Disney animator Ward Kimball, 88
Posted: Monday, July 8th, 2002 11:20 pmPioneering animator Ward Kimball, who helped modernize Mickey Mouse’s look in 1938 and created the character Jiminy Cricket for the Disney classic “Pinocchio,” died on 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 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. … Read full obituary
