Winners That Received At Least 7 Oscars

Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Flora Disney (née Call) and Elias Disney, a Canadian-born farmer and businessperson. He had Irish, German, and English ancestry. Walt moved with his parents to Kansas City at age seven, where he spent the majority of his childhood. At age 16, during World War I, he faked his age to join the American Red Cross. He soon returned home, where he won a scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute. There, he met a fellow animator, Ub Iwerks. The two soon set up their own company. In the early 1920s, they made a series of animated shorts for the Newman theater chain, entitled "Newman's Laugh-O-Grams". Their company soon went bankrupt, however.

The two then went to Hollywood in 1923. They started work on a new series, about a live-action little girl who journeys to a world of animated characters. Entitled the "Alice Comedies", they were distributed by M.J. Winkler (Margaret). Walt was backed up financially only by Winkler and his older brother Roy O. Disney, who remained his business partner for the rest of his life. Hundreds of "Alice Comedies" were produced between 1923 and 1927, before they lost popularity.

Walt then started work on a series around a new animated character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. This series was successful, but in 1928, Walt discovered that M.J. Winkler and her husband, Charles Mintz, had stolen the rights to the character away from him. They had also stolen all his animators, except for Ub Iwerks. While taking the train home, Walt started doodling on a piece of paper. The result of these doodles was a mouse named Mickey. With only Walt and Ub to animate, and Walt's wife Lillian Disney (Lilly) and Roy's wife Edna Disney to ink in the animation cells, three Mickey Mouse cartoons were quickly produced. The first two didn't sell, so Walt added synchronized sound to the last one, Steamboat Willie (1928), and it was immediately picked up. With Walt as the voice of Mickey, it premiered to great success. Many more cartoons followed. Walt was now in the big time, but he didn't stop creating new ideas.

In 1929, he created the 'Silly Symphonies', a cartoon series that didn't have a continuous character. They were another success. One of them, Flowers and Trees (1932), was the first cartoon to be produced in color and the first cartoon to win an Oscar; another, Three Little Pigs (1933), was so popular it was often billed above the feature films it accompanied. The Silly Symphonies stopped coming out in 1939, but Mickey and friends, (including Minnie Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto, and plenty more), were still going strong and still very popular.

In 1934, Walt started work on another new idea: a cartoon that ran the length of a feature film. Everyone in Hollywood was calling it "Disney's Folly", but Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937) was anything but, winning critical raves, the adoration of the public, and one big and seven little special Oscars for Walt. Now Walt listed animated features among his ever-growing list of accomplishments. While continuing to produce cartoon shorts, he also started producing more of the animated features. Pinocchio (1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942) were all successes; not even a flop like Fantasia (1940) and a studio animators' strike in 1941 could stop Disney now.

In the mid 1940s, he began producing "packaged features", essentially a group of shorts put together to run feature length, but by 1950 he was back with animated features that stuck to one story, with Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951), and Peter Pan (1953). In 1950, he also started producing live-action films, with Treasure Island (1950). These began taking on greater importance throughout the 50s and 60s, but Walt continued to produce animated features, including Lady and the Tramp (1955), Sleeping Beauty (1959), and One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961).

In 1955 he opened a theme park in southern California: Disneyland. It was a place where children and their parents could take rides, just explore, and meet the familiar animated characters, all in a clean, safe environment. It was another great success. Walt also became one of the first producers of films to venture into television, with his series The Magical World of Disney (1954) which he began in 1954 to promote his theme park. He also produced The Mickey Mouse Club (1955) and Zorro (1957). To top it all off, Walt came out with the lavish musical fantasy Mary Poppins (1964), which mixed live-action with animation. It is considered by many to be his magnum opus. Even after that, Walt continued to forge onward, with plans to build a new theme park and an experimental prototype city in Florida.

