Kansas City Film Ad Company

The Kansas City Film Ad Company — successively the Kansas City Slide Company, the Kansas City Film Ad Service, and, from 1924, United Film Ad Service — produced animated advertisements screened before features in Kansas City movie theaters. It is the company where Walt Disney learned animation. Disney was hired there in 1920 after losing a commercial-art job, was joined by Ub Iwerks, and left in 1922 to found Laugh-O-Gram Films.¹² Its owner, A. V. Cauger, employed several other young men who would become significant figures in Hollywood’s Golden Age of animation.¹ The company’s building has been demolished and the site is a private parking lot.¹

Summary

The firm began as the Kansas City Slide Company, producing the glass advertising slides that theaters projected between reels. As it moved from still slides into motion, it moved out of 1015 Central in early 1920 and adopted the trading name Kansas City Film Ad Service to reflect the change in what it actually made.¹ Its product was the animated theater advertisement — short commercial films made for local merchants and shown to a captive movie audience, a form of paid animation that in 1920 was one of the few places in the American Midwest where a young artist could be paid to learn the craft.

Background

From glass slides to animation

Advertising slides were static images painted or photographed onto glass and projected between films. The shift to animated advertising required a different skill set — draftsmen who could break a movement into drawings — and the Slide Company’s transition is what created the jobs Disney and Iwerks took.¹

A. V. Cauger and United Film Ad Service

Owner A. V. Cauger expanded the operation as it grew. In 1924 he added on to the building and incorporated the company as United Film Ad Service.¹ He sold his interest in the early 1930s under the pressure of the Depression.¹

Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks

Disney’s first commercial-art job in Kansas City was at the Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio, where he befriended Ub Iwerks; he was laid off in January 1920.³ He was then hired by the Kansas City Film Ad Company,² where he took up animation and Iwerks soon joined him.⁴

Two details of that apprenticeship are documented and both matter to what followed:

The borrowed camera. Disney and friends “experimented with animations in the family garage” using a movie camera borrowed from the ad agency.² The experiments done on the company’s equipment, off the company’s clock, are the direct ancestors of the Laugh-O-Grams.
Iwerks’s motor drive. Iwerks attached a motor drive to the animation camera with a switch that resembled a telegraph key, which let one person shoot animation alone rather than needing a second operator.⁴ It is an early instance of the mechanical ingenuity that made Iwerks indispensable to Disney for the next decade.

Disney left the company in 1922; Laugh-O-Gram Films opened May 23, 1922 at 1127 East 31st Street.² Iwerks followed Disney to Laugh-O-Gram and later to Los Angeles, where he became the principal animator of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Mickey Mouse.

Cauger’s payroll was unusually consequential for a local ad shop: over the years he employed several other men alongside Disney who would become famed animators and producers in Hollywood’s Golden Age.¹ Their names are not established here — see Open Questions.

Long-term significance

Kansas City’s claim on the origins of American animation usually rests on Laugh-O-Gram, the studio Disney owned. The Film Ad Company has the better claim to being where he was trained: Laugh-O-Gram lasted roughly a year and went bankrupt, while the Film Ad job is where Disney first drew animation for money, first worked alongside Iwerks on film, and first got his hands on a camera. The company also documents a commercial form now almost entirely lost — the locally produced animated theater advertisement — which supported a small working animation trade in Midwestern cities before the industry consolidated in Los Angeles and New York.

Sites in KC associated with the company

1015 Central — the Kansas City Slide Company’s address before the early-1920 move.¹
The Film Ad Service building — the company’s location from early 1920, expanded by Cauger in 1924. The building has since been razed and the site is now a private parking lot.¹ — the street address of this second building is not established by the sources consulted here.
McConahay Building, 1127 East 31st Street — where Disney went next.

Sources

Clio — “Kansas City Film Ad Service (est. 1920),” a contributing entry to the Walt Disney’s Kansas City tour — Confirms: the Kansas City Slide Company moved from 1015 Central to a new location in early 1920; renamed Kansas City Film Ad Service to reflect the shift from glass slides to animation; owner A. V. Cauger added on to the building and incorporated as United Film Ad Service in 1924; Cauger sold his interest in the early 1930s during the Depression; Cauger employed other future Golden Age animators alongside Disney; the building has been razed and is now a private parking lot. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰
The Pendergast Years (Kansas City Public Library) — “Walt Disney.” — Confirms: Disney was hired by an advertising agency named the Kansas City Film Ad Company; he and friends experimented with animation in the family garage using a movie camera borrowed from the ad agency; Laugh-O-Gram Films opened May 1922. ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴
Wikipedia — “Walt Disney.” — Confirms: Pesmen-Rubin Commercial Art Studio was Disney’s first art-industry job; he befriended Ub Iwerks there; he was laid off in January 1920. ↩
Wikipedia — “Ub Iwerks.” — Confirms: Iwerks and Disney found work as illustrators for the Kansas City Slide company, later renamed the Kansas City Film Ad Company; Disney took up animation there and Iwerks soon joined him; Iwerks attached a motor drive to the animation camera with a switch resembling a telegraph key, enabling solo operation. ↩ ↩²