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Romer Grey Pictures Ltd. was a short-lived animation studio that was launched in the spring of 1930 and shut down in the summer of 1931. It was located in Altadena, California, just north of Pasadena. It was run by Romer Zane Grey, the son of acclaimed Western writer Zane Grey. The studio was trying to compete with Walt Disney Productions with a Mickey Mouse-esque character named Binko the Bear Cub. The studio had faded away into obscurity after its demise until in 1990, plumber and one-time sketch artist Rollin Nesmith uncovered countless pieces of artwork and documents that was packed away in boxes by the house’s then-owner, but no film had surfaced. The studio is mostly known by animation buffs today for the roster of animators that would later become some of the greatest in the field, most notably Robert McKimson, who later went on to be an animator and director at Warner Bros. and Preston Blair, who later went to MGM working with Tex Avery.

Financing for the studio came from Romer’s mother, Lina Grey. She administered a fund-raising luncheon to raise the initial business of the studio. Twenty-year old Romer set up the studio in the garage in the back of Zane Grey’s palatial estate. He had hired Volney White to supervise the studio because he had no artistic experience himself. Many of the artists that were hired had no animation experience. Like Romer, they were barely out of their teens at the time they were working at the studio, thus it was their first job animating, but regardless, they were hired on the spot.

"I remember Pete Burness and I were sitting around the lobby of the Chouinard School one Saturday morning and the phone rang. A Miss Smith answered, and after hesitating a moment, turned to us and said, 'Are you fellows animators?' We really didn't know what an animator was, but having nothing better to do, we said, 'Yes!' She said [into the phone], 'I happen to have two of them right here and I'll send them right up.' She gave us the address and we went out, jumped into my car and off to Altadena. I remember that we didn't have too much difficulty in convincing Romer that we were the men he needed. He was desperate." – Jack Zander, interview

Romer lured the McKimson brothers, Robert and Tom, away from Disney, offering them eighty dollars a week. Tom was twenty-three while Bob was only nineteen, but they had more experience than most of the staff at the studio and had even guided new recruits brought along directly from local art schools. Most of the staff that was at the studio included Preston Blair, Pete Burness, Ken Harris, Jack Zander, Cal Dalton, Robert Stokes, Volney White and Riley Thompson.

The studio was trying to make a star out of a character named Binko the Bear Cub. He bore a resemblance to Mickey Mouse, with a round head, tiny ears and a button nose. There were about four cartoons planned and partially drawn: Arabian Nightmare, Hot Toe Molly, Binko the Toreador and Sand Witches. None of the cartoons have survived as of yet, but most of the cartoons never ended up in the camera department. However, in the basement of the Zane Grey house, exposure sheets, detailed production records, a musical score, a handful of cels and thousands of animation drawings (many in full color) have surfaced.

Romer wanted to move the studio away from his father’s garage in favor of a building located on Beverly Boulevard, near Vermont, in Hollywood, but Romer did not have any income to establish the capital. Since he did not have any money to pay the artists, their paychecks stopped coming. By the summer of 1931, there were two Binko the Bear Cub cartons ready to be duplicated, but Romer’s interest in making animated short films was started to wane.

“...Romer decided to spend more money on having a good time, hunting trips and things like that, and left everybody high and dry.” – Robert McKimson, interview with Michael Barrier

Romer had also been informed that he would need fifty thousand dollars to keep his studio going, and that was too much even for his mother. The studio then shut its doors and faded away into obscurity.

The animators at the studio would still stay in the animation business. Pete Burness would eventually move on to Ted Esbaugh's studio then later to MGM working on the Tom and Jerry series, and would later be a creative force at both UPA and Jay Ward Studios. Volney White would relocate to Terrytoons in New Rochelle, New York, then to Leon Schlesinger's to work in Frank Tashlin's unit.

After the artwork had been discovered in the Zane Grey basement, few staffers that worked at the studio were interviewed, including Blair, Zander, Lou Zukor and Thomas McKimson.