He did not live to see the culmination of those plans, however; in 1966, he developed lung cancer brought on by his lifelong chain-smoking. He died of a heart attack following cancer surgery on December 15, 1966 at age 65. But not even his death, it seemed, could stop him. Roy carried on plans to build the Florida theme park, and it premiered in 1971 under the name Walt Disney World. His company continues to flourish, still producing animated and live-action films and overseeing the still-growing empire started by one man: Walt Disney, who will never be forgotten.

Douglas Shearer came to MGM to visit his sister, Norma Shearer, and was hired as an assistant in the camera department. When MGM decided to make sound pictures, Douglas was appointed head of the sound department. In 1928, Douglas took the silent 'White Shadows in the South Seas' to a New Jersey recording studio where he added sound effects and music. As was common in the early days, the music and sound effects were recorded, but not the dialogue. In 1929, Douglas came up with the idea of playing the sound track for a musical number so that it would be filmed in sync with the music. The film was The Broadway Melody (1929) which won the Best Picture Oscar for 1929. It was an 'All-Talking! All-SingingAll-Dancing!' movie. Douglas won his first oscar for sound recording with The Big House (1930). Douglas became one of the most innovative men in the sound field and MGM became well known for the quality of the sound in their pictures. He would develop or improve recording systems and reduce any unwanted noise. Overall, Douglas would win 12 oscars for Best Sound Recording. In 1959, he would receive an Oscar for helping co-develop MGM's Camera 65 wide screen system. His career as Recording Director would end in 1955 when he was promoted to director of technical research at MGM. He would hold this office until his retirement in 1968.

After graduating from New York's Art Students League he worked for his architect father, then started film work at Edison Studios in 1915 assisting Hugo Ballin. In 1918 he moved to Goldwyn as art director and, in 1924, began his 32 year stint as supervising art director for some 1500 MGM films, with direct responsibility in well over 150 of those. He designed the Oscar itself, winning it 11 of the 37 times he was nominated for it. Some of his designs influenced American interiors, and it has been argued that he was the most important art director in the history of American cinema.

Alexander Farciot Edouard was for many decades one of Hollywood's foremost special effects technicians. Though of French descent, he was born and raised in California, the son of a portrait photographer. He joined the film industry early on, working in Hollywood for a subsidiary of Paramount, Realart, as an assistant cameraman. At the onset of World War I, Edouart enlisted in the Camouflage Division of the Corps of Engineers, rose to the rank of major and patented a technique for detecting camouflage through photographic means. He then had a stint in the Signals Corps and worked as a war photographer for the American Red Cross in Europe until 1921. In 1922, he joined the Lasky Organisation as special effects photographer. When this company was absorbed into Paramount, Edouart was made head of the Special Effects Department. He remained at the studio until 1974, during his career gathering a staggering ten major technical and scientific awards from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (including two outright Oscars). Other renowned FX technicians, who worked under his auspices included Gordon Jennings and John P. Fulton.

In addition to being singularly adept at making back-projection look realistic and exotic locales appear authentic (especially via his engineering of the double frame, triple-headed background projector), Edouart also perfected the 'glass shot', which cleverly melded small models with full-sized sets. Among his most memorable work remains Dr. Cyclops (1940), for which he created a believable Peruvian jungle and used his back-projection to depict a group of human explorers reduced to one-fifth of their size (through the endeavours of the titular mad scientist), struggling against non-miniaturised 'monsters', such as cats and chickens. The formula has since been used numerous times (notably in the popular TV series Land of the Giants (1968)). Edouart and Jennings also created the futuristic effects for When Worlds Collide (1951), complete with erupting volcanoes and a tidal wave sweeping over Times Square. Other films which benefited from Edouart's expertise include Reap the Wild Wind (1942) and Vertigo (1958).

Farciot Edouart served on the Research Council of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences during the Second World War, producing training films for the U.S. Signals Corps. He was a member of the American Society of Cinematographers.

Alfred Newman is an American composer, arranger, and conductor of film music.

