Ken Anderson (1909-1992) was an American artist and writer.
Career[]
A native of Seattle, Ken Anderson studied for a Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Washington, which he obtained in 1934. The experience this granted him as an artist led to his hiring by the Walt Disney Studios, and he started work as an Art Director on several of the early Walt Disney Classics, starting with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937), as well as an animator starting with 1935's Three Orphan Kittens.
Later on in his career, he also contributed to the story work of several Disney films, from Melody Time (1948) to The Rescuers (1977). Anderson was also one of the foundational “Imagineers” of the Disney Parks, being instrumental to such attractions as the Sleeping Beauty diorama and the earliest, 1957 conceptions of The Haunted Mansion.
Dubbed “the Father of the Haunted Mansion” by Long-Forgotten Haunted Mansion, Anderson was given a tribute in 2011 in the expanded queue of the Walt Disney World Haunted Mansion, in the form of a tombstone marked out for “our friend Ken”. Previously, the comic story Blueprint for Murder had also alluded to Ken Anderson by crediting an architecture book (used by the architects of the Manor as reference) to an “Anderson”.