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TAG FOR “Ward Kimball”Cartoon Brew's home for up-to-the-minute, unedited announcements and press releases direct from industry sources.
March 15, 2011 8:30 pm
Some will point out that a decent amount of Ward’s work is already available: Toot Whistle Plunk and Boom and Melody appeared on the Disney Rarities DVD, and the space specials and Eyes in Outer Space were featured in the Tomorrow Land Treasures. However, a lot of Ward’s most memorable work as a director, including some of the studio’s oft-requested cult favorites, have never been released onto DVD. The majority of these works are from his later period when he was at his satirical peak. As an exercise in wishful thinking, here’s what my ideal Ward Kimball collection would include: 55 Comments » posted in Disney, Ward Kimball 
January 11, 2011 3:28 pm
For nearly thirty years, animation legend Ward Kimball contributed a cartoon page called “Asinine Alley” to the bi-monthly magazine Horseless Carriage Gazette, which was a specialized magazine geared towards collectors of vintage automobiles. For a few issues, he also created ads for Mobil, and someone on Ward’s very active Facebook page has been posting them on-line. I read an interview with Ward once in which he described how Walt Disney became angry when he saw these ads displayed at a studio show, and told Ward that he couldn’t do them anymore. Ward said he was never paid for the ads and was making them as a favor to the magazine, but nevertheless, he stopped. The last one was created in 1960. Like the cartoons he created for the Gazette, the ads are created in a diverse range of styles from cartoon drawings to collage paste-ups to photography. A gallery of Ward’s Mobil ads can be seen after the jump: 8 Comments » posted in Cartoon Culture, Ward Kimball, Horseless Carriage Gazette
October 30, 2010 4:21 pm
Even animation legends, like this guy, dress up for Halloween!
4 Comments » posted in Ward Kimball
August 26, 2010 7:28 pm
Brew reader Topher writes, “I saw these on the Disney channel. They are called BLAM! and they are horrendous. Disney cartoons with America’s Funniest Home Videos style commentary and horrible music running over every second of footage. Why they don’t just show the cartoons I have no idea.” Personally, I have no problem with remixing footage that might be too slow-paced for today’s media-saturated kiddies. The idea for Blam! is nothing new. Ward Kimball did the same thing in the 1970s with his TV series The Mouse Factory (watch an episode of the series with Don Knotts). The difference was that Ward edited and packaged the cartoons in a witty and fun way that enhanced an audience’s appreciation for the source material and made the viewer want to seek out the original shorts. These Blam! episodes, which are probably named so because the viewer wants to blam their head off after watching them, destroy the spirit of the Disney cartoons and over-explain every joke to the point where it becomes unfunny. I’ve included three in this post so you can judge for yourself. UPDATE: Pixar’s Up has been “blammed”! 115 Comments » posted in Disney, Ward Kimball, The Mouse Factory
July 4, 2010 4:37 pm
Betty Lawyer Kimball passed away last Thursday evening at the age of 97. She died from natural causes. Betty (birth name: Mary Elizabeth Lawyer) was born on October 14, 1912 in Alhambra, California. After high school, she attended Pasadena Junior College and worked on various stage productions at the Alhambra Theater. In the mid-1930s, she directed one-act plays at the Pasadena Playhouse as part of a WPA arts project. In 1935, she was hired at Walt Disney Productions to work in the ink-and-paint department. At Disney, she met animator Ward Kimball whom she married in 1936. Their marriage last 66 years until Ward’s death in 2002. Betty worked her way up the ranks at Disney and her duties expanded from painting cels to also choosing colors and creating color models to guide the work of other painters. She “did a lot of experimenting for Fantasia,” her husband Ward said. “She developed the dry-brush technique on cels.” She also provided live-action reference modeling for the title character in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs when the live-action model, Marjorie Belcher, was unavailable. She left the studio in mid-1939 to raise a family. Her life as a homemaker was hardly conventional due to the couple’s decision to install full-sized locomotives in their backyard which became known as the Grizzly Flats Railroad. She assumed an integral role in the railroad’s operation as it attracted national media attention and a steady stream of visitors. Her husband Ward is an undeniable legend, one of Disney’s Nine Old Men and a great artist and director, but Ward’s achievements cannot be explained without some acknowledgment of Betty’s role. Beneath her petite frame was a resilient and strong woman. She was a teammate in many of Ward’s endeavors, and provided encouragement, grounding, and support throughout her lifetime. I had the privilege of getting to know Betty a little bit in the past few years, and she was one of the sweetest people one could hope to meet. It was inspiring to meet someone who maintained a positive outlook and sense of humor throughout their lifetime. She is survived by three children, Kelly, John, and Chloe, and five grandchildren. Here are some moments celebrating Betty’s life. All of the photos are from the Kimball Family Collection:
56 Comments » posted in Animators, Disney, Ward Kimball, RIP, Ward Kimball
January 7, 2010 10:00 am
Animator Ward Kimball’s famed Chloe locomotive was on the move recently to Yorba Linda, CA for the annual Holiday Festival of Trains at the Nixon Library. The steam engine, along with a model representation of Kimball’s whimsical Grizzly Flats Railroad, is on display through this Sunday, January 10, 2010. Featured are two huge layouts of operating model trains. Also showing on two giant flat-screen monitors are rare home movies of Walt Disney’s 1948 trip to the Chicago Railroad Fair and the work that went into creating the Chloe locomotive during the 1950s. The home movies of Walt Disney at the 1948 Chicago Railroad Fair are from the Kimball family and have never been shown in their entirety to the public. For more information on admission, hours & directions, check (and I never thought I’d say this) The Richard Nixon website. 11 Comments » posted in Disney, Ward Kimball
June 25, 2009 3:38 pm
I didn’t expect to be using this picture in such a sad context, but here is a photo of Michael Jackson visiting with Ward and Betty Kimball.
The opening to Rankin/Bass’s Jackson 5ive series. (Thanks, OM) Will Vinton’s “Speed Demon” sequence from Moonwalker. “Do the Bartman” co-written and produced by Michael Jackson. (Thanks, Carlos) 55 Comments » posted in Cartoon Culture, Ward Kimball
February 16, 2009 7:54 am
The late Ward Kimball, Chuck Jones and Tex Avery have a showdown with the notoriously mean-spirited Alan Smithee in this week’s edition of Directorama. According to the artist Peet Gelderblom, “Directorama is a weekly webcomic that chronicles the afterlife of a pantheon of legendary directors duking it out for artistic supremacy. Their heavenly mission: To inspire filmmakers carrying the torch back on Earth. The strip was inspired by the near simultaneous deaths of cinematic masters Ingmar Bergman and Michelangelo Antonioni in the Summer of 2007.” |
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