Talk to the Snail

You know, I had been waiting for last Thursday for the longest time to do this very post… but then it rolled around and I forgot. The TAG blog, though, reminded me.

That picture up top is the location of the first Disney Brothers Studio. Walt and Roy rented two different spaces on this site in Los Feliz beginning on October 8, 1923. They were first at 4651 Kingswell Avenue, then moved next door at 4949 a few months later. The Disneys moved into their new studio at 2719 Hyperion in January 1926, changing the name to Walt Disney Studio.

Below is a shot of the former home of Walt Disney’s uncle, Robert Disney, with whom Walt stayed when he first moved from Kansas City to Los Angeles in July 1923. It’s at 4406 Kingswell, a couple blocks down the street from the first studio. Walt moved out later that November. It’s also the bungalow in which Roy married his girlfriend, Edna Francis, in 1925. Walt was best man. Notably, it was the site of the famous garage in which Walt built an animation stand for a camera he had bought and rejiggered, then making a demo reel for pitching. (That garage was moved to Garden Grove in the mid-1980s.)

Finally, right across the street from 4406 Kingswell is what was the boarding house into which Walt and Roy moved in December 1923 after their short stay at the Olive Hill Apartments.

History lesson over.

– Eric