:Ub Iwerks

Iwerks was born in Kansas City, Missouri.{{sfn |Lenburg |1993 |p=[https://archive.org/details/greatcartoondire00lenb/page/24/mode/2up 25]}} His father was born in the village of Uttum in East Frisia (northwest Germany, today part of the municipality of Krummhörn) and emigrated to the United States in 1869 around the age of 14.{{Cite web |title=Ub Iwerks {{!}} American Animator and Special-Effects Technician |url=https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ub-Iwerks |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170910084220/https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ub-Iwerks |archive-date=September 10, 2017 |access-date=December 26, 2021 |website=Britannica.com |language=en}} The elder Iwerks, who worked as a barber, had fathered and abandoned several previous wives and children. When Ub was a teenager, his father abandoned him as well, forcing the boy to drop out of school and work to support his mother. Iwerks despised his father and never spoke of him; upon learning that he had died, he reportedly said, "Throw him in a ditch."{{sfn |Iwerks |Kenworthy |2001 |p=134}} He attended Ashland Grammar School, graduating in 1914.{{sfn |Lenburg |1993 |p=[https://archive.org/details/greatcartoondire00lenb/page/24/mode/2up 25]}} Ub's full name, Ubbe Ert Iwwerks, can be seen on early Alice Comedies that he signed. Several years later, he simplified his name to "Ub Iwerks", sometimes written as "U.B. Iwerks".{{efn|For example in the opening credits of Little Black Sambo (1935)}}

Iwerks spent most of his career with Disney. The two met in 1919 while working for the Pesmen-Rubin Art Studio in Kansas City,{{sfn |Gabler |2006 |p=46}} and eventually started their own commercial art business together.{{sfn |Gabler |2006 |pp=47–50}} Disney and Iwerks then found work as illustrators for the Kansas City Slide Newspaper Company{{sfn |Gabler |2006 |p=50}} (which was later named The Kansas City Film Ad Company).{{sfn |Gabler |2006 |p=56}} While working for the Kansas City Film Ad Company, Disney decided to take up work in animation,{{sfn |Gabler |2006 |p=58}} and Iwerks soon joined him. There he{{who|Disney or Iwerks?|date=April 2025}} attached a motor drive to the camera with a switch that resembled a telegraph key, reducing the number of people needed to animate from two to just one.{{how|reason=Both how and what here are opaque: what camera? Who's animating? What? How?|date=April 2025}}{{Cite book |last1=Burnes |first1=Av Brian |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=JEjSDvkp7OUC&dq=%22Ub+streamlined+the+process%22&pg=PA79 |title=Walt Disney's Missouri: The Roots of a Creative Genius |last2=Viets |first2=Dan |last3=Butler |first3=Robert W. |year=2002 |publisher=Kansas City Star Books |isbn=9780971708068 |via=Google Books}}

File:Trolley Troubles (1927) Title Card.jpg (1927), animated by Iwerks]]

Iwerks was responsible for the distinctive style of the earliest Disney animated cartoons, and was also responsible for designing Mickey Mouse.{{sfn |Maltin |1987 |p=189}} In 1922, when Disney 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" which had live-action mixed with animation. After the end of this series, Disney asked Iwerks to design a character that became Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.{{sfn |Apgar |2015 |pp=[https://archive.org/details/mickeymouseemble0000apga/page/34/mode/2up 34]–[https://archive.org/details/mickeymouseemble0000apga/page/36/mode/2up 37], [https://archive.org/details/mickeymouseemble0000apga/page/60/mode/2up 61]}} The first cartoon Oswald starred in was animated entirely by Iwerks. Following the first cartoon, Oswald was redesigned on the insistence of Oswald's owner and the distributor of the cartoons, Universal Pictures. The production company at the time, Winkler Pictures, gave additional input on the character's design.

In spring 1928, Disney was removed from the Oswald series, and much of his staff was hired away to Winkler Pictures. He promised to never again work with a character he did not own.{{sfn |Gabler |2006 |p=109}} Disney asked 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 later turned up as Clarabelle Cow and Horace Horsecollar.{{sfn |Gabler |2006 |p=53}} Ub Iwerks eventually got inspiration from an old drawing. In 1925, Hugh Harman drew some sketches of mice around a photograph of Walt Disney. Then, on a train ride back from a failed business meeting, Walt Disney came up with the original sketch for the character that was eventually called Mickey Mouse.{{sfn |Iwerks |Kenworthy |2001 |p=54}}{{sfn |Apgar |2015 |p=[https://archive.org/details/mickeymouseemble0000apga/page/76/mode/2up 76]}} Afterward, Disney took the sketch to Iwerks. In turn, he drew a more clean-cut and refined version of Mickey, but one that still followed the original sketch.{{sfn |Apgar |2015 |pp=[https://archive.org/details/mickeymouseemble0000apga/page/80/mode/2up 80–81]}}

