Ward Kimball

Ward Walrath Kimball (March 4, 1914 – July 8, 2002) was an American animator employed by Walt Disney Animation Studios. He was part of Walt Disney's main team of animators, known collectively as Disney's Nine Old Men. His films have been honored with two Academy Awards for Best Animated Short Film.

Outside of his job as an animator, Kimball was a railroad enthusiast as well as a talented jazz trombonist. He founded and led the seven-piece Dixieland band Firehouse Five Plus Two, in which he played the trombone.

Early life Kimball was born on March 4, 1914, in Minneapolis. His father was a salesman who traveled widely. He grew up in the Midwest, often residing with his grandparents.

Career

While Kimball was a brilliant draftsman, he preferred to work on comical characters rather than realistic human designs. Animating came easily to him and he was constantly looking to do things differently. Because of this, Walt Disney called Ward a genius in the book The Story of Walt Disney. While there were many talented animators at Disney, Ward's efforts stand out as unique.

According to Jeff Lenburg's assessment of him, Kimball was a pioneer animator and a great innovator of his time. He instilled life to diverse Disney characters, such as Mickey Mouse, Jiminy Cricket, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, Captain Hook and Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Kimball attended the Santa Barbara School of the Arts in order to become a painter and illustrator. Kimball's instructor at the school suggested to him that his work should be submitted to Walt Disney Productions (later known as the Walt Disney Animation Studios), and that he should pursue a career in animation.

Following the release of Snow White, Kimball was promoted to a supervising or directing animator. He would remain in this position until his retirement in the 1970s. His employer Walt Disney was sufficiently satisfied with Kimball's work that he entrusted him with designing the new character Jiminy Cricket in the Disney Studio's next feature film, Pinocchio. It took Kimball 12 or 14 drafts before completing his final design of Jiminy. ) Kimball's next major task was designing the sympathetic Crows in Dumbo (1941). Following the example of the Seven Dwarfs from Snow White, Kimball had to give each crow a distinct appearance and character. The film was reportedly successful in the American box office, earning about 3 to 4 million dollars. Melody was the Disney studio's first animated 3D film;

Kimball served as a screenwriter for the featurette Eyes In Outer Space (1959). The film combined live action and animation. It depicted weather satellites and explained how the weather is predicted. The film was originally theatrically released. Around 1962, it started being shown in Disneyland. He worked on the World of Motion attraction for Disney's EPCOT Center. in which he revised various well-known works of art, such as putting Mona Lisa'''s hair up in curlers, showing Whistler's Mother watching TV, and adding a Communist flag and Russian boots to Pinkie. These masterpiece remixes are thought to have been appropriated by the street artist Banksy.

His three acting appearances on film were an uncredited role as a jazz musician (with his Firehouse Five Plus Two) in Hit Parade of 1951, an IRS Chief in Mike Jittlov's The Wizard of Speed and Time, and voicing and giving his likeness to half of the vaudeville duo "Ward and Fred" in the Mickey Mouse short The Nifty Nineties (with fellow Disney animator Fred Moore). Kimball served as host of the "Man in Space" and "Man and the Moon" episodes of Disneyland in 1955 and 1956 respectively. He hosted the second season of the 1992 PBS series Tracks Ahead. That season has since been repackaged to feature current host Spencer Christian.

As recounted in Neal Gabler's biography of Walt Disney, Ward Kimball was a key figure in spreading the urban legend that Disney had left instructions for his body to be preserved by cryonics after his death.

Amid Amidi wrote a biography of Kimball, Full Steam Ahead: The Life and Art of Ward Kimball that was projected for publication in the fall of 2012. However, publication of the biography was canceled in February 2013, which Amidi believed was due to pressure from the Disney corporation.

