Walt didn’t talk to him for a year after 101 Dalmations, even going so far as to say, “Ken’s never going to be an art director again.” 🥺 Watching Ken talk about it in interviews is always heartbreaking, because he knew he let Walt down… Walt wanted films to look like they hadn’t been hand-drawn, and 101 Dalmations had the animators lines obviously on display in the final film. Though the technology was a triumph of preserving the animator’s original sketches, it came at a cost of looking unlike anything Disney had ever produced previously. I love Ken’s story about his healing journey after his two strokes in 1962. His wife Polly took him to Descanso Gardens near his home and the trees in particular were inspiring for him. He said that if the oak trees could to contort themselves into lovely shapes, if they could endure, if they were so strong to hold themselves in impossible angles, maybe he could too 🥺 that was what encouraged him to take his first three steps, which soon became many more until he was eventually walking again. Ken then worked on a plethora of projects for Disney for two more decades, including The Sword in the Stone (where he resumed his role of art director), The Jungle Book, Aristocats, Robin Hood, and Pete’s Dragon, among many others. After his retirement from Walt Disney Productions, he was brought on by Imagineering in 1979 to help with Disneyland’s new Fantasyland not only because he had helped design the first version of the land, but also because he had worked on the film Pinocchio which they were adding as new attraction at the time.
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