Movie Musings: Disney and More

Oscar-Winning Archives Part 3

Our first two discussions about Oscar-winners covered some records of wins and nominations, but kept the winner of the most Oscars a secret. So, finally, that answer…the individual whom has won more Academy Awards than any other personality is none other than…Walt Disney.

Of an outstanding 59 total nominations throughout his career, Walt Disney received 22 Academy Awards!, No other individual has been nominated for or awarded as many Oscars!

Three of Disney’s wins were Honorary Oscars: in 1932 for the creation of Mickey Mouse, in 1937 for the distinguished achievement that was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) and in 1940 for Fantasia to recognize an outstanding use of sound in a motion picture. (The award for “Snow White,” was one big statuette surrounded by seven miniature statuettes.) Disney’s twenty-second and final Oscar win came after his death in the category of Best Short Subject, Cartoons with the short, Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day (1968).

Disney had always hoped that one of the films that he produced would win the Academy Award for Best Picture, but the only Best Picture Oscar Nomination that he would receive would be for Mary Poppins (1964) and he shared the nomination with the film’s co-producer, Bill Walsh. Sadly, they lost the award to Jack L. Warner for My Fair Lady (1964). Since then, three other Disney films have been nominated for the Best Picture Oscar, but unfortunately they all lost as well: Beauty and the Beast (1991), which lost to The Silence of the Lambs (1991), Up (2009) which lost to The Hurt Locker (2009) and Toy Story 3 (2010) which lost to The King’s Speech (2010). While no Disney film yet has won the Best Picture Oscar, Disney/Pixar’s Finding Nemo was awarded the Oscar for Best Animated Feature in 2003, two years after the Academy first created that award in 2001. Since then, that award has also been given to The Incredibles (2004), Ratatouille (2007), Wall-E (2008), Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Brave (2012), Frozen (2013), Big Hero 6 (2014), Inside Out (2015), Zootopia (2016), and Coco (2017).        

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that Meryl Streep had an amazing 20 nominations for acting Oscars. Interestingly, her 19th nomination was as Best Supporting Actress for her performance as the Witch in Disney’s Into the Woods (2014). That made her the fourth of four actors who have all received Best Acting Oscar nominations for performances in Disney movies, along with Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins (1964), Richard Farnsworth in The Straight Story (1999) and Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pear (2003). Andrews is the only winner in that group, however Hayley Mills won the Oscar for Best Juvenile Performance by an Actor/Actress when she made her Disney/film debut in Pollyanna (1960). (Mills was the last recipient of that award. After that, the Academy began nominating child actors in the regular acting categories rather than having the separate “juvenile” category.)

Many of Disney’s nominations were in the category of Oscar short films—most, of course, animated. When he first came up with Mickey Mouse, he hatched the idea of creating Mickey Mouse cartoons with sound. Sound had never been produced in animation before! Steamboat Willie premiered on November 18th, 1928, at the Colony Theatre on Broadway and 53rd. The audience members in the theatre were completely blown away, and some of them even begged the projectionist to wait to start the movie and reshow “Steamboat Willie.” Six years later, in 1932, when Walt won his Honorary Oscar for the creation of Mickey Mouse, he won a second Oscar that year in the category of Best Short Subject, Cartoons for the short Flowers and Trees which was the first ever sound cartoon produced in Technicolor format. From then to the year 1939, Walt was awarded 8 other Oscars in the category of Best Short Subject, Cartoons for:The Three Little Pigs (1933), The Tortoise and the Hare (1935), Three Orphan Kittens (1935), The Country Cousin (1936), The Old Mill (1937), Ferdinand the Bull (1938), and The Ugly Duckling (1939).       

In 1954, Walt set a new record by being nominated for six different Academy Awards in the same year. He won four: Best Documentary, Features for The Living Desert (1953), Best Documentary, Short Subjects for The Alaskan Eskimo (1953), Best Short Subject, Two-reel for Bear Country (1953), and Best Short Subject for Toot Whistle Plunk and Bloom (1953).                

So as you can see, throughout the history of the Academy Awards there have been all kinds of talented people who have received recognition for all kinds of different/incredible achievements in film, many of whom have been recognized more than once. It probably will be a while before someone achieves or even surpasses the record that Walt Disney holds. And whether or not a new record will be formed next year, remains to be seen. But each of the people who already have formed these records will live on in the history of film forever.