Ward Kimball

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==

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, 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. ==Other activities==

Kimball was profiled by producer Jerry Fairbanks in his Paramount Pictures film short series Unusual Occupations. This 35mm Magnacolor film short was released theatrically in 1944; it focused on Kimball's backyard railroad and full-sized locomotive. Kimball was also a jazz trombonist. He founded and led the seven-piece Dixieland band Firehouse Five Plus Two, in which he played trombone. The band made at least 13 LP records and toured clubs, college campuses and jazz festivals from the 1940s to early 1970s. Kimball once said that Walt Disney permitted the second career as long as it did not interfere with his animation work. Kimball appeared on the March 17, 1954, episode of You Bet Your Life, in which Groucho Marx coaxed him into playing his trombone with the house band. He and his partner won $75 in their quiz portion of the show, including one Disney animation question that Kimball answered easily: the answer was Pinocchio. Kimball continued to work at Disney until 1974, working on the Disney anthology television series, being one of the writers for Babes in Toyland, creating animation for Mary Poppins, directing the animation for Bedknobs and Broomsticks, and working on titles for feature films such as The Adventures Of Bullwhip Griffin and Million Dollar Duck. His last staff work for Disney was producing and directing the Disney TV show The Mouse Factory, which ran from 1972 to 1974. He continued to do various projects on his own, even returning to do some publicity tours for the Disney corporation. He also worked on the World of Motion attraction for Disney's EPCOT Center. Kimball also produced two editions of a volume titled Art Afterpieces, 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==

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. ==See also==