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

left|thumb|Kimball drawing [[Pecos Bill from Melody Time]]

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 Lisas 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

{| class="wikitable sortable"

! Year

! Title

! Credits

! Characters

|rowspan="7"| 1934 || The Hot Choc-late Soldiers (Short) || rowspan="10" | Animator ||

|The Wise Little Hen ||

| The Flying Mouse ||

|Orphan's Benefit ||

|Servants' Entrance||

|Mickey Plays Papa ||

|The Goddess of Spring ||

|rowspan="2"| 1935 || The Tortoise and the Hare ||

|Pluto's Judgement Day ||

|rowspan="3"| 1936 || Elmer Elephant ||

|Toby Tortoise Returns || Writer / Animation Director ||

|More Kittens || Animation Director ||

|rowspan="2"| 1937 || Woodland Café || rowspan="5" | Animator ||

|Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs ||

|rowspan="2"| 1938 || Ferdinand the Bull ||

|Mother Goose Goes Hollywood ||

| 1939 || The Autograph Hound ||

|rowspan="2"| 1940 || Pinocchio || Animation Director / Supervising Animator || Jiminy Cricket

|Fantasia || Animation Supervisor – Segment "The Pastoral Symphony" ||Bacchus and Jacchus

|rowspan="4"| 1941 || The Reluctant Dragon || rowspan="3" | Animator ||

|The Little Whirlwind ||

|The Nifty Nineties ||

|Dumbo || Animation Director ||The Crows

|rowspan="5"| 1942 || All Together (Short) || rowspan="17" | Animator ||

|Stop That Tank! ||

|Saludos Amigos||

|How to Play Baseball ||

|Der Fuehrer's Face ||

|rowspan="6"| 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 ||

|rowspan="3"| 1944 || The Pelican and the Snipe ||

|How to Play Football ||

| The Three Caballeros ||Title Song

|rowspan="2"| 1945 ||African Diary ||

|Hockey Homicide ||

|rowspan="2"| 1946 || Pluto's Kid Brother ||

|Make Mine Music || Animator <br>(Segments Casey at the Bat, Peter and the Wolf, Willie the Operatic Whale) ||

| 1947 || Fun and Fancy Free || Directing Animator <br>(Segments Bongo, Mickey and the Beanstalk) ||

| 1948 || Melody Time || Directing Animator <br>(Segments Johnny Appleseed, Blame It on the Samba, Pecos Bill) ||

| 1949 || The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad || Directing Animator <br>(Segments The Wind in the Willows, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow)||

| 1950 || Cinderella || Directing Animator ||Jaq, Gus, Lucifer

|rowspan="2"| 1951 || Alice in Wonderland || Directing Animator / Animator || Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Walrus, Cheshire Cat, Mad Hatter, March Hare

|How to Catch a Cold (Short) || Animator ||

|rowspan="4"| 1953 || Peter Pan || Directing Animator || John Darling, Chief Indian, Captain Hook

|Melody (Short) || Animator / Director ||

|How to Dance (Short) || Musician ||

|Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom (Short) || Animator / Director ||

|rowspan="2"| 1955 || Man in Space (Disneyland episode) || rowspan="2" | Writer / Director ||

|Man and the Moon (Disneyland episode) ||

|rowspan="2"| 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

|rowspan="2"| 1967 || Scrooge McDuck and Money (Short) || rowspan="2" | 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

thumb|The Ward Kimball locomotive pulling into New Orleans Square Station in Disneyland

thumb|Kimball operating his model train in 1977

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.

References

Sources

External links

Disney Legends
Animation Blast: Remembering Ward Kimball
View Escalation on Youtube
Official Southern California Railway Museum website and Grizzly Flats Railroad Page