File:Excerpt from Steamboat Willie (1928), used as part of Walt Disney Animation Studios Logo.gif (1928), one of the first few Mickey Mouse shorts, which was animated almost entirely by Iwerks]]

The first few Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphony cartoons were animated almost entirely by Iwerks, including Steamboat Willie, The Skeleton Dance and The Haunted House.{{sfn |Maltin |1987 |p=189}} However, as Iwerks began to animate more and more cartoons on a daily basis, he chafed under Disney's leadership.{{sfn |Gabler |2006 |p=143}} Iwerks also felt he was not getting the credit he deserved for drawing all of Disney's successful cartoons.{{sfn |Gabler |2006 |p=144}} Eventually, Iwerks and Disney had a falling out; their friendship and working partnership were severed in January 1930. According to an unconfirmed account, a child approached Disney and Iwerks at a party and asked for a picture of Mickey to be drawn on a napkin, to which Disney handed the pen and paper to Iwerks and stated, "Why don't you draw Mickey and I'll sign it." Iwerks became furious and threw the pen and paper, storming out.{{sfn |Iwerks |Kenworthy |2001 |pp=83-84}}{{Cite web |last=Not! |first=Ripley's Believe It or |title=Wonderfully Weird Facts You Want To Know About Walt Disney |url=https://lethbridgenewsnow.com/2020/08/18/wonderfully-weird-facts-you-want-to-know-about-walt-disney/ |access-date=May 7, 2023 |website=Lethbridge News Now |language=en}} Iwerks accepted a contract with Disney's former distributor, Pat Powers, to leave Disney and start an animation studio under his own name.{{Cite book |last1=Kaufman |first1=J.B. |title=Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse: The Ultimate History |last2=Gerstein |first2=David |date=2018 |publisher=Taschen |isbn=978-3-8365-5284-4 |location=Cologne |page=53}} His last Mickey Mouse cartoon was Wild Waves (1929) and final Disney film was the Silly Symphony Autumn (1930).{{Cite book |last=Ryan, Jeff |title=A Mouse Divided: How Ub Iwerks Became Forgotten, and Walt Disney Became Uncle Walt |publisher=Post Hill Press |year=2018 |isbn=978-1-68261-628-4 |pages=181, 184}} (Powers and Disney had an earlier falling-out over Disney's use of the Powers Cinephone sound-on-film system—actually copied by Powers from DeForest Phonofilm without credit—in early Disney cartoons.){{citation needed|date=December 2022}}

{{main article|Iwerks Studio}}

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.{{cn|date=April 2025}}

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. Newly hired animator Fred Kopietz recommended that Iwerks employ a friend from Chouinard Art School, Chuck Jones, who was hired and put to work as a cel washer.{{sfn |Maltin |1987 |p=191}} The Flip and Willie cartoons were later distributed on the home-movie market{{clarification needed| date= March 2019}} by Official Films in the 1940s.

File:Sinbadthesailor01.jpg, a 1935 ComiColor cartoon]]

From 1933 to 1936, he produced a series of shorts (independently distributed, not part of the MGM deal) in Cinecolor, named ComiColor Cartoons. The ComiColor series mostly focused on fairy tales with no continuing character or star. Later in the 1940s, this series received home-movie distribution by Castle Films. Cinecolor produced the 16 mm prints for Castle Films with red emulsion on one side and blue emulsion on the other. Later in the 1970s Blackhawk Films released these for home use, but this time using conventional Eastmancolor film stock. They are now in the public domain and are available on VHS and DVD. He also experimented with stop-motion animation in combination with the multiplane camera, and made a short called The Toy Parade, which was never released in public.{{Cite book |last=Telotte |first=J. P. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=LEy50gAEhpgC&dq=unreleased+film+Toy+Parade&pg=PA62 |title=The Mouse Machine: Disney and Technology |year=2008 |publisher=University of Illinois Press |isbn=9780252033278 |author-link=Jay Telotte |via=Google Books}} In 1936, backers withdrew financial support from the Iwerks Studio, 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) where he was the director of several of the Color Rhapsody shorts before returning to work for Disney in 1940.

