He instilled life to diverse Disney characters, such as Mickey Mouse, Jiminy Cricket, the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter, and Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Some of his memorable credits in this position include the animated short films Toby Tortoise Returns (1936), More Kittens (1936), and Mother Goose Goes Hollywood (1938).

[3] Kimball spent months working on the scene in which the Seven Dwarfs are eating soup, prepared for them by Snow White.

[3] Kimball told one interviewer that he "hated" animating Jiminy Cricket: "I got sick of drawing that oval head looking in every direction.

[3] According to animation historian Jeff Lenburg, The Three Caballeros is considered to have a place among the finest work of Kimball's career.

[3] Kimball directed the character animation and sequences of the Pecos Bill segment in Melody Time (1948).

[3] In Alice in Wonderland (1951), Kimball was responsible for Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Hatter and his mad tea party, and the Cheshire Cat.

He and Charles August Nichols co-directed the animated short films Melody (1953) and Toot, Whistle, Plunk and Boom (1953).

The consultants for these shows included pioneers of the Space Age, such as aerospace engineer Wernher von Braun.

According to animation historian Jeff Lenburg, the three shows helped in sparking popular interest in spaceflight.

[3] Kimball was profiled by producer Jerry Fairbanks in his Paramount Pictures film short series Unusual Occupations.

This 35mm Magnacolor film short was released theatrically in 1944; it focused on Kimball's backyard railroad and full-sized locomotive.

The band made at least 13 LP records and toured clubs, college campuses and jazz festivals from the 1940s to early 1970s.

Kimball appeared on the March 17, 1954, episode of You Bet Your Life, in which Groucho Marx coaxed him into playing his trombone with the house band.

Kimball also produced two editions of a volume titled Art Afterpieces,[10] in which he revised various well-known works of art, such as putting Mona Lisa's hair up in curlers, showing Whistler's Mother watching TV, and adding a Communist flag and Russian boots to Pinkie.

[11] His three acting appearances on film were an uncredited role as a jazz musician (with his Firehouse Five Plus Two) in Hit Parade of 1951, an IRS Chief in Mike Jittlov's The Wizard of Speed and Time, and voicing and giving his likeness to half of the vaudeville duo "Ward and Fred" in the Mickey Mouse short The Nifty Nineties (with fellow Disney animator Fred Moore).

[13] However, publication of the biography was canceled in February 2013, which Amidi believed was due to pressure from the Disney corporation.

[16][17] Kimball was an avid railway enthusiast from a young age, having grown up in Parsons, Kansas, near the massive Katy Railroad facilities.

[20][21] Kimball's roundhouse also included two small steam engines that had been used on sugar cane plantations, one of which was his and the other was owned by his friend, noted railroad historian Gerald M.

In a rare deviation from its usually tight copyright policy, the Disney corporation allowed the city to decorate the transit center with Kimball's artwork.

The center is currently served by Riverside Transit Agency buses, with train service as part of the Metrolink 91/Perris Valley Line.

Kimball helped match colors with an engine at the Smithsonian Institution and painted the artwork for the replicas of the Union Pacific No.

[25] Kimball was also in the 1975 video Model Railroading Unlimited as the host in the beginning of the movie and was showing parts of his GFRR.

[27][28] In 1968, Kimball directed a two-minute animated short called Escalation, which criticized Lyndon B. Johnson's Vietnam War policy.

[31][32][33] The Academy Film Archive houses the Kimball Family Collection which includes over 60 home movie reels, as well as short films, TV spots, and jazz band performances, serving to document Ward's personal interests and moments in his extraordinary career.

The collection also includes home movies and shorts by his son, filmmaker and animator John Kimball.