Born: Walter Benjamin Lantz
Birthday: April 27, 1899
Location: New Rochelle, NY, U.S
Alma mater:  Art Students League of New York
Occupation: Animator, Writer, Director, Producer
Years active: 1915–1972
Died: March 22, 1994

Walter Lantz was born in New Rochelle, New York, to Italian immigrant parents. Nearly orphaned, Walter ran the family’s grocery store at a young age when father became an invalid. Lantz loved art and was inspired by Winsor McCay’s animated Gertie the Dinosaur. Young Walter even completed a mail-order drawing class by age 12.

A wealthy customer became a patron of sorts for Lantz, financing his studies at the Art Students League of New York and getting him a job as a copy boy at William Randolph Hearst’s New York American. Lantz worked at the newspaper by day while attending for art school at night, and by the age of 16, he was employed in the International Film Service studio’s animation department.

Lantz left to work on the Jerry on the Job series at John R. Bray Studios, and in 1924, Lantz directed, animated, and starred in his first original cartoon series, Dinky Doodle before becoming the studio’s head of production. Bray changed to a publicity film studio in 1927 prompting Lantz’s moved to Hollywood, California where started his own sound cartoon studio with Pinto Colvig, but it failed.

In 1928, Lantz was hired to direct the Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoon series for Universal Pictures. Walter went on to win the character and animation studio from Universal Pictures’ president Carl Laemmle in a poker bet, and in the Fall of 1929, Lantz released his first Oswald cartoon, Race Riot.

Walter developed new original characters like Meany, Miny and Moe, Baby-Face Mouse, Snuffy Skunk, Doxie the dachshund, and Jock and Jill. One particular character, Andy Panda, became the star of Lantz’s 1939–1940 production season.

A new character was developed as a foil to annoy and aggravate Andy Panda in the short, Knock Knock. Woody Woodpecker had arrived and was an overnight sensation, earning his own series beginning in 1941. Walter Lantz, Alex Lovy, and Ben Hardaway contributed to Woody’s first design.

The studio’s financial troubles and difficult negotiations his parent company, Universal-International forced Lantz to shut down his studio from 1949 to 1951. Resuming production, Walter pushed for a faster and cheaper model and no longer created the rich backgrounds and character designs audiences had grown used to in the 1940s.

In 1957, Walter Lantz began showing his old cartoons on network television with The Woody Woodpecker Show. Other movie studios shuttered their animation departments by the late 1960s, leaving Lantz as one of only two producers still animating theatrical shorts, but Walter finally succumbed to the rising costs of production and closed the studio’s permanently in 1972.

After retirement, Walter Lantz engaged in several charitable ventures, was presented with the international animation society, ASIFA/Hollywood’s Annie Award in 1973, and in 1979, he received a special Academy Award “for bringing joy and laughter to every part of the world through his unique animated motion pictures.