Glen Keane at an animation Oscar week event in 2023 in L.A. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images) Oscar-winning Disney animator Glen Keane had to be hoisted to safety by a helicopter rescue team after falling ill during a mountain hike on Wednesday in Arizona.
According to a local news account by NBC’s 12 News station in Phoenix, Keane needed help from the Phoenix Fire Department to get down a narrow path on Mummy Mountain, near his childhood home in Paradise Valley, Arizona. “I would climb this thing all the time, and I thought, ‘Oh, no big deal. It’s going to be easy. But no, it wasn’t,” Keane, 72, told a 12 News reporter after coming down off the mountain summit to a safe landing zone.
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During his celebrated 38-year career at The Walt Disney Studios, Keane created such classic characters for the studio as Ariel in The Little Mermaid, the Beast in Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas and Tarzan. He won an Oscar in 2018 for the best animated short Dear Basketball, an award he shared with Kobe Bryant.
Keane left the Walt Disney studio in 2012 and, while living today in Paris, on Wednesday he was back in the U.S. on a morning hike with his grandchildren when he got stuck on a craggy mountain ridge with a steep drop-off on either side. “My legs would start shaking, my arms would and I knew that I had just spent all my energy hiking up through the mountain,” he recounted.
“As I was being lifted up, I was looking at all the areas that I used to climb around as a kid, and I thought, ‘Lord, thank you.’ This was a real blessing to have that crew, and they were really risking their lives on the edge of that narrow little ridge,” Keane added in tribute to his rescuers.
The Disney animator was not injured as result of the mountain incident and declined transportation to a local hospital. Even so, Phoenix Fire Department Captain Todd Keller told the 12News crew that all hikers should know and respect their limits. “You’re not only putting yourself at risk, you’re putting your first responders at risk,” he said.
The Hollywood Reporter reached out Keane for direct comment following his medical emergency.
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