Disney100: The 10 Best Oscar Wins By the Walt Disney Company

October 16 marks the 100th anniversary of the Walt Disney Company.

Brothers Walt and Roy Disney founded the company way back in 1923 as the Disney Brothers Studio, officially changing its name to the Walt Disney Company in 1986. Over the span of that 100 years, the Disney brand received over 140 Academy Awards across live action and animated films. Walt Disney himself holds the record for competitive Oscar wins with 22 statues across his 59 nominations. He received his final Oscar win in 1968 for Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day.

So, after looking at these stats and at the overall history of Oscar wins by the legendary studio, we thought we’d list our top 10 favorite Disney Academy Award wins. It proved tougher than expected because how to you rank the well deserved costume design win for Black Panther: Wakanda Forever against the then-celebrated visual effects of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea?

Truth is, you really can’t, but it didn’t stop us.

So, with that, here are our 10 favorite Oscar wins by the Walt Disney Company.

10. Flowers and Trees (Best Animated Short Film)

Compared to the far more advanced works that would come later, Disney’s first Oscar win ranks as one of our favorites for its incredible beauty and simplicity. A part of the beloved Silly Symphony brand, the short marked Disney’s first animated short made in color, produced with the then 3-strip Technicolor process. There’s not much story — spring awakens trees, flowers, and mushrooms who are soon threatened by a forest fire — but simplicity works wonders for this sweet, timeless animated classic.

9. Cruella (Best Costume Design)

To date, costume designer Jenny Beavan has received 12 Oscar nominations for Best Costume Design, winning three times. But it’s her most recent Oscar win for 2021’s Cruella that ranks as her best. Granted, she won for a film literally about the mid-1960s fashion industry, but she used the canvas to let loose her imagination and create some seriously stunning, seriously thematic looks. Many black and white patterns underscored the inherent battle within certain characters while also hinting at major revelations to come within the film. One dress burns away to reveal an even more stunning creation beneath it. One dress appears made completely of trash. There are over 100 major costumes used in the film, but Beavan’s win isn’t strictly based on quantity. It’s a hallmark of the very best work from one of the most creative costume designers working today.

8. Toy Story 3 (Best Animated Feature)

1995’s superior Toy Story and 1999’s Toy Story 2 weren’t eligible for the Animated Feature Oscar as the category didn’t exist when the films were released. So, 2010’s Toy Story 3 ranks on this list to represent the entire Toy Story series. While the first film wowed audiences with advancements in computer animation (and launched the powerhouse that is Pixar) and the second expanded the series’s universe in imaginative ways, the third film in the series brought a true sense of stakes and of honest emotion, reducing parents raised on the original to a puddle of tears by the film’s end. It also managed to rank in then-expanded Best Picture lineup. Plus, it introduced one of Disney’s best villains across its entire 100 year canon: Lots-O’-Huggin’ Bear (voiced by Ned Beatty). That year, there were only three contenders, so it wasn’t really much of a competition, but that doesn’t diminish the strength of the win.

7. Julie Andrews (Best Actress for Mary Poppins)

Julie Andrews didn’t win a Tony Award for her Eliza Doolittle in the stage production of My Fair Lady, but the role felt iconically hers. When Hollywood set out to make the film version of the musical, Jack Warner replaced Andrews with Audrey Hepburn. Yet, Andrews had the last laugh. The film would go on to win Best Picture, but Hepburn failed to garner a nomination for Best Actress. Instead, the Best Actress honor that year would go to Andrews for her iconic role as Mary Poppins, the magical nanny who makes everything better with a spoonful of sugar. Say what you want about the film itself or its place as the adaptation of P.L. Travers original novel (see Saving Mr. Banks), but Andrews’s central performance is undeniably great. She anchors the film’s more whimsical elements with practicality and a bewitching sense of great fun.

6. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Best Visual Effects)

It’s probably a horror to many that we’ve ranked 1988’s Who Frame Roger Rabbit higher than the great Julie Andrews, but such is the unruly nature of lists. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, Who Framed Roger Rabbit famously broke Disney’s “animation is sacred” creed by seamlessly blending animation with adult-leaning live action. The film won three competitive Oscars plus a special achievement award, but its win for visual effects ranks among one of the best ever awarded.

5. Beauty and the Beast (Best Original Score)

There are many great scores associated with Walt Disney animated films, but somehow, 1991’s Beauty and the Beast tops them all. Fresh off 1989’s The Little Mermaid’s Broadway-ready score, Beauty and the Beast gave us not only an embarrassment of riches for its memorable songs, but it would also pepper the entire film with Alan Menkin’s career-best score. It would win Original Song for title song “Beauty and the Beast” and would make history by receiving a Best Picture nomination, a then first for an animated film. But Menkin’s win for Original Score underscores the real power of the film.

4. Ratatouille (Best Animated Feature)

Pixar Studios has won Best Animated Feature 10 times after losing the very first award to Dreamworks’s Shrek back in 2002. Several modern Pixar classics received this award, so it’s very difficult to pit one against the other. However, for our money, its win for 2008’s Ratatouille highlighted the extraordinary magic the studio could create. Instead of focusing on beloved toys or cute fish or a heartbreakingly sincere robot, Ratatouille takes one of man’s most hated creatures — the rat — and puts him squarely in the kitchen as a budding chef. The film’s theme of “anyone can cook” democratizes any industry into which dreamers want to break, but the true heart of the film lies in the film’s late-breaking monologue about criticism by Anton Ego (Peter O’Toole). It was clear writer / director Brad Bird wasn’t talking about food criticism. He elevated the animated film to something that would resonate with adult artists everywhere, and the Academy responded in kind with an Oscar.

3. Daniel Day-Lewis (Best Actor for Lincoln)

Disney released Steven Spielberg’s masterpiece Lincoln under its Touchstone Pictures label in 2012. Before the film’s release, we’d all heard the stories about Oscar-winner Daniel Day-Lewis’s on-set insistence of remaining in character even as the cameras stopped rolling. But when the film unspooled, it became immediately clear that his dedication to the performance paid off in spades. Day-Lewis eschews traditional biopic tropes by fully humanizing one of our greatest presidents. He guides us through the film’s often dense political machinations with a performance so authentic and complex that it likely ranks as the great actor’s very best on-screen performance (write your comments below). Even though the film failed to win much-deserved Best Picture and Best Director trophies, Day-Lewis’s win for Best Actor was the easiest call of the night. No one even came close.

2. Pinocchio (Best Original Song for “When You Wish Upon a Star”)

Of the many songs to win Original Song for Disney, 1940’s Pinocchio’s “When You Wish Upon a Star” set the standard that has yet to be matched. A simple ballad dedicated to dreamers everywhere, the song literally became the hallmark for the Walt Disney Company itself. Each time you see the famous castle logo in front of a Disney film, bars of the song accompany the image. There have been a lot of great, Oscar-winning songs stemming from Disney films (and at least one that didn’t win that ranks higher than winners — The Little Mermaid’s “Part of Your World”), but this song by Leigh Harline and Ned Washington may never be surpassed for its ability to imbed itself in our collective subconscious.

1. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (Honorary Academy Award for Screening Innovation) 

And finally, we’ve come to perhaps what will likely be perceived as the most obvious choice for the best Oscar win by the Walt Disney Company. Technically, it’s not a win. Back in 1937, there weren’t really any Oscar categories geared toward recognizing animated features. That’s because before Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs there were no animated features. The Academy didn’t nominate it for Best Picture of 1937, but they recognized something equally great and groundbreaking in this classically told story. Yes, the film is great, but what truly makes this the greatest Oscar win are the statues themselves. Yup, Walt Disney received one normal-sized statue accompanied by seven miniature statues (presented by Shirley Temple). The stuff of legends.