This just in from Børge Ring. It is not a Disney item, but fun, nonetheless: William Littlejohn animated Lucy and Snoopy for Melendez on the PEANUTS series and recounted: "At one time Charles Schultz (the author of the comic strip) complained: "You guys make a mistake when you animate Charlie Brown. You change the placement of his nose when his head turns from profile to front view!" "No Charlie...the change is YOURS!" "Ah...come on fellers, I know my own characters!" They invited him down to the studio, set him up in the attic at a lightbox and said: "Draw a Charlie Brown in profile and one where he looks into the camera. Then draw three stages in between the two where his head turns." At 7 o'clock that evening, when everybody was having beers and playing pool, a tired Schulz came down the stairs, jacket slung over the shoulder. He stopped briefly to say: "OK, you guys. You win..."
One problem is that Kimball wasn't retired in 1968. He was still active in 1969, when I visited him at his office at the studio, and he was producing the "Mouse Factory" TV show a few years later. The studio's announcement of his death said he retired in 1973. I can believe the substance of the anecdote, but I'd bet that Ward imitated Walt's cough soon after Walt's death--when it really would have been spooky to hear it--and a long time before his own retirement.
ReplyDeleteGood observation! Well, I can only say: I tell 'em as I hear 'em. You are probably right, too, when you suspect it wasn't too long after Walt's death...
ReplyDeleteI have a 1971 phone directory that the animator Fred Kopietz used to keep track of his studio collegues. Kopietz retired in 1971, so he kept this in his home in Arizona to write in. Following Ward Kimball's name he writes "let go"...