The Walt Disney Family Album - Ken Anderson (1984)

The Walt Disney Family Album was a monthly series on the recently launched Disney Channel that showcased the people Walt Disney collaborated with on many of his creations. The development of this series was a perfect storm. The brand new Disney Channel needed new content, there were a bunch of young people recently starting out at the studio learning from these masters, and many of these people were working on the lot or retiring and wanted to share their stories with the world. At the time people had their entire careers at Walt Disney Productions. Not so today.

The series was produced on a shoestring budget. Pretty much the crew was sent out with cameras to interview various people and put these shows together. It was a pet project of former Disney CEO Card Walker who'd been at the studio since the 1938 when he started as a mail clerk and personally knew all of these people and their important contributions to the studio. Walker cared very much about history and understood the importance of the Walt Disney legacy being preserved.

Walt's friend and Disney Legend Buddy Ebsen narrates the series. He starred in several Walt Disney films including Davy Crockett and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. He was also the first live action reference model for what became audioanimatronics. The theme song was written by future film score composer John Debney. His father had been a producer on the lot for decades and John started out his music career with Disney. The opening title was put together by John Lasseter in one of his final projects for Walt Disney Feature Animation. He was trying to get computer animation in at Walt Disney Productions and was eventually fired for he. He would eventually become one of the driving forces behind Pixar and would return to head Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2006.

In the long run, the Walt Disney Family Album proved to be a tremendous historical record as many of these people passed away shortly after being interviewed. There were plans to continue this series but when the Eisner regime took over, they shut it down because it was a Card Walker project. It's a great tragedy because who's stories never got to be told because they were robbed of this opportunity...There needs to be a revival of this series to chronicle the careers of the people at Disney in the 80's and 90's as they're retiring and could be gone in the coming decades.

The Walt Disney Family Album aired on the Disney Channel in reruns off and on up through the early 2000's when it aired on Vault Disney. It hasn't been seen since but sometimes interviews have been excerpted in other documentaries.

This sixth episode focuses on Walt Disney's Jack of All Trades Ken Anderson.

Ken was a trained architect and started at the Walt Disney Studios in 1933 where he applied his talents to a variety of aspects for the Silly Symphonies. He did everything from animation to layout to art direction and more. He eventually became one of the most important artists at the studio with his influence seen in most of Walt's animated films. Walt came to rely on Ken to represent his vision in different areas just as Walt relied on Ub Iwerks for technical innovations.

This episode leaves out Ken collaborating with Ub Iwerks on many of these projects such as the blending of live action/animation in Song of the South and the Xerox process developed for 101 Dalmatians.

Ken also worked on creating the inspirational artwork for a proposed traveling exhibit of miniature scenes known as Disneylandia. This project eventually developed into Disneyland, for which Ken worked on many of the original attractions.

Besides layout, one of Ken's greatest contributions to the Walt Disney Studios were his inspirational sketches for scenes and character designs. This was something he continued to do well after Walt had died. He not only selected projects like Robin Hood (which he'd originally intended to set in the American south) but he later developed designs for early Walt Disney Productions TV shows such as Dumbo's Circus, The Wuzzles, and The Adventures of the Gummi Bears. For some, his last animation hurrah was in designing Elliot the dragon for the original Pete's Dragon.

One of the projects he developed toward the end of his career at Disney was an animated feature based on the Catfish Bend books by Ben Lucien Burman. This film had been intended for a late 1980's release and would have likely been made if the Eisner regime had not taken over.

In the early 1980's Ken helped redesign Fantasyland as well as several attractions at EPCOT Center.

He was one of Walt's most loyal artists although he's lesser known today than figures like Mary Blair and the Nine Old Men.

In 1991 Ken Anderson was named a Disney Legend. He passed away from a stroke in 1993.

Original air date November 5, 1984

Posted for historical purposes. This channel is not affiliated with the Walt Disney Company.