The first time I met Gene Autry was at a Golden Boot Awards dinner in the early 1980s.  I have an indelible memory of watching his wife Jackie with a transistor radio pressed to her ear, so she could tell him how the Angels were doing throughout the night.  (One other thing I’ll never forget about that evening:  midway through the proceedings, veteran western star Bob Steele arrived and was taken to his seat.  He was suffering from emphysema, but he very much wanted to be there.  Gene got up from his seat and walked over to Bob, put his hand on his shoulder, and paid his respects to a man he and every other Western movie veteran looked up to.)

At a time when television seems to have amnesia about show business history (and anyone who isn’t of this generation), I was tickled to see how often Gene was pictured, and spoken about, during the recent World Series.  He often said he couldn’t—and wouldn’t—die until his team won a pennant, and that didn’t come to pass, but I know he’s beaming right now.

Gene Autry’s voice was not what I expected to hear at a funeral I recently attended, but it was among the last wishes of

Andre de Toth still cuts quite a figure in this 1996 photo I took at the Los Angeles Film Critics Asssociation luncheon, where he enjoyed talking to old friends and colleagues George Sidney and Sam Fuller. It's hard to believe all three are gone now.

  veteran filmmaker Andre de Toth that western music be a part of his memorial services.  The Hungarian-born de Toth acquired the unlikely nickname “Tex” when he fell in love with the American west.  He co-wrote the story (and collaborated, without credit, on the screenplay) of The Gunfighter, and directed such films as Ramrod, Springfield Rifle, Man in the Saddle, Bounty Hunter, Last of the Comanches, Carson City, Indian Fighter, and Day of the Outlaw, not to mention episodes of such TV series as Maverick and The Westerner.

Of course, he is better remembered as the one-eyed director who made the most popular 3-D movie of all time, House of Wax.  (No one ever mentions the fact that he did a second 3-D movie, that same year; fittingly, it was a Western with Randolph Scott, The Stranger Wore a Gun.)

Andre was as interesting as any fictional character ever invented, and his life was much more colorful than any movie he ever made.

Indeed, it was difficult to get Andre to talk about his work—not only because he didn’t like to blow his own horn (he shot second unit material for David Lean on Lawrence of Arabia, and assisted with the flying sequences for Richard Donner’s Superman, but balked at taking credit) but because he was much more interested in real life than movie make-believe.  His autobiography, Fragments: Portraits from the Inside, chronicles his adventures from boyhood in Hungary to his apprenticeship with Alexander Korda (working on The Thief of Bagdad and The Jungle Book) and his first experiences in Hollywood, but it’s not a conventional moviemaker’s saga.  It’s the story of a man who lived life with gusto—and guts.  He was married seven times, once to actress Veronica Lake, and had nineteen children (including some stepchildren he adopted).  I daresay he was happiest with Ann Green, his devoted wife of the past twenty years who shared his no-nonsense approach to the world.

He had no use for filmmakers who hadn’t experienced life itself.  “If they haven’t lived much, it’s their loss,” he wrote.  “Film schools teach you absolutely nothing.  The psychology of being a director, it’s not mechanics—either you’ve got it of you ain’t.  The No. 1 requirement is understanding.  A film director works with the most sensitive instrument:  human beings.  Being exposed to life makes you more understanding of the problems of people.”

It’s a measure of his work that Martin Scorsese and Betrand Tavernier both wanted to contribute forewords to his book.  But it’s more revealing of the man to know that he took up scuba diving at the age of seventy. 

And, at his services on Friday, November 1, his friend Bob Koster (the son of director Henry Koster) carried out Andre’s instructions to place the urn containing his ashes into a brown paper bag before burial!

Here was a man with a style all his own.

It was difficult to feel sad at the memorial tribute to Disney legend Ward Kimball that Friday evening, because Ward’s pixie-ish spirit permeated the event from beginning to end.

Artists, by their very nature, don’t take well to regimentation, but Kimball thrived at the

Fellow animator Ollie Johnston saved this page of Ward's doodling from a production meeting. What talent--and what an imagination!

Disney studio for forty years because Walt recognized his talent and gave him a wide berth.

His deleted (now rediscovered) soup-eating sequence from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is revered by animators and animation buffs alike...alongside his work on Jiminy Cricket in Pinocchio, Bacchus in Fantasia, the black crows in Dumbo,  Lucifer the cat and Jaq and Gus the mice in Cinderella, the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland, and the self-named song sequence in The Three Caballeros.

But not unlike Andre de Toth, Ward Kimball was as original as any of his cartoon creations.  He was an inveterate collector who was famous for his assemblage of vintage toys, antique cars, and his own private backyard railroad.  He played the trombone and led the Dixieland band The Firehouse Five Plus Two, which started as a lunchtime diversion at the studio and took on a life of its own.  (One of the highlights of the tribute was a sequence from Groucho Marx’s television show You Bet Your Life, on which Ward once appeared as a contestant.  Kimball wound up playing straight for once, while the host got most of the laughs, but when Groucho asked why the band was called The Firehouse Five Plus Two, Ward got a huge response by deadpanning, “Well, there are seven of us.”)

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I was honored to be asked to host this evening, which filled the Directors Guild of America theater in Hollywood.  My good friend Howard Green, the publicity v.p. who oversees animation projects at Disney, worked hard to make the event worthy of its subject. Animators Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston, the last of Walt Disney’s fabled Nine Old Men, stole the show with their winning ways, and amusing memories of Ward.  They also brought sketches and caricatures of his they’d accumulated over the years; Ollie even saved Ward’s extraordinary doodles from production meetings.  Chief Imagineer Marty Sklar recalled Kimball’s crucial—and distinctive—involvement in a major exhibit at Epcot. 

Disney animator Andreas Deja (who most recently designed and animated Lilo in Lilo and Stitch) analyzed an array of Ward’s original drawings with enthusiasm and eloquence; then he joined a panel alongside critic/historian Charles Solomon and animation directors David Silverman and Pete Docter (who co-directed Monsters Inc.) to discuss Ward’s influence on all of them.  And Betty Kimball, who met her husband when she was working in the Ink and Paint Department in the 1930s, said that spending a lifetime with Ward was like holding onto a skyrocket. It was a warm and funny evening of remembrance.  Harry Arends’ lovingly edited film clips allowed Kimball to introduce each segment through vintage interview footage.  In other words, Ward was the star of his own memorial tribute.  Perfect!