Filmography Year Title Credits Characters 1934 The Hot Choc-late Soldiers (Short) Animator The Wise Little Hen The Flying Mouse Orphan's Benefit Servants' EntranceMickey Plays Papa The Goddess of Spring 1935 The Tortoise and the Hare Pluto's Judgement Day 1936 Elmer Elephant Toby Tortoise Returns Writer / Animation Director More Kittens Animation Director 1937 Woodland Café Animator Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1938 Ferdinand the Bull Mother Goose Goes Hollywood 1939 The Autograph Hound 1940 Pinocchio Animation Director / Supervising Animator Jiminy CricketFantasia Animation Supervisor – Segment "The Pastoral Symphony" Bacchus and Jacchus 1941 The Reluctant Dragon Animator The Little Whirlwind The Nifty Nineties Dumbo Animation Director The Crows 1942 All Together (Short) Animator Stop That Tank! Saludos AmigosHow to Play Baseball Der Fuehrer's Face 1943 The Spirit of '43 Education for Death: The Making of the Nazi Victory Through Air Power (Documentary) Victory Vehicles Reason and Emotion Chicken Little 1944 The Pelican and the Snipe How to Play Football The Three Caballeros Title Song 1945 African Diary Hockey Homicide 1946 Pluto's Kid Brother Make Mine Music Animator (Segments Casey at the Bat, Peter and the Wolf, Willie the Operatic Whale) 1947 Fun and Fancy Free Directing Animator (Segments Bongo, Mickey and the Beanstalk) 1948 Melody Time Directing Animator (Segments Johnny Appleseed, Blame It on the Samba, Pecos Bill) 1949 The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad Directing Animator (Segments The Wind in the Willows, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow) 1950 Cinderella Directing Animator Jaq, Gus, Lucifer 1951 Alice in Wonderland Directing Animator / Animator Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Walrus, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter, March HareHow to Catch a Cold (Short) Animator 1953 Peter Pan Directing Animator John Darling, Chief Indian, Captain HookMelody (Short) Animator / Director How to Dance (Short) Musician Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom (Short) Animator / Director 1955 Man in Space (Disneyland episode) Writer / Director Man and the Moon (Disneyland episode) 1957 Cosmic Capers (Documentary short) Writer / Director / Producer Mars and Beyond (Disneyland episode) Writer / Director 1959 Eyes in Outer Space (Documentary short) Writer / Director / Producer 1961 Babes in Toyland Writer 1964 Mary Poppins Animator Pearly Band 1967 Scrooge McDuck and Money (Short) Animator The Adventures of Bullwhip Griffin 1968 Escalation (TV Short) Director 1969 It's Tough to Be a Bird Writer / Director / Producer 1970 Dad... Can I Borrow the Car? Director / Producer 1971 Bedknobs and Broomsticks Animation Director 1972–73 The Mouse Factory Director / Producer (43 episodes)

Railfan

Along with his employer and friend Walt Disney, and friend Ollie Johnston, Kimball collected old railroad ephemera. He was also an avid collector of model trains. Kimball was an avid railway enthusiast from a young age, having grown up in Parsons, Kansas, near the massive Katy Railroad facilities. One of his first childhood drawings was of a locomotive, and he said that his mother called him a "marked" baby because of his early infatuation with railroads.

Kimball donated his narrow-gauge collection to the Southern California Railway Museum (formerly the Orange Empire Railway Museum) in Perris, California. A full-size steam locomotive, which Kimball ran on his private backyard railroad known as Grizzly Flats Railroad in San Gabriel, California, bears some of his original artwork on the headlamp and cab, and is on permanent display at the museum. Kimball's roundhouse also included two small steam engines that had been used on sugar cane plantations, one of which was his and the other was owned by his friend, noted railroad historian Gerald M. Best. In recognition of his love of railroading and support of the Southern California Railway Museum, the Perris Transit Center, where the museum's historic trains travel, is dedicated to Mr. Kimball. In a rare deviation from its usually tight copyright policy, the Disney corporation allowed the city to decorate the transit center with Kimball's artwork. The center is currently served by Riverside Transit Agency buses, with train service as part of the Metrolink 91/Perris Valley Line.

Kimball is credited with helping Walt Disney for the inspiration to install the Disneyland Railroad at Disneyland. The inspiration for the Disneyland Railroad also partly came from Disney's personal gauge, live steam backyard Carolwood Pacific Railroad, which Kimball had partially constructed. Kimball's Grizzly Flats train station served as the model for the Disneyland Frontierland Train Station. As a tribute to Kimball, Engine No. 5 of the Disneyland Railroad is named the Ward Kimball.

Kimball's talents are also evident in the reproduction steam locomotives built for the National Park Service at the Golden Spike National Historic Site at Promontory, Utah. Kimball helped match colors with an engine at the Smithsonian Institution and painted the artwork for the replicas of the Union Pacific No. 119 and Central Pacific Jupiter built by O'Connor Engineering Laboratories for the Park Service. Kimball was also in the 1975 video Model Railroading Unlimited as the host in the beginning of the movie and was showing parts of his GFRR. Kimball was featured in the 1987 Great Toy Train Layouts of America book and in the first installment of the Great Toy Train Layouts of America video series in 1988, produced by TM Books and Video. Kimball was a longtime member of the Train Collectors Association, a hobby association with the mission of preserving and promoting the history and enjoyment of toy trains through research, education, and community; setting collecting standards; and fostering appreciation for "Tinplate Toy Trains" and model railroading via museums, libraries, conventions, and local events for hobbyists worldwide. He was the national president of the organization from 1974 to 1975 and personally helped design some of the distinctive features of their national headquarters building in Strasburg, Pennsylvania.

Escalation

In 1968, Kimball directed a two-minute animated short called Escalation, which criticized Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam War policy.

Death Kimball died in 2002 in Arcadia, California of complications from pneumonia at age 88. In 2005, the Disneyland Railroad named its newly acquired locomotive No. 5 "Ward Kimball" in his memory.

Archive The Academy Film Archive houses the Kimball Family Collection which includes over 60 home movie reels, as well as short films, TV spots, and jazz band performances, serving to document Ward's personal interests and moments in his extraordinary career. The collection also includes home movies and shorts by his son, filmmaker and animator John Kimball. The archive has preserved several of the Kimball family home movies, including family vacations to Death Valley and Disneyland.