Nine Old Men: Ward Kimball
Remembering Walt Disney's Legendary Animators
Who were Disney's Nine Old Men? I run down the careers of the influential animators. This installment honours Ward Kimball (March 4, 1914 - July 8, 2002).
If Walt Disney's studio was the greatest animation factory of the 20th Century, then Walt's 'Nine Old Men' were its finest artists.
Ward Kimball (March 4, 1914 – July 8, 2002) was the youngest, and most flamboyant, member. He animated the Crows in Dumbo; Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland; Lucifer the Cat from Cinderella; and Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio. He also directed two Oscar-winning short films while leading the Firehouse Five Plus Two, and encouraging Walt Disney and Ollie Johnston's love of trains.
Ward Kimball: Disney's Mad Hatter
Ward Walrath Kimball was born March 4, 1914, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Kimball's mother recalled that his first recognizable drawing was of a train. He had three major interests: drawing, trains, and music. He eventually attended the Santa Barbara School of the Arts, intending to become a painter and illustrator.
There are conflicting reports about how Kimball joined Disney. The official story is that, like Milt Kahl, Kimball applied after watching "The Three Little Pigs." However, the New York Times claimed that he submitted his portfolio after his art professor urged him to do so. Nevertheless, Kimball joined Disney in 1934, and started as an in-betweener but by 1938, he was assisting Les Clark in redesigning Mickey Mouse.
"I worked the first two weeks for nothing and then got $15 a week," Kimball said in a 1978 interview. "There was no pay for overtime and no air conditioning. We stripped to the waist in the summer and, if a guy was taking himself too seriously, we'd stick a flutter pad under his seat so he'd make a rude noise when he sat down."
In a studio full of pranksters, Kimball stood out. He would quickly finish his daily workload, leaving him plenty of time to plot practical jokes.
“One early morning (Kimball) stocked all the restroom stalls in the Animation Building with pants filled with newspaper padding to make them appear occupied," recounted writer Michael Broggie. "It took several anxious hours for someone to figure out they’d been duped.”
However, his antics were tolerated because his drawings were so good. His first major job was animating Jiminy Cricket for 1940's Pinocchio. Author John Canemaker (Disney's Nine Old Men and the Art of Animation) said there was more than a little Kimball in the character.
"Ward was a feisty, plucky short guy with a big personality who wasn't shoved around by any man or cricket," Canemaker claimed.
By 1944, Kimball's status at Disney was bullet-proof. When his fellow animators saw his madcap sequence for the title song of The Three Caballeros, they warned Kimball that he had gone too far. However, Walt loved the sequence, and it set a standard for Disney silliness.
Another legendary sequence was for Lucifer the cat in Cinderella.
"Kimball has the cat's body conform to the shape of the staircase as he goes up, with the legs paddling in a very natural way," observed John Canemaker. "It was naturalistic animation but very cartoony."
The Firehouse Five Plus Two, "Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom" and "Man in Space"
In 1948, Kimball formed a traditional Dixieland jazz band with some fellow animators: the Firehouse Five Plus Two, in which he played trombone. At first Walt tolerated the group (as long as it didn't interfere with their studio work), but later encouraged the FFPT in its tours and recordings, and featured the band on his Sunday night show. At one point, the group's records outsold Dizzy Gillespie on the jazz charts.
In 1953, Kimball directed the Oscar-winning short "Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom," winning another Academy Award for 1969's "It's Tough to be a Bird."
In the early 1950's, after Walt put out a call for ideas for his proposed Tomorrowland, Kimball suggested that Walt meet with legendary rocketeer Wernher von Braun for some brainstorming sessions. The result was three hour-long films about space: 1955’s “Man in Space,” “Man and the Moon” and 1957’s “Mars and Beyond.” These films were so popular that President Eisenhower requested them for government use, and it's believed that these (plus Sputnik 1's maiden voyage in 1957) were responsible for sparking the U.S. space program.
Despite retiring from Disney in 1972, Kimball did publicity tours for the Mouse House, and worked on World of Motion for the EPCOT Center.
Ward Kimball died of pneumonia on July 8th, 2002.
(Thanks to the New York Times, Disney website and Animation Blast for material for this article)
Next Up: Animator and talent scout Eric Larson
