Ub Iwerks - Biography - The Biographicon

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Overview

Ub Iwerks (Ubbe Ert Iwwerks) (March 24, 1901–July 7, 1971) was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri.

His name is explained by his East Frisian roots — his father, Eert Ubbe Iwwerks, emigrated to the USA in 1869 from the village Uttum in East Frisia (northwest Germany). Ub's birth name was Ubbe Iwwerks. This can be seen on early "Alice" shorts that he signed. Several years later he anglicized his name to Ub Iwerks.

Career

Iwerks was considered by many to be Walt Disney's oldest friend, and spent most of his career with Disney. He was responsible for the distinctive style of the earliest Disney animated cartoons. In 1922, when Walt began his Laugh-O-Gram cartoon series, Iwerks joined him as chief animator. The Studio went bankrupt, however, and in 1923, Iwerks followed Disney's move to Los Angeles to work on a new series of cartoons known as the Alice Comedies. After the end of this series, Disney asked Iwerks to come up with a new character. The first Oswald the Lucky Rabbit was animated entirely by Ub Iwerks. Following the first cartoon, Oswald was redesigned on the insistence of Universal, who agreed to distribute the new series of cartoons in 1927.

In the spring of 1928, Disney lost control of the Oswald character, and much of his staff was hired away. Disney asked Ub Iwerks, who stayed on, to start drawing up new character ideas. Iwerks tried sketches of frogs, dogs, and cats, but none of these appealed to Disney. A female cow and male horse were created at this time by Iwerks, but were also rejected. They would later turn up as Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar. Ub Iwerks eventually got inspiration from an old drawing. In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney. These inspired Ub Iwerks to create a new mouse character for Disney, eventually called Mickey Mouse. Thus, in a very real sense, Iwerks can be called true the creator of Mickey Mouse because Iwerks, and not Disney, originated the character.

The first few Mickey Mouse cartoons were animated almost entirely by Iwerks. Walt Disney understood the value of Ub so much that Ub made twice what Walt was making. Walt would make $75.00 a week and Ub would make $150.00 a week. Eventually, however, Iwerks and Disney had a falling out, and their friendship was severed when Iwerks accepted a contract with a competitor to leave Disney and start an animation studio under his own name. The Iwerks Studio opened in 1930. Financial backers led by Pat Powers suspected that Iwerks was responsible for much of Disney's early success. However, while animation for a time suffered at Disney from Iwerks' departure, it soon rebounded as Disney brought in talented new young animators.

Despite a contract with MGM to distribute his cartoons, and the introduction of a new character named Flip the Frog, and later Willie Whopper, the Iwerks Studio was never a major commercial success and failed to rival either Disney or Fleischer Studios, despite Iwerks' cartoons being technically superior, and more intellectually sophisticated in many ways. Backers withdrew further financial support from Iwerks Studio in 1936, and it folded soon after.

In 1937, Leon Schlesinger Productions contracted Iwerks to produce four Looney Tunes shorts starring Porky Pig and Gabby Goat. Iwerks directed the first two shorts, while former Schlesinger animator Robert Clampett was promoted to director and helmed the other two shorts before he and his unit returned to the main Schlesinger lot. Iwerks then did contract work for Screen Gems (then Columbia Pictures' cartoon division) before returning to work for Disney in 1940. The cartoons created by Iwerks' own studio remained largely unseen for many decades, but have been released to DVD by Image Entertainment on their series titled Cartoons That Time Forgot.

After his return to Disney Studios, Iwerks mainly worked on developing special visual effects. He is credited as developing the processes for combining live action and animation used in Song of the South (1946), as well as the xerographic process adapted for cel animation. He also worked at WED Enterprises, now Walt Disney Imagineering, helping to develop many Disney theme park attractions during the 1960s. Iwerks did special effects work outside the studio as well, including his Academy Award nominated achievement for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).

Iwerks' most famous work outside creating and animating Mickey Mouse was Flip the Frog for his own studio. The Flip The Frog cartoons are much admired by fans of classic animation, and have now acquired a cult following.

Iwerks was known for his fast work at drawing and animation and his wacky sense of humor. Animator Chuck Jones, who worked for Iwerks' studio in his youth, said "Iwerks is Screwy spelled backwards." Ub Iwerks died in 1971 of a heart attack in Burbank, California, aged 70.

A documentary film, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story was released in 1999, followed by a book written by Leslie Iwerks and John Kenworthy in 2001.

Influence and homages

A rare self portrait of Iwerks was found in the trash at an animation studio in Burbank. The portrait was saved and is now part of the Animation Archives in Burbank, California.

After World War Two, much of Iwerks' early animation style would be imitated by legendary Anime artists Osamu Tezuka and Shōtarō Ishinomori.

Iwerks Entertainment, a filmographic company, was founded in 1985 in honor of Ub Iwerks.

The 1986 DC Comics character Dr. Ub'x was named in his honor.

In the The Ren and Stimpy Show episode Superstitious Stimpy, Stimpy is chanting in garbled talk and mentions Ub Iwerks.

In the 1996 The Simpsons episode "The Day the Violence Died," a relationship similar to Iwerks' early relationship with Walt Disney is used as the main plot.

In the 2005 Fairly OddParents episode "The Good Ol'Days", Timmy and his Grandpa Pappy, are transported to an early Disney-style cartoon. In it, two street signs that intersect are the streets of Ube and Iwerks.

Bibliography

* Leslie Iwerks and John Kenworthy, The Hand Behind the Mouse (Disney Editions, 2001) and documentary of the same name (DVD, 1999) * Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (Penguin Books, 1987) * Jeff Lenburg, The Great Cartoon Directors (Da Capo Press, 1993)

References

See also

* Iwerks Entertainment

External links

* * Disney Legends *

Who is Ub Iwerks connected to?

