After his death, the studio that bares his name would continue almost annual visits to show biz�s night of nights. However, even with all that gold raining down, Walt Disney Pictures has never got the big one -- Best Picture. Sure, the Disney-owned Miramax label has took home three (The English Patient, Shakespeare in Love, Chicago) and looks poised to claim another one this year (with either No Country for Old Men or There Will Be Blood). In addition, a handful of releases from Touchstone Pictures (Dead Poets Society, The Insider) and Hollywood Pictures (Quiz Show, The Sixth Sense) have been invited into the top five. But to date, only two Disney-branded films -- Mary Poppins and Beauty and the Beast -- have even been nominated for Best Picture. The sad reality is that Disney is the only major Hollywood studio to have never won a Best Picture Academy Award.

To add insult to injury, since the inception of the Best Animated Feature category in 2001, no homegrown Disney production has won that one either. Yes, Pixar has been victorious twice, with Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, and will likely do so again with Ratatouille come February 24; plus, the Disney distributed Spirited Away won in 2002, and Lilo & Stitch, Treasure Planet and Brother Bear have all received nominations. Nevertheless, considering that it was Disney�s revitalization of the medium in the late 80�s/early 90�s that contributed to the creation of the award in the first place, it is a bit embarrassing that a full-fledged Disney animated feature has never actually won it (and the fact that that upstart ogre from DreamWorks took home the first one doesn�t help either).

Where Disney has excelled at grabbing the gold guy�s attention has been in the shorts, documentary and music categories. One could say that, like the Best Animated Feature award decades later, the animated short subject category (known as �Best Cartoon� in its first years, beginning in 1932) was created with Disney in mind as well. Moreover, unlike with the feature prize, Disney won the first animated short Oscar, for Flowers and Trees, the first Technicolor cartoon. That one was a Silly Symphony, and over the next eight years, the series won seven Oscars for the studio, out of nine total nominations. (And that one year a Symphony didn�t win, the award still went to Disney, for Ferdinand the Bull.)

Ironically, an actual Mickey Mouse cartoon never won an Oscar. But his pal Donald Duck (Der Fuehrer's Face) and even his dog Pluto (Lend a Paw) did. All in all, seven Mickeys were nominated (including two more recent bids, Mickey�s Christmas Carol and Runaway Brain), followed by ten total for Donald, three for Pluto and only two for Goofy.

With the creation of the True Life Adventures series in 1948 with Seal Island, Disney started another round of domination, this time in the documentary short and feature categories. Five of the seven TLA shorts and three of the six features won Oscars. Even the less successful spin-off series, Peoples and Places, won one for its first outing, The Alaskan Eskimo.

This brings us to another historic night, March 25, 1954, when Walt set yet another record, winning four Academy Awards in one night. His productions -- The Living Desert, The Alaskan Eskimo, Bear Country and Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom -- swept the short and documentary races. And the record still stands today (some have come close by winning three), although Joel and Ethan Coen may tie it this year with their No Country for Old Men, which they produced, directed, wrote and edited (under the pseudonym �Roderick Jaynes�).