From his start as a music prodigy, he came to be regarded as a respected figure in the history of film music. He won nine Academy Awards and was nominated 45 times, contributing to the Newmans being the most nominated Academy Award extended family, with a collective 92 nominations in various music categories.

In a career spanning more than four decades, Newman composed the scores for over 200 motion pictures. Some of his most famous scores include All About Eve (1950), Anastasia (1956), Wuthering Heights (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), How Green Was My Valley (1941), The Song of Bernadette (1943), Captain from Castile (1947), Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), How the West Was Won (1962), The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and his final score, Airport (1970), all of which were nominated for or won Academy Awards. He is perhaps best known for composing the fanfare which accompanies the studio logo at the beginning of 20th Century Fox's productions.

Newman was highly regarded as a conductor, and arranged and conducted many scores by other composers, including George Gershwin, Charles Chaplin, and Irving Berlin. He also conducted the music for many film adaptations of Broadway musicals (having worked on Broadway for ten years before coming to Hollywood), as well as many original Hollywood musicals.

He was among the first musicians to compose and conduct original music during Hollywood's Golden Age of movies, later becoming a respected and powerful music director in the history of Hollywood.

Dennis Muren is the Senior Visual Effects Supervisor and Creative Director of Industrial Light & Magic. A recipient of nine Oscars for Best Achievement in Visual Effects and a Technical Achievement Academy Award®, Muren is actively involved in the evolution of the company, as well as the design and development of new techniques and equipment. In June 1999, Muren became the first visual effects artist to be honored with a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In February 2007, he was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Visual Effects Society. Muren is currently working on a book focusing on "observation" for digital artists.

As Creative Director of Industrial Light & Magic, Muren is a key member of the company's leadership team and collaborates with all of ILM's supervisors on each of the films that the company contributes to.

Alan Menken is an American composer, songwriter, music conductor, director and record producer.

Menken is best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. His scores and songs for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) have each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1987), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), among others.

He is also known for his work in musical theatre for Broadway and elsewhere. Some of these are based on his Disney films, but other stage hits include Little Shop of Horrors (1982), A Christmas Carol (1994) and Sister Act (2009).

Menken has collaborated with such lyricists as Lynn Ahrens, Howard Ashman, Jack Feldman, Tim Rice, Glenn Slater, Stephen Schwartz and David Zippel. With eight Academy Award wins, Menken is the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman, who has 9 Oscars. He has also won 11 Grammy Awards, a Tony Award, Emmy Award, 7 Golden Globe Awards and many other honors.

Edith was the chief costume designer for Universal Studios having started her career as a sketch artist at Paramount. Sweet Charity was her 1,130th film, Over the years she had over30 Oscar nominations of which she won 7. She wrote two books, The Dress Doctor and How to Dress For Success. In 1959 she was chosen as Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Times

Edwin B. Willis was born on 28 January 1893 in Decatur, Illinois, USA. He was a set decorator and art director, known for Gaslight (1944), An American in Paris (1951) and The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). He was married to Naomi Agnes. He died on 26 November 1963 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Loren L. Ryder was born on 9 March 1900 in California, USA. Loren L. is known for Your Jeweler's Showcase (1952), Cavalcade of America (1952) and Daktari (1966). Loren L. was married to Isabell. Loren L. died on 28 May 1985 in Monterey, California, USA.

Richard Edlund was born on 6 December 1940 in Fargo, North Dakota, USA. He is a producer, known for Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi (1983), Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977) and Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980).

Fred Quimby was an American animation producer. He served as the executive in charge of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio from 1937 to 1955. He worked with prominent directors, such as Tex Avery, Joseph Barbera, and William Hanna. His studio won 8 Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film. He is chiefly remembered as a producer for the original "Tom and Jerry" film series.

In 1886. Quimby was born in Minneapolis, the largest and most-populous city in the US state of Minnesota. Early in his life, he worked as a journalist, before starting a career in film.

