A magazine article once described him as "Cartoonist, painter, antique auto collector, railroad-in-his-back-yard Kimball, trombonist, photographer, leader of the Firehouse Five: all these are one and the same guy." Add to that humorist, pilot, ambassador for space exploration, political activist, two-time Oscar-winning director, and last but certainly not least, animator, and it's still a hardly sufficient description of the multi-faceted life and career of Ward Kimball.
Over the years, Ward Kimball has grown to become my favorite of the Disney Nine Old Men and also one of my favorite animation artists of all time. I can hardly claim to be the only member of his fan club though. Ward Kimball has fans all over: animation aficionados, jazz buffs, toy train hobbyists, and even UFO conspiracy theorists each have their own individual reasons for liking Ward. This piece is my attempt to explain why I enjoy his work so much. I will try to refrain from simply recounting his many accomplishments. For a full biographical survey of Ward's career, one should look no further than John Canemaker's excellent book, WALT DISNEY'S NINE OLD MEN.
It would be fitting to begin the discussion with his animation work, which is where he began his formal career in the arts. Ward Kimball has always struck me as being the quintessential animator. When I read about artists who played gags on each other and the crazy studio atmosphere of the Golden Age, I can't help but conjure up the image of the impish bushy-eyebrowed Kimball running amok and causing all sorts of mayhem. There are certainly enough stories around to support this image I have of Ward. Of course, simply having the spirit of an animator would be of little consequence had he also not been a terrific animator. And Kimball was, as he proved time and time again with the memorable animated performances he created: to name just a few, the crows in DUMBO, Bacchus in FANTASIA, Jiminy Cricket in PINOCCHIO, the Cheshire Cat in ALICE IN WONDERLAND and the lively title song in THE THREE CABALLEROS with Donald Duck, Jose Carioca and Panchito.
While Kimball brought to life many of the now-classic characters and moments from the Disney features, it became increasingly apparent by the late-Forties that Kimball's talents were not being utilized to their fullest extent as an animator. It wasn't until the Fifties, when he made the switch over to directing and producing films, that his sophisticated graphic sensibility and humorous and intellectual tendencies found a receptive home. Most of his projects from this era casually inform as well as entertain: his stylized masterpieces MELODY and TOOT, WHISTLE, PLUNK & BOOM teach music theory, the space specials for the TV show DISNEYLAND introduced a generation of Americans to the vast subject of outer space, and IT'S TOUGH TO BE A BIRD focused on the lives of our feathered friends. It was in these projects that he could indulge his own curiosities (like space exploration) and incorporate his own personal experiences into the films (as he did in TOOT WHISTLE, where the series of popping string gags was inspired by Harper Goff's banjo troubles during one of their live Firehouse Five performances). Thoughtful, stylized, and funny - these films are vintage Kimball.
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Owing to his diverse interests and hobbies, Ward Kimball must hold some sort of record for the number of guests he has entertained at his home over the years. I count myself among the lucky thousands to have visited Ward's home. After a brief encounter with him at a screening of Cinemascope Disney shorts, I mustered up the courage to call him and invite myself to his place in fall 2000. His semi-suburban San Gabriel home looked as ordinary as any other house on the block, but the train tracks which snaked their way to the front of the house quickly reminded me that this was anything but an ordinary residence.
My official reason for visiting Kimball headquarters was to interview him about Tom Oreb. It was during this chat that I first learned of the truly unique character of Ward. Everybody I'd interviewed up until then had offered interesting stories and remembrances about Tom, but the type of things that Ward remembered about his former colleague were quite unlike anything else - they were the slight eccentricities of Tom that made him stand out from the rest, bits so trivial that they would have long been forgotten by everybody else. Ward however reveled in this minutiae, and to see it from his perspective, these were the things that make individuals unique. He remembered the way in which Tom would greet people in the hallway ("When he'd pass somebody in the hallway, his head would be down, and his first finger would be sticking out beyond his pocket, and he'd make a little whistle sound.") or how Tom would sneak out of meetings ("Every time somebody coughed or rustled papers, he'd shift his chair a few inches towards the door, and another few, and he'd disappear halfway through the meeting."). His remembrance of Oreb's first wife segued into an even more fascinating bit of drollery: he recalled that Oreb's father-in-law had invented a machine - "a chrome box with two suction cups that you could turn the wheels on each side and it would work your eyeballs so you could relax." He then added with particular delight, "And it actually worked."
