Tommy Tucker's Tooth

As I mentioned in the last blog, Disney's Laugh-O-Gram Studios was not considered a grand success. In fact, it was nearly a complete failure. Animation was expensive, and Walt and his cohorts were fairly young and inexperienced. Debt mounted up and the studio eventually had to file bankruptcy after running for only just barely over a year. By the beginning on 1923, Walt was forced to actually live inside his office at the studio and reportedly visited the train station once a week to take a bath. Times were rough, and in one of the studio's darkest hours a glimmer of hope came in the form of a local Dentit. Thomas McCrum, the dentist, gave Disney roughly five hundred dollars to make a short film about dental hygiene. The end product is Tommy Tucker's Tooth.

The film largely comprises of live action footage rather than animation and depicts a mother telling the story of Tommy Tucker to her children. The two main characters of this tale are Tommy Tucker and Jimmy Jones. Tommy brushes his teeth and takes care of himself, while Jimmy does the exact opposite up until the end of the film when he turns his life around and converts to brushing his teeth. Atta boy, Jimmy! It's actually rather curious that this movie is called Tommy Tucker, when it actually spends far more time focusing on the far more interesting and far more entertaining Jimmy. Jimmy ends up suffering from toothache and cavities while Tommy does not. This is actually a pretty fun sequence because Disney animates the creation of toothache with characters known in the film as "Acid Demons." They're the only animated characters in the entire film, spawned from spoiled food left in Jimmy's unclean mouth. Pretty intense stuff. Then Jimmy becomes underweight while Tommy- who seems perhaps to be borderline obese -is praised for his health. And in the end they both apply for a job and Tommy gets it while Jimmy is openly admonished for his cruddy teeth. But Jimmy decides that The Dentist is his best friend and goes and gets his life put in order, gets a job, and then teaches us all how to brush our teeth. The film urges that we "never forget" this story. As it is, obviously, of vital importance.

I guess I personally don't have much to say about this little gem. It's not exactly meant to entertain or stretch the imagination or inspire anything other than tooth brushery. It's an educational film. And by 1923 standards, I'd say I'm pretty amazing at tooth care which is nice. Lifted my spirits. And since I've treated this post as a bit of a history lesson as well, I'll continue with a few interesting notes. This was the second to last film that Laugh-O-Grams would produce. Their final short would actually go on to find flourishing success in California under a new studio formed by Walt and his brother Roy. However, probably something far far more important ended up taking place in the confines of the Kansas City studio. In an interview years later Walt mentioned that he was inspired to draw Mickey Mouse by a pet mouse he kept on his desk at Laugh-O-Gram Studios. "They used to fight for crumbs in my waste basket when I worked at night. I lifted them out and kept them in wire cages on my desk. I grew particularly fond of one brown house mouse. He was a timid little guy. By tapping him on the nose with my pencil, I trained him to run inside a black circle I drew on my drawing board. When I left Kansas to try my luck at Hollywood, I hated to leave him behind. So I carefully carried him to a backyard, making sure it was a nice neighborhood, and the tame little fellow scampered to freedom."