Pat Powers (producer)
Patrick Anthony Powers (October 8, 1869 – July 30, 1948) was an American producer who was involved in the movie and animation industry of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s as a distributor and producer. He established Powers Moving Picture Company, also known as Powers Picture Plays. His firm, Celebrity Productions, was the first distributor of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse cartoons (1928–1929).[1] After one year, Disney split with Powers, who started another animation studio with Disney's lead animator, Ub Iwerks.[2]
For other people named Patrick Powers, see Patrick Powers.
Pat Powers
Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks[edit]
In 1928, Powers sold Walt Disney the Powers Cinephone so that Disney could make sound cartoons such as Mickey Mouse's Steamboat Willie (1928).[12] Unable to find a distributor for the sound cartoons, Disney began releasing his cartoons through Powers' company Celebrity Productions (also known as Celebrity Pictures).
After one year of successful Mickey Mouse and Silly Symphonies cartoons, Walt Disney confronted Powers in 1930 about money due to Disney from the distribution deal. Powers responded by signing Disney's head animator Ub Iwerks to an exclusive deal to create his own animation studio.[13][1] The Iwerks Studio was only mildly successful, with cartoon series such as Flip the Frog and Willie Whopper, released through Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and the ComiColor cartoons, released by Celebrity Pictures.[14] The Iwerks studio closed in 1936 and Iwerks subsequently returned to Disney. As for Disney, he would go on to distribute his cartoons without Powers to Columbia Pictures.
In his lifetime, Powers produced nearly 300 movies, most of them early silent films produced at Universal before 1913 or one-reel animated shorts. He is, however, also credited as a producer on Erich von Stroheim's The Wedding March (1928), along with Jesse Lasky and Adolph Zukor. (The latter was a former partner of Mitchell Mark who, like Powers, was a native of Buffalo, New York.)
Death[edit]
Patrick Powers, at age 77, died on July 30, 1948, at the Doctors Hospital in New York City after a brief illness. His August 1 obituary in The New York Times notes that at the time of his death he was president of the Powers Film Products Company of Rochester, New York.[15] He also had two homes, one in Rochester and another in Westport, Connecticut. His obituary also states that he was survived by his sister Mary Ellen and a daughter, Mrs. Roscoe N. George of San Fernando, California.[15] Powers' gravesite is at Holy Cross Cemetery in Lackawanna, New York, near Buffalo.