John Ryan Kinney (1909-1992) started work at the Walt Disney studio in 1931 and remained a Disney employee for more than twenty-six years, until 1957, when he was fired in the midst of the dismantling of Disney's short-cartoon units. Kinney started in animation, then moved to story, but for most of his time at the studio he was a director—of shorts and feature sequences throughout the 1940s, and then of shorts and TV shows until his termination. He is most celebrated, probably, for the series of cartoons in which Goofy demonstrates how not to play a variety of sports.
After leaving Disney, Kinney directed the first UPA feature cartoon, 1001 Arabian Nights (1959), and a string of undistinguished TV cartoons, educational films, pilots, and feature inserts, hitting bottom with very cheaply produced TV cartoons starring Popeye.
[Michael Barrier] recorded several interviews with Kinney, of which this was the first. Milt Gray and [Michael Barrier] interviewed Jack on November 28, 1973, as part of the research for [his] book Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age. [...]
