Joe Grant was born at 1908 in New York City. After school, he began his career as a caricaturist. In 1933, he was hired by Disney for the Mickey Mouse short movie "Mickey's Gala Premiere". In the next years, he, Albert Hurter, Dick Huemer and Fred Moore were the studios' most important character animator. He created the witch in "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937). Grant and Huemer created books for "Fantasia" and "Dumbo". Later, he was the head of the "Character Animation Department" at Disney. This department was closed in 1949 and Grant left Disney.