Layout animation not working on first run

As you discovered, the issue is visibility. When a view is initially set as gone in the xml file, Android will not render the layout until the visibility is changed to visible or invisible. If you attempt to animate on a view that has not been rendered yet, the animation will occur on the view without a layout. After the animation has completed, it will render it and suddenly the view will appear without animation. It works subsequent times because the view has a layout even when set to gone.

The key is to set the visibility to invisible instead of gone in the xml file so that it is rendered yet hidden. When the animation occurs the first time the view appear and will move as expected.

Of course not 20 minutes after posting this question I figured out my problem. Since I was setting the visibility of my layout to "GONE", when I tried to start the animation on it, it wasn't triggering the first time. Not sure why it goes the 2nd and subsequent times, but if I set the visibility to "VISIBLE" right before I start the animation, it fixed the problem. Here is the code where I changed it...

// Handle list item selections
ListView lv = getListView();
lv.setOnItemClickListener(new OnItemClickListener() {
    public void onItemClick(AdapterView<?> parent, View view, int position, long id) {
        final Voicemail vmItem = (Voicemail) vmla.getItem(position);
        Toast.makeText(ctx, "Name: " + vmItem.getCallerName() + " Position: " + position, Toast.LENGTH_SHORT)
                .show();
        vVm_controls.setVisibility(View.VISIBLE);
        vVm_controls.startAnimation(mSlideIn);
    }
});