Walter Crawford Kelly, Jr (August 25, 1913 - October 18, 1973), known as Walt Kelly, was a cartoonist notable for his comic strip Pogo featuring characters that inhabited a portion of the Okefenokee Swamp in Georgia.
Kelly was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. While still a child, his family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut where his father worked in a munitions plant. After graduating from Warren Harding High School in 1930, Kelly worked a few odd jobs until landing a position as a crime reporter on the Bridgeport Post. There he took up cartooning and illustrated a biography of Bridgeport native P. T. Barnum. He found a job at Walt Disney Productions in California as an animator on Donald Duck cartoons. Kelly worked 1935 to 1941 for Disney, contributing to films including Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, and Dumbo. During 1935 and 1936, his work also appeared in early comic books for what later became DC Comics. Kelly was one of many Disney animators, including Art Babbitt, Bill Tytla, and John Hubley, who picketed Disney during the 1941 Disney animators' strike, after which he left the studio.
Kelly began a series of comic books based on fairy tales and nursey rhymes along with annuals celebrating Christmas and Easter for Dell Comics. He also produced a series of stories based on the Our Gang film series, provided covers for Walt Disney's Comics and Stories and illustrated adaptations of Pinocchio and The Three Caballeros. This period saw the creation of Kelly's most famous character, Pogo, who first saw print in 1943 in Dell's Animal Comics. During World War II, Kelly worked in the Army's Foreign Language Unit illustrating manuals. He returned to journalism as a political cartoonist after the war. In 1948, while art director of the short-lived New York Star, Kelly began to produce a pen-and-ink strip of current-events commentary populated by characters from Okefenokee Swamp. The first Pogo strip appeared on October 4, 1948. After the New York Star folded on Jan. 28, 1949 Kelly arranged for syndication through the Hall Syndicate which re-launched the strip in May of 1949. Kelly eventually arranged to acquire the copyright and ownership of the strip, which was uncommon in that era.
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Historic Illustrators :: Illustration

Graffix Gallery - Walt Kelly - Short biography with images of some of the artist's works.
Reuben Award Winners - Brief profile of Kelly and his career.
Walt Kelly Biography - An illustrated biography, including his early work as well as the comic strip Pogo.
Meta Description: [ An illustrated biography of Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo. One of 101 biographical pages for illustrators and artists. ]
Walter Crawford Kelly - Biography and appreciation of Kelly's work, including the Pogo comic strip.
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