Ub Iwerks had grown tired of working with his friend Walt Disney. As a third owner of the Disney Brothers Studio, he could share in the profits of the enterprise, but Walt would often spend money as fast as the studio would get it and Ub had become anxious to go his own way. He ordered the Disneys to buy him out. It was hard, but Roy Disney found the money, paid off Ub and Ub went out to work for himself. (The payout was thousands of dollars; a third ownership of Disney today would be about $57 Billion.)
Ub took his money and started up a new studio aligned with MGM. His first character was Flip the Frog, a crude character with a human girlfriend. Originally, Ub sought to make the cartoons in color, but MGM sought to economize and decreed that Flip would only be produced in black and white.
Despite hiring such future legends as Chuck Jones and Grim Natwick, Ub's studio quickly burned out. Flip the Frog would not prove to be as successful as he had hoped. MGM canceled the series and Ub became a contractor, making films for Warner Brothers and Columbia. He eventually found himself back at Disney, only working on special projects and techniques- not animation.