After his return to the Disney studio, 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, which was used in 101 Dalmatians (1961). 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 the birds for his Academy Award nominated achievement for Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds (1963).{{Cite news |last1=Counts |first1=Kyle B. |last2=Rubin |first2=Steve |date=Fall 1980 |title=The Making of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds |volume=10 |work=Cinefantastique |issue=2 |url=https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Cinemafantastique_(1980)_-_The_Making_of_Alfred_Hitchcock's_The_Birds |url-status=live |access-date=March 7, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220307154006/https://the.hitchcock.zone/wiki/Cinemafantastique_%281980%29_-_The_Making_of_Alfred_Hitchcock%27s_The_Birds |archive-date=March 7, 2022}} Iwerks' last credit for Disney was for perfecting the travel matte system for the Mary Poppins sequence "Feed the Birds" Iwerks' most famous work, outside animating Mickey Mouse, was Flip the Frog from his own studio.{{Cite web |last=Marks |first=Scott |date=May 19, 2016 |title=Fiddlesticks Flips Flip in First Color Cartoon |url=https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2016/may/19/screen-fiddlesticks-flips-flip-first-color-cartoon/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220502182312/https://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2016/may/19/screen-fiddlesticks-flips-flip-first-color-cartoon/ |archive-date=May 2, 2022 |access-date=May 2, 2022 |website=San Diego Reader}} While he was at Disney, he developed a variety of patents for applying Xerography for use in animation.{{Cite web |title=USPTO Search Results for Iwerks and Xerographic. |url=https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/static/pages/ppubsbasic.html}}

Iwerks had two children with his wife, Mildred (née Henderson): Donald and David. Donald went on to work for the Walt Disney company and to found Iwerks Entertainment. His granddaughter is documentary film producer Leslie Iwerks.{{cite web|url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fAv0NL2Ezc|title=Untold with Leslie Iwerks|publisher=Disney|via=YouTube|language=en-US|url-status=live|date=May 12, 2020|access-date=July 22, 2023|archive-date=July 22, 2023|archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/varchive/1fAv0NL2Ezc}} David Iwerks became a portrait photographer.{{Cite web |date=November 1966 |title=Dave Iwerks Catches Great in the Eye of His Perceptive Camera |url=https://archive.org/details/hollywood-studio-magazine-1966-11 |access-date=March 7, 2022 |website=Hollywood Studio Magazine |publisher=San Fernando Valley Pub. Co. |quote=via: archive.org |location=Sherman Oaks, CA}}{{Cite web |last=Iwerks |first=David Lee |title=John F. Kennedy, Head-and-Shoulders Portrait, Facing Slightly Left |url=https://www.loc.gov/item/93511088/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220307135004/https://www.loc.gov/item/93511088/ |archive-date=March 7, 2022 |access-date=March 7, 2022 |website=Library of Congress}}

Iwerks died in 1971 from a heart attack in Burbank, California, aged 70, and his ashes are interred in a niche in the Columbarium of Remembrance at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills Cemetery. The last project he worked on was the Hall of Presidents.{{Cite news |last=Spry |first=Jeff |date=February 1, 2020 |title=The Son of Mickey Mouse's Co-Creator Opens Up the Book on Disney Classics |work=Syfy Wire |url=https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-son-of-mickey-mouses-co-creator-opens-up-the-book-on-disney-classics |url-status=live |access-date=May 2, 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220502180710/https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/the-son-of-mickey-mouses-co-creator-opens-up-the-book-on-disney-classics |archive-date=May 2, 2022}}

The Ub Iwerks Award for Technical Achievement, as part of the Annie Awards, is named in his honour.

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

After World War II, much of Iwerks' early animation style was imitated by legendary manga artists Osamu Tezuka and Shotaro Ishinomori.{{cn|date=April 2025}}

In 1989, Iwerks was named a Disney legend.

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.

A documentary film, The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story, was released in 1999, followed by a book written by Iwerks' granddaughter Leslie Iwerks and John Kenworthy in 2001. The documentary, created by Leslie Iwerks, was released as part of The Walt Disney Treasures, Wave VII series (disc two of The Adventures of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit collection).{{Cite web |title=The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story (1999) |url=https://www.waltdisney.org/education/films/hand-behind-mouse-ub-iwerks-story-1999 |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308083001/https://www.waltdisney.org/education/films/hand-behind-mouse-ub-iwerks-story-1999 |archive-date=March 8, 2022 |access-date=March 8, 2022 |website=The Walt Disney Family Museum}}{{Cite web |title=The Hand Behind the Mouse: Stories of Ub with Don and Leslie Iwerks |url=https://www.waltdisney.org/education/talks/sold-out-hand-behind-mouse-stories-ub-don-and-leslie-iwerks |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220308082959/https://www.waltdisney.org/education/talks/sold-out-hand-behind-mouse-stories-ub-don-and-leslie-iwerks |archive-date=March 8, 2022 |access-date=March 8, 2022 |website=The Walt Disney Family Museum}}

A feature film released in 2014, Walt Before Mickey, showed how Ub Iwerks, portrayed by Armando Gutierrez, and Walt Disney, portrayed by Thomas Ian Nicholas, co-created Mickey Mouse.

