These originally appeared in 1946 in Dell’s Four Color #105: Albert the Alligator and Pogo Possum.
Excerpts from Ward Kimball’s introduction in the Eclipse Books reprints:
“It was lucky for me that I happened to see a little advertisement in Popular Mechanics magazine that announced “WALT DISNEY WANTS ARTISTS. WALT DISNEY, CREATOR OF MICKEY MOUSE AND SILLY SYMPHONIES, OFFERS EXCEPTIONAL OPPORTUNITIES TO TRAINED MALE (sic) ARTISTS. WRITE FOR PARTICULARS, GIVING AGE AND OCCUPATION…” I had seen some of Disney’s cartoons and was impressed enough to postpone my trip to New York and to apply for work at the old Disney Hyperion Avenue studio in Hollywood.
“Kelly began his short four-year career at the “Mouse Factory” as a story sketch artist in the expanding story department.
“I had just finished restoring a 1914 Model “T” Ford touring car, and on a nice summer day in 1938, I drove it ten miles to work and parked it in the Disney lot.
“This event caused a small state of pandemonium, with dozens of Disney’s artists clustered around my freshly painted Ford throughout the day. Sometime after lunch, Kelly appeared at my room with a quick sketch impression he had rendered of the curious crowd of people crawling all over, in, and under the “Tin Lizzy,” with a caricature of an irate Kimball ordering all the moon-faced Disneyites to get the hell off my pride and joy.
“We were all very young upstarts in our twenties, and spent a lot of Disney’s time laughing and goofing off.
“Kelly drew very rapidly and effortlessly. It seemed as though only a matter of minutes after something off-beat had happened he would appear with a scratchy charcoal pencil gag sketch of the event with all his embellishing exaggerations.”
Jeff