In 1907, Quimby became the manager of film theater in Missoula, Montana. He later joined the staff of the film production company Pathé. He became a member of its board of directors, but left in 1921 to try his lack as an independent producer. From 1924 to 1927, Quimby worked for Fox Film. In 1927, he was hired by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). He served for a time as the nominal head of its short films department.

In 1937, Quimby became the head of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cartoon studio, MGM's new animation subsidiary. His name became well known due to its prominence in the cartoon credits. He had a difficult relationship with his staff members. He was not an animator himself, and had no previous experience in animation. He served chiefly as a liaison between the animators and MGM executives. He consistently turned down requests for bigger budgets, raises and special dispensations of funds. His employees considered him humorless.

In 1939, Quimby approved the production of " Puss Gets the Boot" by directors Barbera and Hanna. The film introduced the characters of Tom Cat and Jerry Mouse, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film. Quimby was at first not interested in producing more Tom and Jerry films, but changed his mind due to the first film's critical and financial success. As a producer, he claimed sole responsibility for the success of the new series.

In May 1955, Quimby retired at the age of 69. Barbera and Hanna replaced him as the new heads of the studio. The studio did not long survive Quimby's departure, as MGM shut down its animation subsidiary in 1957. Quimby lived in retirement for 10 years. In September 1965, Quimby died from a heart attack in Santa Monica, California. He was 79-years-old.

Originally planning to become a lawyer, Billy Wilder abandoned that career in favor of working as a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, using this experience to move to Berlin, where he worked for the city's largest tabloid. He broke into films as a screenwriter in 1929 and wrote scripts for many German films until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Wilder immediately realized his Jewish ancestry would cause problems, so he emigrated to Paris, then the US. Although he spoke no English when he arrived in Hollywood, Wilder was a fast learner and thanks to contacts such as Peter Lorre (with whom he shared an apartment), he was able to break into American films. His partnership with Charles Brackett started in 1938 and the team was responsible for writing some of Hollywood's classic comedies, including Ninotchka (1939) and Ball of Fire (1941). The partnership expanded into a producer-director one in 1942, with Brackett producing and the two turned out such classics as Five Graves to Cairo (1943), The Lost Weekend (1945) (Oscars for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay) and Sunset Boulevard (1950) (Oscars for Best Screenplay), after which the partnership dissolved. (Wilder had already made one film, Double Indemnity (1944) without Brackett, as the latter had refused to work on a film he felt dealt with such disreputable characters.) Wilder's subsequent self-produced films would become more caustic and cynical, notably Ace in the Hole (1951), though he also produced such sublime comedies as Some Like It Hot (1959) and The Apartment (1960) (which won him Best Picture and Director Oscars). He retired in 1981.

Gary Rydstrom, Director of Creative Operations/Sound Designer and Mixer, joined Skywalker Sound in 1983 as an operator in the machine room. Since then, he has contributed his talents to many projects as a sound designer, re-recording mixer, effects mixer and foley mixer. In 1998, Rydstrom was appointed Director of Creative Operations for Skywalker Sound, overseeing the creative and technological direction for the facility. Apart from his feature film and commercials work, Rydstrom has completed several television projects, rides and attraction films. Rydstrom holds a graduate degree from the USC School of Cinema and Television. He is the recipient of 7 Academy Awards for Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing for his work on Saving Private Ryan (1998), Titanic (1997), Jurassic Park (1993), and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991).

