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Spotlight On: Ward Kimball

Ward Kimball

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 Kimball and Walt Disney
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.

Caricature of Ward Kimball
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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