Scott, Walt

Walt Scott (1894-1970) was an American cartoonist and creator of the newspaper comic strip The Little People .

Born in Sandusky, Ohio, Walt Scott started his newspaper career in the local printer's shop before pursuing formal art studies at the Cleveland School of Art. Scott paid his dues early as a staff artist for various Cleveland-area engraving houses and ad agencies, but it wasn't until after his service in the U.S. Army during World War I that his career began to take shape. In the early 1920s, he made a quick transition from the art department of the Cleveland Press to the art department of the Cleveland Plain Dealer, and it was here that the "little people" made their first appearance in a strip called The Doonks .

Scott worked for five years in the late 1930s for Walt Disney Studios-working on animation features like Bambi, Fantasia, Pinocchio and Dumbo -but it was his work with the NEA syndicate in Cleveland that really defined the bulk of his career. He originally signed on as magazine art director with NEA in 1935, but after his Disney stint, he returned to the syndicate to work on the Captain Easy Sunday page (for Leslie Turner). Despite a demanding and diverse range of assignments for NEA, Scott was eventually able to launch his own Sunday comic strip in 1952, The Little People (with companion strip Huckleberry Hollow ). The feature was modestly successful over the years and yielded a number of comic book adaptations by Dell Comics written and drawn by Walt Scott. Scott continued to work on his signature creation until his death in 1970.