Biography
Paul J. Smith (also credited as Paul Smith) was an American composer and violinist. He was born on 30 October 1906 in Calumet, Michigan, and died on 25 January 1985 in Glendale, California.
Smith studied music at the College of Idaho from 1923 to 1925 and at the Bush Conservatory of Music in Chicago. He joined Walt Disney Studios in 1934 and remained there until 1962. His film scores include Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), for which he received an Academy Award nomination, Pinocchio (1940), for which he shared an Academy Award for Best Original Score with Leigh Harline and Ned Washington, and Cinderella (1950). He also composed for many other Disney animated features, shorts and True-Life Adventures documentaries, as well as some live-action films and the television series Leave It to Beaver (1962–1963). He appeared as a violinist in the orchestra in Fantasia (1940).
Smith received further Academy Award nominations for Saludos Amigos (1942), Victory Through Air Power (1943), The Three Caballeros (1945), Song of the South (1946), Cinderella (1950) and Perri (1957). He was posthumously named a Disney Legend in 1994.