Add a Connection

Photograph of Leonard Maltin.

This biography says:

* Leslie Iwerks and John Kenworthy, The Hand Behind the Mouse (Disney Editions, 2001) and documentary of the same name (DVD, 1999) * Leonard Maltin, Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons (Penguin Books, 1987) * Jeff Lenburg, The Great Cartoon Directors (Da Capo Press, 1993)

Photograph of Osamu Tezuka.

This biography says:

...After World War Two, much of Iwerks' early animation style would be imitated by legendary Anime artists Osamu Tezuka and Shōtarō Ishinomori....

Photograph of Mary Blair.

That biography says:

Both Blairs soon began to work in the animation industry, joining the Ub Iwerks studio. Lee went on to work at the Harman-Ising studios before ultimately joining the Walt Disney studio where he was joined by his wife in 1940...

Photograph of Lotte Reiniger.

That biography says:

...Although it failed to a find a distributor for almost a year, once premièred at the Cannes Film Festival (thanks to the support of Jean Renoir) it then went on to become a critical and popular success. Reiniger anticipated Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks by a decade by devising the first multi-plane camera for certain effects. In addition to Reiniger's silhouette actors, Prinz Achmed boasted dream-like backgrounds by Walther Ruttmann (her partner in the Die Nibelungen sequence) and a symphonic score by Wolfgang Zeller...

Photograph of Scott Bradley.

That biography says:

...Bradley was a conservatory-trained composer and English horn player who had studied under Arnold Schoenberg. He first composed cartoon scores in the early 1930's for Ub Iwerks, a former Disney animator who had opened his own animation studio the year before. In 1934 Bradley began composing for Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, who were producing cartoon shorts for MGM...

Photograph of Bob Clampett.

That biography says:

...This led to what was essentially a co-directing stint with fellow animator Chuck Jones for the financially ailing Ub Iwerks, whom Schlesinger subcontracted to produce several Porky Pig shorts. These shorts featured the short-lived and generally unpopular Gabby Goat as Porky's sidekick...

Photograph of Earl Hurd.

That biography says:

...In addiition, Hurd worked as a comic strip artist, illustrating the strips Trials of Elder Mouse (1911-1915), Brick Bodkin's Pa (1912) and Susie Sunshine (1927-1929). He worked later at the Ub Iwerks studio and the Walt Disney studio as a storyboard artist. He died on September 28 1940 in Burbank, California.

Photograph of Chuck Jones.

This biography says:

...Iwerks was known for his fast work at drawing and animation and his wacky sense of humor. Animator Chuck Jones, who worked for Iwerks' studio in his youth, said "Iwerks is Screwy spelled backwards." Ub Iwerks died in 1971 of a heart attack in Burbank, California, aged 70...

That biography says:

...After graduating from Chouinard Art Institute, Jones held a number of low-ranking jobs in the animation industry, including washing cels at the Ub Iwerks studio and assistant animator at the Walter Lantz studio. While at Iwerks, he met a cel painter named Dorothy Webster, who would later become his wife.

Photograph of Walt Disney.

This biography says:

Ub Iwerks (Ubbe Ert Iwwerks) (March 24, 1901–July 7, 1971) was a two-time Academy Award winning American animator, cartoonist and special effects technician, who was famous for his work for Walt Disney. He was born in Kansas City, Missouri....

That biography says:

...Disney and Iwerks (who now shortened his name to Ub Iwerks) formed a company called "Iwerks-Disney Commercial Artists" in January 1920. Unfortunately, few clients were willing to hire the inexperienced duo...

Photograph of Hugh Harman.

This biography says:

...They would later turn up as Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar. Ub Iwerks eventually got inspiration from an old drawing. In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney. These inspired Ub Iwerks to create a new mouse character for Disney, eventually called Mickey Mouse...

Photograph of Harman and Ising.

Harman and Ising

That biography says:

...In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney which would later inspire Ub Iwerks to create a new character for Disney called Mickey Mouse....

Photograph of Frank Tashlin.

That biography says:

...He signed his comic strip "Tish Tash." Tashlin was fired from the studio when he refused to give Schlesinger a cut of his comic strip revenues. He joined the Ub Iwerks studio in 1934. He moved to Hal Roach's studio in 1935 as a writer. He returned to Schlesinger in 1936 as an animation director where his diverse interest and knowledge of the industry brought a new understanding of camerawork to the Warners directors...

Photograph of Friz Freleng.

That biography says:

Freleng was born in Kansas City, Missouri, where he began his career in animation at United Film Ad Service. There, he made the acquaintance of fellow animators Hugh Harman and Ub Iwerks. In 1923, Iwerks' friend Walt Disney moved to Hollywood, put out a call for his Kansas City colleagues to join him...

Photograph of Bernard Wolf (animator).

Bernard Wolf (animator)

That biography says:

...It was at Fleischer Studios that he met Shamus Culhane and Al Eugster, with whom he would maintain a long personal and professional relationship. The three would leave Fleischer to work briefly for Ub Iwerks, where they worked alongside Grim Natwick....

Photograph of Carl Stalling.

That biography says:

...While there, Stalling pioneered the use of "bar sheets" which allowed the musical rhythms to be sketched out simultaneously with the storyboards for the animation. He left Disney after only two years, at the same time as animator Ub Iwerks. Finding few outlets in New York, Stalling rejoined Iwerks at his own studio in California, while freelancing for Disney and others...