Here’s a fascinating piece on legendary Disney animator Ward Kimball’s toy train collection and the recent auctions of the trains which grossed around $5 million. For those prices, I’d want real trains…

I was re-reading the Ward Kimball section in John Canemaker’s masterful WALT DISNEY’S NINE OLD MEN AND THE ART OF ANIMATION and ran across these tips from Ward. They were taken from his notes for an Action Analysis class that he taught at Art Center during the 1960s. Man, it would have been something to live in LA back when master animators like Kimball and Benny Washam were teaching around town. Nothing revelatory in these notes, but I’d wager it’s still more insightful than anything they’re teaching in animation schools nowadays.

> Elimination makes your drawing better.

> A cartoon character who is funny to look at before he is animated is going to be made funnier by the movement.

> The young filmmaker should draw what he or she pleases, not what any adult tells him or her to do.

After the recent post about Ward Kimball paintings, somebody emailed to ask whether I had a color version of Kimball’s painting of Disney colleagues Tom Oreb and Jesse Marsh, which was printed in ANIMATION BLAST #6. Indeed I do. Click on it for the full image.

Here are a couple beautiful paintings by one of Disney’s Nine Old Men, Ward Kimball (1914-2002). He was, of course, a genius animator and director, but what few people know is that he was also a terrific painter who worked in a wide variety of styles. These two pieces are a couple of his more stylized efforts. The top one is from the 1940s and documents the day that Kimball took his son flying. Last October, I blogged “Ladies’ Hat Contest ” (ca. early-1950s), the Kimball painting below, but now if you click on it, there’s a much bigger version available. (Thanks for the bigger pic, Thorsten)

Currently up for auction, a painting by Ward Kimball with gorgeous color and design. (Thanks, Shane)

Ward Kimball is the only animator I can ever imagine being caught up in this sort of stuff. This ARTICLE recounts Ward’s involvement with secret unreleased government footage of UFOs. Most intriguing, the piece says that in 1979 Ward publicly screened 15-20 minutes of animation from an unfinished Disney documentary about UFOs. Does this footage still exist? I’d love to see it.

I had a delightful time at Walt’s Barn on Sunday. It’s in Griffith Park, open one Sunday (the third Sunday) of each month – and I recommend you visit this piece of authentic Disney history. It gave me some new insight into Walt’s railroading addiction.
Meanwhile, if you are wondering what has happened to Ward’s personal train collection, here’s the scoop:
Noel Barrett Antiques and Auctions Ltd. has been awarded the contract to sell the collection of toys, trains and accessories from the estate of Ward Kimball, who died July 8, 2002 at age 88.
Kimball spent four decades amassing a premier collection of European and American trains and toys.

Two or three auctions will be held to disperse the collection estimated to bring more than $4 million. The approximately 2000 piece collection whose contents and quality are widely known could bring intense competition from bidders all over the world via the internet and drive prices even higher.

The first auction is slated for the weekend of Nov. 21, 2004 at the
Philadelphia Airport Ramada Inn. The second sale is scheduled for the
weekend of May 28, 2005.

Thanks to Steve Waller for locating these links

Ward Kimball (1914-2002) was a great animator, but the reason he’s my personal favorite of Disney’s Nine Old Men reaches far beyond his animation work. Peter Adamakos nails it when he writes in this REMEMBRANCE of Kimball, “In a way, it seemed there were Eight Old Men and then there was Ward Kimball.” Ward, like his Old Men counterparts, was a fine draftsman and animator, but it’s his singular sense of humor and subversive imagination that distinguishes him from the pack and for which I appreciate him most. These elements are evident not only in his animation, but throughout his career in the arts. I was reminded of this yesterday when a friend gave me a videotape copy of a Kimball film I’d never seen before, DAD, CAN I BORROW THE CAR?, a 47-minute live-action episode of THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF DISNEY from the early-Seventies. The special does not by any stretch of the imagination qualify as a masterpiece of 20th century American cinema, but it is enjoyable to watch and filled with delightfully silly and inventive bits as only Kimball could conjure.

DAD, CAN I BORROW THE CAR? takes a hackneyed concept: our fascination with cars from the time we’re born through our teen years, and uses it as an excuse for a variety of absurd montages and sequences: a breakneck-paced spoof of used car TV commercials, a musical segment that involves driving an open-top convertible through a car wash, and a sequence about the incredible frustrations of going to the DMV (the California Department of Motor Vehicles is thanked in the credits for their cooperation, although it’s hard to imagine they’d have agreed to participate in this had they been aware of Ward’s intentions). There are also bits and pieces of animation interspersed throughout – a bit of pixellation here, some cut-out there, and an abstract cel animated sequence that follows two speeding paint stripes around a car. There is nothing particularly ambitious animation-wise, probably due to the budgets, but the cartoon pieces are effective and work nicely within the context of the film. The animation is credited to Art Stevens, who was an animator at Disney since the early-Forties and one of Ward’s main animators beginning in the early-Fifties with MELODY and TOOT WHISTLE PLUNK & BOOM. I’m pleased to report that Stevens is among the few legendary Disney animators who is still with us today.

It’s hard to describe the appeal of this film. There are plenty of wry little touches throughout, like when the live-action kid requires his father’s signature on a driving form, a clawed monster hand comes into frame and marks the paper with an “X” or when a newborn baby is slapped at birth by a doctor, the accompanying sound effect is a car horn. Perhaps in the mundaneness of everyday routine, it’s simply inspiring to see a film by somebody whose outlook on life was so drastically different from the vast majority of the populace. Or maybe it’s the brief shot of Ward Kimball eating a toy car. Cartoonists eating cars is not something you see everday.