Ward Kimball — Disney’s Iconoclast
Animation renaissance man
“Ward is one man who works for me I am willing to call a genius.” — Walt Disney.
“Exuberant humor, zany as well as sardonic, pervades all of Kimball’s work and reflects his personality. It informs how he draws his characters, their relationship to each other, their emotions as well as motions. Not for Kimball sincere emotional displays; he savages sentimentality, routs hypocrisy, and gleefully pokes a finger into tearful eyes.” — John Canemaker.
Ward Kimball was one of Walt Disney’s “Nine Old Men”, the elite group of character animators who not only helped perfect that art form but also carried its torch for nearly five decades. Kimball, however, stood apart from his brethren. In fact, he’s been called the most “un-Disney” of the Nine. He was irascible, irreverent, and unabashedly anti-establishment. He might have been more at home at Warner Brothers where his smart-aleck-y humor was more in keeping with the house style. The man could, by all accounts, be willful and contrary, but his unique personality gave birth to animation that is both distinct and beguiling.
Ward Kimball’s idiosyncratic, even schizophrenic contribution to the history of animation is best exemplified by two wildly disparate pieces of work created some five years apart.
