Swift began his career as an animator and filmmaker at The Walt Disney Studios where he adapted the story of Pollyanna for the screen and wrote and directed The Parent Trap (1961).

After the depression, he dropped out of school at the age of 17 and boarded a freight train to California to pursue his goal of working for Walt Disney.

[1] He began his career at The Walt Disney Studio as an office boy and rose to be an assistant animator under Ward Kimball in 1938.

His final project was the screenplay for the 1998 remake of The Parent Trap, starring Lindsay Lohan, Natasha Richardson and Dennis Quaid.

[1] On December 31, 2001, Swift died of heart failure at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California, at the age of 82.