A Tribute to Ward Kimball
By Charles Solomon
It's hard for me to believe I first got to know Ward Kimball exactly
23 years ago. During the summer of 1979, I was invited to join the
board of ASIFA/Hollywood, which was primarily a professional organization
then. I was working on a master of fine arts in animation at the
UCLA film school and was just beginning to write for the LA Times
and other publications. Ward was already on the board. I was a little
intimidated to meet one of the celebrated Nine Old Men, but the
mischievous grin behind his outsized round glasses soon put me at
ease.
Over the next two decades, I learned that although Ward enjoyed
playing the curmudgeon, there was a gracious and warm man underneath
the crotchety pose. I spent many hours with him, conducting interviews
about his career at Disney, riding on the Grizzly Flats Railroad
-- the full-sized 1881 steam locomotive and cars he had restored
and installed on a track in the back yard of his San Gabriel home
-- and just chatting at animation events.
I was saddened to learn of the death of this colorful and eccentric
artist on July 8, 2002, from natural causes; he was 88.
Ward Kimball was born on March 4, 1914, in Minneapolis. He attended
the Santa Barbara School of the Arts, intending to become a painter/illustrator.
In March of 1934, an instructor persuaded him to submit a portfolio
to the Walt Disney Studio in Los Angeles. Kimball later told animation
historian John Canemaker that he insisted they accept or reject
him on the spot, declaring "I don't have enough money to buy
gas to come back!" They accepted him. Kimball began work at
Disney in April, 1934, and remained there for 39 years. He quickly
rose through the ranks to become a supervising animator.
Ward spent months animating a sequence in an early
draft of "Snow White" that showed the Dwarfs eating soup in a variety
of humorous ways. When Walt cut the sequence from the film, Ward
was ready to quit. He had put eight months of hard work into this
now-eliminated scene. But when he went to see his boss, Walt began
talking about "Pinocchio" and how he wanted Kimball to
animate the cricket who would be the title character's conscience.
Defusing a problem on one film, by building an artist's enthusiasm
for the next one, was one of Walt's most effective strategies. As
Kimball said, "Walt was a salesman!"
The design of Jiminy Cricket proved difficult. Kimball explained,
"Normally, an artist caricatures an animal by learning to it
draw correctly -- then the caricature becomes a simple problem of
degree. But a cricket looks like a cross between a cockroach and
grasshopper. I did 12 or 14 versions, and gradually cut out all
the insect appendages. I ended up with a little man who looks like
Mr. Pickwick, but with no ears, no nose, and no hair. The audience
accepts him as a cricket because the other characters say he is."
The madcap finale of "The Three Caballeros" (1945) is
generally considered Kimball's most characteristic work. Donald
Duck, José Carioca, and Panchito zip around the screen, performing
the title number as props appear and disappear. The song ends with
Panchito holding the last note for an impossible 20 seconds, while
Donald and José scramble for ways to silence him. Director
Clyde "Gerry" Geronimi objected to Kimball's illogical
cutting within the sequence: Donald may exit to the right and re-enter
from the left. But Walt liked the effect and, as Kimball observed,
"that was all that mattered."
In 1948, Kimball formed the Firehouse Five Plus Two
with other Disney artists, including Frank Thomas, another of the
Nine Old Men, on piano. They began playing for noon dances on studio
sound stages, with Kimball leading and playing trombone. The Firehouse
Five soon graduated to nightclubs, appeared on the Milton Berle
and Ed Sullivan shows, and recorded 12 albums (which have been reissued
on CD). In his later years, Kimball was bemused to receive fan mail
-- and royalty checks -- from a group that disbanded when the members
tired of "the late hours, the extra effort, and the frenzy."

Ward and Walt during productions of "Alice in Wonderland"
After working on Lucifer, in "Cinderella,"
Kimball animated Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter and March
Hare, and the Cheshire Cat in "Alice in Wonderland," which
was released in 1951. Although he found the finished film disappointing,
Kimball said, "I didn't realize it at the time, but the Cheshire
Cat is the maddest thing in the whole picture because he was underplayed.
He didn't move much -- he'd finish a word and accent it with a quick
flipping back and forth of the tail, then he'd go into that grin.
I didn't realize it was so mad."
Of the Nine Old Men, Kimball was the most interested in the animation
of other studios, especially the graphic innovations of UPA. As
his work with Jiminy Cricket and the Crows in "Dumbo"
show, he was capable of doing nuanced and touching character animation.
But he chafed at the realistic style of the personality-driven features
of the '50s.
When Walt assigned him to direct "Adventures in Music: Melody,"
the studio's first 3-D cartoon, and "Toot Whistle Plunk and
Boom," Disney's first CinemaScope short, Kimball used a flattened
perspective, more stylized action, broader cartoon takes, and contemporary
graphics. "Toot Whistle" won the Oscar for Best Cartoon
-- the first the studio had received since "Der Fuehrer's Face"
in 1943. (Kimball directed a second Oscar-winner in 1969, "It's
Tough to Be a Bird," which also featured stylized visuals and
irreverent humor.)
He followed these innovative shorts with three one-hour programs
for the "Disneyland" TV series: "Man in Space"
and "Man and the Moon" in 1955, and "Mars and Beyond"
in 1957. Kimball described these offbeat mixtures of animation,
live action, fact, fiction, and humor as "the creative high
point of my career." He later worked on the live-action musical
"Babes in Toyland" in 1961 and produced and directed 43
episodes of the syndicated series "The Mouse Factory"
in the early 1970s.
Kimball retired from the Disney Studio in 1973, but in 1978, he
served as the conductor on the "Birthday Special," a cross-country
whistle-stop train tour to celebrate Mickey Mouse's 50th birthday.
He also helped to design the 1982 "World of Motion" attraction
for the Epcot Center in Florida.
An irreverent, iconoclastic man, Kimball was an exceptional caricaturist.
He kept a notebook filled with hundreds of gag cartoons he and his
assistant Walt Kelly, the future creator of "Pogo," drew
of each other during the late '30s. Kimball's eccentricities invited
caricature: He favored outsized glasses and deliberately mismatched
plaids. He was caricatured as one of the "Two Clever Boys from
Illinois" in the vaudeville show Mickey and Minnie attend in
the 1941 cartoon "Nifty Nineties," and as the thuggish
caveman in "Reason and Emotion" in 1943.

Ward Kimball in a caricature by fellow animator Mel Shaw
Kimball is survived by his wife of 66 years, Betty; three children;
five grandchildren; and two great grandchildren. He met Betty when
she was working in the studio ink and paint department. Over the
years, Ward presented her with such unusual gifts as a paper doll
of himself. He had a photographer shoot a life-sized picture of
him in his underwear, then added tabs to photos of his clothes.
Not long after I met Ward, I offered to make a donation to a favorite
charity if he would do a drawing for me. He dismissed my offer,
replying, "Aw, hell, I'll do something for you right now,"
and drew a lively portrait of Mickey Mouse in my sketch book. I
still have that drawing, framed, and I treasure it as a souvenir
of a singular artist and the time we spent together.
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