The sixth episode from the second season of Drunk History ("Hollywood") tells about Ub's work relationship with Disney, with stress on the creation of Mickey Mouse. Iwerks was portrayed in the episode by Tony Hale.

All Comicolor shorts

All Comicolor shorts

• Contract work to Leon Schlesinger Productions – two cartoons
• Contract work to Screen Gems/Columbia Pictures – 17 cartoons (Iwerks was only personally involved with 16 of the Color Rhapsody series, the last cartoon in the deal was completed by Paul Fennell after Iwerks had left his own studio)
• In 1940, Iwerks produced his last series, Gran'pop Monkey, featuring the art of British illustrator Lawson Wood.{{Cite web |last=Stanchfield |first=Steve |date=March 20, 2014 |title='Beauty Shoppe' (1940) with Gran' Pop Monkey |url=https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/beauty-shoppe-gran-pop-monkey-and-cartoon-films-ltd/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20190116061705/http://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/beauty-shoppe-gran-pop-monkey-and-cartoon-films-ltd/ |archive-date=January 16, 2019 |access-date=June 10, 2020 |website=Cartoon Research}} Three cartoons were made: "A Busy Day", "Beauty Shoppe" and "Baby Checkers".{{sfn |Lenburg |1993 |p=[https://archive.org/details/isbn_9780816038312/page/88/mode/2up 88]}}

{{Portal|Biography}}

• Walt Disney (2015 PBS film)

{{notelist}}

{{reflist}}

• {{cite book |last=Apgar |first=Garry |title=Mickey Mouse: Emblem of the American Spirit |publisher=Weldon Owen |publication-place=San Francisco, CA |date=December 22, 2015 |isbn=978-1-61628-672-9 |oclc=1349253324 |url=https://archive.org/details/mickeymouseemble0000apga |url-access=registration |via=Internet Archive}}

• {{cite book |last=Gabler |first=Neal |title=Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination |publisher=Knopf |publication-place=New York |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-307-26596-8 |oclc=232315401}}

• {{cite book |last1=Iwerks |first1=Leslie |author-link=Leslie Iwerks |last2=Kenworthy |first2=John D. |title=The hand behind the mouse : an intimate biography of the man Walt Disney called "the greatest animator in the world" |publisher=Disney Editions |publication-place=New York |year=2001 |isbn=978-0-7868-5320-5 |oclc=44669781}}

• {{cite book |last=Lenburg |first=Jeff |chapter=Ub Iwerks |chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/greatcartoondire00lenb/page/24/mode/2up |chapter-url-access=registration |title=The Great Cartoon Directors |url=https://archive.org/details/greatcartoondire00lenb |url-access=registration|publisher=Da Capo Press |publication-place=New York |year=1993 |isbn=978-0-306-80521-9 |oclc=1035310767 |page=25 |via=Internet Archive}}

• {{cite book |last=Maltin |first=Leonard |author-link=Leonard Maltin |title=Of Mice and Magic |publisher=Plume |publication-place=New York, NY |date=1987 |orig-year=1980 |isbn=978-0-452-25993-5 |oclc=1319416533 |url=https://archive.org/details/ofmicemagichisto0000malt |url-access=registration |via=Internet Archive}}

• {{Cite journal |last=Boje |first=David M. |date=August 1995 |title=Stories of the Storytelling Organization: A Postmodern Analysis of Disney As "Tamara -Land" |url=https://davidboje.com/vita/paper_pdfs/AMJ_Disney.pdf |journal=Academy of Management Journal |volume=38 |issue=4 |pages=997–1035 |doi=10.5465/256618 |doi-broken-date=November 1, 2024 |access-date=March 8, 2022 |ref=none}}
• {{cite book |last1=Iwerks |first1=Don |author-link=Don Iwerks |last2=Maltin |first2=Leonard |author2-link=Leonard Maltin |title=Walt Disney's Ultimate Inventor: the Genius of Ub Iwerks |publisher=Disney Editions |publication-place=Los Angeles |year=2019 |isbn=978-1-4847-4337-9 |oclc=1133108493 |ref=none}}
• {{Cite web |last=Iwerks |first=Leslie |author-link=Leslie Iwerks |date=December 17, 2008 |title=The Hand Behind the Mouse: The Ub Iwerks Story |url=https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/529899/the-hand-behind-the-mouse-the-ub-iwerks-story |website=via: TCM |publisher=Leslie Iwerks Productions, Walt Disney Pictures}}

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• {{Inducks author|Ub+Iwerks}}
• {{Find a Grave}}

{{Ub Iwerks}}

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Iwerks, Ub}}

Category:1901 births

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