[Deathwatch] Ward Kimball, "Jiminy Cricket" Creator, 88

[Deathwatch Central <cdw@slick.org>]

Jiminy Cricket creator Kimball dies at 88
July 9, 2002 Posted: 6:23 AM EDT (1023 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/News/07/09/obit.kimball.reut/index.html


LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- Pioneering animator Ward Kimball,
who helped modernize Mickey Mouse's look in 1938 and created the
character Jiminy Cricket for the Disney classic "Pinocchio," died
Monday at age 88. 

Kimball, a member of Walt Disney's trusted cadre of cartoon artists
known as the "nine old men," died of natural causes at at a hospital in
Arcadia, a suburb northeast of Los Angeles, the Walt Disney Co. said in
a statement. 

During a Disney career that stretched from 1934 until his retirement in
1973, Kimball animated or served as directing animator on such feature
classics as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Pinocchio," "Fantasia,"
"Cinderella" and "Alice in Wonderland." 

Two animated shorts he created for Disney -- "Toot, Whistle, Plunk and
Bloom" (1953) and "It's Tough to be a Bird" (1969) -- won Academy
Awards. 

In the late 1950s, he also wrote and directed three landmark shows
about space exploration for the "Disneyland" television series -- "Man
in Space," "Man and the Moon" and "Mars and Beyond" -- that were widely
credited with sparking public interest in America's space program. 

But perhaps Kimball's most distinguished achievement was his
development of Jiminy Cricket, the affable, top-hatted sidekick and
conscience of the living puppet who longed to be a real boy in Disney's
1940 adaptation of "Pinocchio." 

Kimball also was credited with animating the famed crow sequence in
"Dumbo" and playing a key role in developing a more sophisticated
cartoon design for Disney's signature character, Mickey Mouse, in 1938.


"He was a brilliant animator and filmmaker with a distinctive style and
humor all his own," said Roy E. Disney, vice chairman of the Disney
company. 

Film critic Leonard Maltin said of Kimball, "Ward had a pixie-ish
spirit that was irresistible." 

In addition to his animation career, Kimball was an accomplished
trombonist and founding member of the popular jazz group the Firehouse
Five Plus Two. He also led some of his fellow Disney employees in a
Dixieland band that recorded albums, played concerts and appeared on TV
and in films. 

As an antique toy collector and model train enthusiast, Kimball and his
wife built a full-sized steam locomotive railroad which the couple ran
on their ranch in Southern California. 

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