After he was born in Denver, Colorado, on October 13, 1910, McKimson's family variously lived in Wray, Colorado, Los Angeles, and Canadian, Texas, before settling in Los Angeles in 1926.[1][2] From 1927 to 1928, McKimson and his brother Tom illustrated a prospective children's book written by their mother titled Mouse Tales, the characters of which were notably similar to those of Walt Disney cartoons (e.g. Mickey Mouse). These drawings entered storage in the 1930s, resurfacing six decades later.[3]
In mid-1929, Robert was offered a job at Walt Disney Studio as an assistant animator to Dick Lundy, while Tom apprenticed under Norm Ferguson.[1] According to Tom, Disney animators attending Otis Art Institute with him recommended him, while Robert said they were hired after an aunt from Denver met Disney at a party.[4] According to Robert, the studio included less than 30 people, comprising nine animators, each with one assistant. After three months, the brothers received a raise from $18 to $25.[4] Despite little extant evidence, Lundy corroborated that the McKimsons worked for Disney.[1] In 1930, they were offered a higher salary at an Altadena studio planned by Romer Grey, the oldest son of Western author Zane Grey.[1] The Romer Grey Studio produced several cartoons, four featuring Binko the Bear Cub, developed by the McKimsons and bearing strong similarities to Mickey Mouse.[5] Due to the Great Depression, Grey's studio was unable to close a distribution deal. No shorts were released, with only a handful completed (and only one known to survive).[6][7]
At the same time he began working for Grey, McKimson was hired by Hugh Harman and Rudolf Ising, first doing ink-and-paint duties for the first Looney Tunes, then becoming an in-betweener before becoming an animator by 1931, when the Romer Grey Studio shut down. At that time he had an accident that gave him a concussion. As a result, he was able to visualize better,[6] thus increasing his production and animation. He was the head animator and go-to guy in the late 1930s at the studio, which overwhelmed him. Eventually he worked exclusively with Bob Clampett.[6][8] He was offered a directorial position by Leon Schlesinger in 1938, but declined, allowing the position to go to animator Chuck Jones.[8] He accepted his own directorial position in late 1944, when Frank Tashlin left Warner Bros. to direct live-action films.[9]
A still of a scene taken from the 1950 Hippety Hopper/Sylvester short Pop 'im Pop! animated by Bill Melendez. This cartoon also introduced Sylvester's son, Sylvester Junior.
In June 1953, the Warner Bros. cartoon studio was shut down for a period of six months due to the 3-D fad at the time, which Jack Warner found to be too costly a process to use for animated cartoons. McKimson's unit however was disbanded entirely two months before the shutdown.[11] He would make an Oldsmobile commercial at Cascade Studios around this time. After the studio re-opened, Freleng and Jones quickly re-assembled their respective units, but there was no indication if McKimson and his unit would be brought back. McKimson was able to convince Warner Bros. to reopening his unit, albeit at the cost of pay cuts. Apart from writer Tedd Pierce, background painter Richard H. Thomas and animator Keith Darling (who worked uncredited for McKimson prior to the 1953 closure), he was unable to hire back most of his animators, including Rod Scribner and his own brother Charles. At the start of this period, McKimson animated on four of his own shorts, The Hole Idea (in fact, he was the sole animator credited on The Hole Idea), Dime to Retire, Too Hop to Handle (along with uncredited work from Jones' animator Ben Washam), and Weasel Stop (where McKimson had no animation credit).[12] Soon, McKimson assembled a new team of artists, including layout man/background painter Robert Gribbroek (formerly of Jones's unit) plus animators Warren Batchelder, Ted Bonnicksen, George Grandpré and Tom Ray. Russ Dyson briefly worked with McKimson in 1956 until Dyson's death that year.
McKimson's office in Warner Bros.'s "Termite Terrace" studio was on the second floor.[13]
Later career
McKimson continued working at Warner's Cartoon Studio as it began to lose staff (including such key personnel as Jones) in the early 1960s. According to an interview with his son, he generally did not like how things were going at the studio and missed full animation, as well as disliking the new characters in the new shorts.[13] Over this time, he directed his share of shorts and worked on the feature The Incredible Mr. Limpet with Hawley Pratt, taking over the role of director from Bill Tytla due to his illness.[14][15]
After the studio closed, he joined DePatie–Freleng Enterprises, co-owned by his old associate Friz Freleng and David H. DePatie, who had been a producer at the Warners studio. At DePatie–Freleng, McKimson briefly worked in Freleng's unit directing several The Inspector shorts and working on some of the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies contracted out to DePatie–Freleng by Warner Bros. In 1967, Warner opened its animation studio again, McKimson re-joining its staff in 1968, but the studio was shut down again in 1969. His last Warner Bros. cartoon was Injun Trouble with Cool Cat. It was shortlisted for an Academy Award, but wasn't nominated.[7][16]Injun Trouble was also the last of the original Looney Tunes or Merrie Melodies cartoon to be produced before the Warner Bros. cartoon studio was closed. McKimson was the one person to be at the studio from the start of the Looney Tunes series through its finish in 1969, first as an animator and then as a director.
After a sabbatical, he went back to DePatie–Freleng in 1972 to direct The Pink Panther Show shorts, among their other series.
Death
On the morning of September 27, McKimson's doctor declared him in good health for a 66-year-old (despite having a case of emphysema after years of smoking), and, according to Freleng, McKimson then referred to his family history of living past 90 and bragged, "I'm going to be around after you guys are gone!" On September 29, 1977, while having lunch with Freleng and another co-worker, David H. DePatie, McKimson suffered a sudden heart attack and died, two weeks before his 67th birthday. At the time of his death, he had recently completed directing Misterjaw and had begun work on Baggy Pants and the Nitwits.[17][18][7]
McKimson's wife, Viola, died in 1963.[8] In addition to being an animator, McKimson was a skilled horseman and polo player, a dedicated bowler, and a Master Mason. He played polo from 1932 until after the outbreak of war in 1942.[13] In addition to his brothers Tom and Charles, their two sisters, Anabel and Aylce McKimson, also worked as animators.[8][19][13] Charles was frequently part of McKimson's unit at Warner Bros.
McKimson Jr., Robert (2012). "I Say, I Say ... Son!": A Tribute to Legendary Animators Bob, Chuck, and Tom McKimson. Santa Monica Press. ISBN978-1-59580-069-5.
