Ward Kimball

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 Wards efforts stand out as especially uniqueKimball created several classic Disney characters including the Crows in Dumbo Tweedledum and Tweedledee the Mad Hatter and the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland the Mice and Lucifer the Cat from Cinderella and Jiminy Cricket fromPinocchio He also animated the famous Three Caballeros musical number from the Disney film of the same nameIn 1953 Kimball became a director and was responsible for the Academy Awardwinning short Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom and three Disney television shows about outer space that put the United States into the space program He received anAcademy Award for the short animated cartoon Its Tough to Be a BirdWard Kimball was profiled by the Academy Awardwinning producer Jerry Fairbanks in his Paramount Pictures film short series Unusual Occupations This 35mm Magnacolor film short was released theatrically in 1944 and focused on Kimballs backyard railroad and full sized locomotiveKimball was also a jazz trombonist He founded and led the sevenpiece 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 workKimball continued to work at Disney up until the early 1970s 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 He continued to do various projects on his own even returning to Disney to do some publicity tours Additionally Kimball worked on an attraction for Disneys EPCOT Center called The World Of Motion