Alwyn Walter Peregoy was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1925. Walt spent his early childhood on a small island in San Francisco Bay. He was nine years old when he began his formal art training, attending Saturday classes at the California College of Arts and Crafts in Berkeley. When he was 12, Walt’s family returned to Los Angeles, where he enrolled in Chouinard Art Institute’s life drawing classes. At age 17, he dropped out of high school and went to work for Disney as an in-betweener, an artist who creates drawings that connect the main poses of an animation.

After serving in the Coast Guard during World War II, Walt continued his art education, studying at the University de Belles Artes, San Miguel de Allende in Guanajuato, Mexico, and with Fernand Léger in Paris.

In 1951, with a young family in tow, Walt returned to the United States, and resumed his career with The Walt Disney Studios. Initially, he served as a designer and animator on Peter Pan (1953) and Lady and the Tramp (1955).

Walt’s unique style meshed well with that of his contemporary, stylist Eyvind Earle, and their work on the Academy Award®-nominated short Paul Bunyan was a departure for Disney. “My style was unusual for Walt Disney, but he tolerated me,” Walt later said. Although, since he was “tolerated” for 14 years, the artist sheepishly admitted, “I had to be doing something right.”

Walt is perhaps best known for his work as color stylist on One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961). “To this day, Walt Peregoy’s color styling in One Hundred and One Dalmatians remains a fine example of how color can be used creatively in animation while serving more than a merely decorative function,” modern animation authority Amid Amidi once said.