Ward and Jackie

It was nice to see the late Ward Kimball included in the "In Memoriam" montage at this year's Oscars.  It would have been even nicer if he'd had something to do with the animation clip that accompanied his photo.  It was a scene of the hippo and alligator dancing from Fantasia — a scene rather famously animated by Preston Blair, Norm Ferguson and John Lounsbery.  Kimball did work a little on Fantasia (he handled Bacchus in the Pastoral sequence) but how difficult would it have been for the Academy to get a clip of, say, Jiminy Cricket from Pinocchio?  Or any of Mr. Kimball's other great works?  Otherwise, it's like honoring a dead artist and showing someone else's paintings.

A fellow named Andrew Leal reminded me of this in an e-mail that also contained a bit of Hanna-Barbera trivia I hadn't known.  Some of us have wondered who did the singing voices of Yogi Bear, Boo Boo and Cindy Bear in the movie, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear.  Andrew has identified Cindy's sing-in as Jackie Ward, whose vocals have been heard on hundreds of TV shows and movies.  She's the lady who dubbed Natalie Wood's rendition of "The Sweetheart Tree" in the movie The Great Race.  She was the female voice in the songs of The Partridge Family.  And she's done lots of other things you can read about in this interview.  Thanks, Andrew!