February 26 - The Academy Awards

On this day, in 1942, Walt Disney received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award at the 14th Academy Awards ceremony. First presented in 1938, the Thalberg award is an honorary Oscar (even though it's not the traditional statue but instead a bust of its namesake) given to "creative producers, whose bodies of work reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production" (to be official about it). It's not awarded every year. Walt was only the fourth person to be honored with one but it wasn't, of course, the first time he'd left the ceremony with a statue.

The Walt Disney studio has a long history of impressing Academy voters with the films they've produced over the last 90+ years. Which, in my opinion, is how we get into a bit of a grey area when it comes to those golden statuettes. The answer to the trivia question "Who has received the most Academy Awards?" is, hands down, Walt Disney. His 26 wins in 59 nominations dwarfs anyone else's total by more than triple. But while he was the guy signing everyone's paychecks, how much of his work is represented in those statistics versus the work of the people cashing those paychecks? Would the studio have done such stellar pictures if Walt hadn't been cheerleading everyone on with a meticulous eye for detail and a bankroll to match? Most probably not. Could Walt have made such stellar pictures on his own? Definitely not. But it's a debate that's gone on as long as collaborative art has been made and will go on until the last director on earth says "That's a wrap": how much belongs to the ones who made it and how much to the one who paid it.

The first time the Walt Disney Studio earned itself an Oscar was for the Silly Symphony Flowers and Trees in 1932, which was also the first time that one was given for Best Animated Short. In fact, Disney went on to win Best Animated Short the first eight times it was given out. The last of the dozen times Walt won in that category happen posthumously in 1968 for Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day. His other wins came as producer on Best Documentary (2 wins), Best Documentary Short (2 wins), and Best Short Subject (5 wins). He was also presented with 3 honorary Oscars for the creation of Mickey Mouse, Fantasia, and his most famous win, one big statue and seven little statues for Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

Eventually, Walt wasn't the only one in the studio winning awards. At first, it was just for music, like when Leigh Harline, Paul Smith and Ned Washington won Best Score and for Pinocchio and Best Song for "When You Wish Upon a Star" in 1940. Then, as Disney started making live action pictures (and was newly eligible for the whole gamut of categories), the wealth was really spread around (for instance, when Mary Poppins won five, Walt didn't get any of them). And the flow continues right up to today, with films produced by Disney garnering over a dozen nominations and bringing home four wins at the 91st ceremony just a couple days ago. It was a showing I'm sure would have put a sparkle in Walt's eye and had him saying "Not bad. Not quite up to me yet, but you'll get there."