Walt Kelly
American cartoonist (1913-1973)
Walter Crawford Kelly Jr. (August 25, 1913 – October 18, 1973) was an American animator and cartoonist, best known for the comic strip Pogo. He began his animation career in 1936 at Walt Disney Productions, contributing to Pinocchio, Fantasia, and Dumbo. In 1941, at the age of 28, Kelly transferred to work at Dell Comics, where he created Pogo, which eventually became his platform for political and philosophical commentary.
Early life
Kelly was born of Irish-American heritage in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to Walter Crawford Kelly Sr. and Genevieve Kelly (née MacAnnula). When he was two years old, the family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut. After graduating from Warren Harding High School in 1930, Kelly worked at odd jobs until he was hired as a crime reporter on the Bridgeport Post. He also took up cartooning and illustrated a biography of another well-known figure from Bridgeport, P. T. Barnum. Kelly was extremely proud of his journalism pedigree and considered himself a newspaper man as well as a cartoonist.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q933892. VIAF identifies the subject as 52956279. The Library of Congress control number is n79018656. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1913, 1973, 1936 and 1941.
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This entry incorporates text from “Walt Kelly” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.