Born in England in 1939, Jonathan Erland commenced his professional training in the entertainment industry in 1954, studying theatre at the Central School (where fellow students included Vanessa Redgrave and Judi Dench) and film at the London Film School where he received his visual effects "baptism by fire" on the student film, Brief Armistice, an anti-war, battlefield film set in World War II. After additional studies at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, he began work with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation during the heyday of live television drama, including such classics as William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, George Bernard Shaw's Doctor's Dilemma, and Anton Chekhov's Three Sisters. His knowledge of theatre technology made him a desirable asset to the team building the Charles Eames-designed audio animatronic puppet theatres for the I.B.M. Pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair. Moving to Los Angeles, he maintained dual careers in both the entertainment and industrial / exhibit design fields. His eclectic backgrounds merged harmoniously when his industrial design knowledge made him a desirable asset for Industrial Light and Magic, the group formed by John Dykstra, A.S.C., to create the visual effects for the film Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope (1977). He continued his association with Dykstra, serving as Director of Research and Development for Apogee Productions. At Apogee, he received patents and Academy Awards for Reverse Bluescreen, the Blue-Max flux projector and a method for making front projection screens. The author of some twenty Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineering (SMPTE) papers, he has received the Society's Journal Award and the Fuji Gold Medal. In 1993, he served as program chair for the SMPTE Technical Conference. He is a Life Fellow of the Society, an Associate of the American Society of Cinematographers (since 1986 the A.S.C. Manual has carried an Erland tutorial: "The Future of Traveling Matte Photography", and he was a founder of the Technology Council of the Motion Picture and Television Industries. In 1997, he became a founder of the Visual Effects Society. In addition to serving as a Director for the VES, he has also served on their Technology Committee, and, for seven years, as Membership Chair. In 2006, the VES awarded him their inaugural Founders Award. In 2010 he, along with Douglas Trumbull and Dennis Muren, became the first Fellows of the VES. In 1984, Erland was invited to join the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and in 1995, as Chairman of the Visual Effects Award Steering Committee, he achieved the long sought goal of establishing Visual Effects as a Branch of the Academy. He has served eleven years on the Board of Governors of the Academy, twenty-five years on the Executive Committee of the Visual Effects Branch and the Scientific and Engineering Awards Committee. He has served also on the Student Academy Awards Committee and the Foreign Films Committee. He's a founding member of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Committee, as well as the Academy Science and Technology Council, where he has served on the Executive Committee and chaired the Research Committee and the Solid State Light subcommittee. For the Council he has appeared in a number of public programs such as, "Movie Magic" where he presented the pre-cinema segment, "Minwa-Za Company of Tokyo" a program on Japanese shadow puppetry, "Illuminating the Future: the Arrival of Solid State Lighting" from which his presentation of "The Science of Colour" can be seen on the Academy website. In 2011, at NAB and also CineGear he presented, "Chromatic Chaos: Implications of Newly Introduced Forms of Stagelight." a study of solid state lighting, which was also presented for the ASC-sponsored International Cinematographers Symposium, chaired by President Michael Goi, ASC. The Council, located at the Academy's Pickford Centre for Motion Picture Studies, is also home to the Esmeralda Stage(TM) an imaging research laboratory Erland has been building for the past twenty-five years. In 1993, he and his wife Kay founded Composite Components Company, which specializes in traveling matte composite technology, and in 1996 the Academy awarded them a Scientific and Engineering Award for the Digital Series(TM) of traveling matte backings. In 2008, he received an Academy Award of Commendation for "his leadership efforts (in 1992) toward identifying and solving the problem of High-Speed Emulsion Stress Syndrome in motion picture film stock." In 2012, Erland was honored with the John A. Bonner Medal of Commendation, which recognizes, "outstanding service and dedication in upholding the high standards of the Academy."

Rick Baker was born on 8 December 1950 in Binghamton, New York, USA. He is an actor, known for Planet of the Apes (2001), Men in Black (1997) and The Wolfman (2010). He has been married to Silvia Abascal since 8 November 1987. They have two children. He was previously married to Elaine Alexander.

Richard Day's film career began in 1918 when director Erich von Stroheim hired him as a set decorator. His work so impressed von Stroheim that the director kept Day as a set decorator, then an art director, and costume designer on many of his productions. Day left von Stroheim and struck out on his own in the '30s. He soon gained a reputation as one of the most imaginative art directors in the business, and he worked often for the major studios on their top-drawer productions. Day won seven Oscars for art direction and set design.