His unique perspective on life often found its way back into his art. In his classic Dada exercise ART AFTERPIECES, he subtly (and not so subtly) alters paintings by masters like Michaelangelo, Titian, Rubens and Manet, to give their works a completely new (and quite often, more sensible) meaning. Once I'd seen the Kimball updates, it was hard to look at the originals again without feeling that something was amiss. Here he had succeeded in making others see the conventional world through his unconventional eyes.
The flamboyant personality of Ward is indeed a large part of his appeal. In a world of conformity, he threw aside all our practical conventions and protocols, and chose to live life to his own tune. It's hard not to chuckle when I see a gift book he'd signed to T. Hee, where underneath his signature he points out in parentheses, "I spent 2 hours reading this book before I wrapped it!" Or when he leans against an elderly lady to think, during his TV appearance on YOU BET YOUR LIFE, he does this so matter-of-factly as if to suggest that using old ladies as leaning posts is part of his everyday routine. There are no shortage of stories about Ward, ranging from the ridiculous to the ribald, but the underlying theme to all of them seems to be an authentic desire to live life in the manner which he saw fit, even if it meant knocking over a few sacred cows along the way.
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During my second visit to Ward's place - my clever excuse this time was to return the materials I'd borrowed on the first visit - Ward told me the whole story about his anti-Vietnam film ESCALATION. Holding special status as the only independent film ever produced by one of the Nine Old Men, Ward recounted fondly how it had played to receptive audiences when he had taken it around the college circuit and also his dismay that none of today's animation historians would write an article about the film. During this visit, he also showed me another side of his talents: his fine art. He brought out a box of jaw-droppingly gorgeous pastel figure drawings he'd drawn at life drawing sessions he used to hold at his house in the Forties for himself and fellow artists. The drawings combined an element of cartooniness and caricature with a level of draftsmanship that left no doubts about how great of an artist he was. And then there were his paintings of family members and friends, expertly executed in an array of styles ranging from Cubist to Surrealist, but never lacking that light-hearted Kimball touch. There are plenty of folks who have to work very hard to draw funny, but Kimball's personal art, whether it's a quick gag drawing or a detailed painting, always exudes a natural, effortless sense of humor.
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Ward managed to go against the grain in nearly everything he did. In his Firehouse Five + Two records, Ward and company went retro before going retro had become fashionable. Floyd Levin, a jazz writer from that era, recently wrote of the groundbreaking nature of Ward's Firehouse Five recordings: "To properly assess the importance of Ward Kimball's contribution to jazz history, a brief overview of the 1949 scene is necessary. The word 'traditional' had not yet been conceived (by Turk Murphy) as a descriptive adjective for the music. Live performances were sporadic, and very few records were available. Despite our fervent pleas, the three major record firms (there were only three!), flushed with the success of their big band recordings, steadfastly refused to reissue the many cherished gems gathering dust in their vaults...Against this dismal backdrop, the Good Time Jazz Record Company, armed with Ward Kimball's Firehouse Five Recordings, dared to challenge an industry that turned its back on the "old fashioned" music. Remember, this occurred during the postwar wasteland when jazz, which had lost favor during the swing era, was also reeling from the "blows" of the emerging bebop fad." To top off the retro-Dixieland package, Ward and company traveled to musical outings on his antique firetruck. The Firehouse Five recordings, while always safely nestled somewhere on the fringes of jazz and pop music, were reportedly popular enough to outsell Dizzy Gillespie's bebop recordings during the early '50s.
Ward Kimball's work has yet to be collected in a manner where everybody can appreciate the full diversity of his output. I hope that one of these days there'll be a book collecting his fine art, his ASININE ALLEY comics, his "Kinetic Constructions" and everything else that he produced during his lifetime. I, and a fellow animator friend who happens to be a Kimball fanatic, had planned to approach him about doing such a book while he was still alive. I envisioned something grand, along the lines of Cameron Crowe's brilliant collection of interviews with Billy Wilder, which resulted in the book CONVERSATIONS WITH WILDER. Somehow though, I couldn't bring myself to bother him at his advanced age with even the proposition of such a time-consuming project. Although Ward is no longer with us, his art still exists, and I'm sure I would be only the first of many who would love to buy a book of Kimball art.
In 1957, Ward Kimball was awarded the title "Escapader of the Year" by a men's lifestyle magazine of the era called ESCAPADE. The editors of the magazine seemed awed that any one man could partake in so many different hobbies, interests and careers, but they certainly got it right when they said, "Most important of all, Ward has mastered the art of living."
