently shortly thereafter. Other tenants continued to occupy the Wirthman Building but it was ultimately demolished in 1997.

Studio Geo is a five part series.  Subsequent parts will be published every Monday here at 2719 Hyperion.  Coming next week:  Kingswell and the Disney Brothers Studio.