Jack Ryan Kinney was an American animator, director, and producer of animated shorts, born on March 29, 1909, and passed away on February 9, 1992, at the age of 82.
Kinney attended John Muir Junior High School in Los Angeles, California, in 1925, and later attended John C. Fremont High School from 1926 to 1928, where he met his future colleague and friend, Roy Williams. Both were hired by Walt Disney in 1930 to work at the Walt Disney Studio on Hyperion Avenue.
Kinney began his career in cartoons at the Walt Disney Studios in 1931 as an animator on several shorts, including Santa's Workshop, The Band Concert, and Moose Hunters. He later became a director of cartoons at Disney, directing shorts, including those starring Goofy, and also served as a sequence director for Pinocchio and Dumbo.
In addition to his work at Disney, Kinney directed a few Donald Duck cartoons, including the Academy Award-winning Der Fuehrer's Face. He also directed most of the "package films" during the 1940s, including The Three Caballeros, Make Mine Music, and The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad.
In the mid-1950s, Kinney supervised new animation used to tie some of the old shorts together for Disney's television efforts. He left Disney in 1959 to start Jack Kinney Productions, an independent animation studio, with his brother Dick. The studio provided animation for King Features Syndicate's 1960 Popeye series.
In 1988, Kinney published a short memoir, Walt Disney and Assorted Other Characters: An Unauthorized Account of the Early Years at Disney's.
