Born: Karyl Ross Harris
Birthday: July 31, 1898
Location: Tulare County, CA, U.S.
Occupation: Animator, Writer, Storyboard, Director
Years active: 1927-1982
Died: March 24, 1982

Karyl “Ken” Ross Harris was born July 31, 1898 in Tulare County, California. He changed the spelling of his name first to Karol, then to eventually Ken since people struggled spelling his name. He completed his education at a college in Stockton, New Jersey and returned to California to build race cars at his brother’s garage. Harris loved cars and racing them. He became an assistant service manager and salesman at a Pontiac dealership in Los Angeles until the agency closed down during the Great Depression.

Ken never attended art school, but he had a natural talent for drawing. His career as an artist began when he was hired to draw cartoons for the sports pages of the Los Angeles Examiner, Evening Express, and the Los Angeles Herald Examiner in 1927.

Harris applied for an animator position at the Disney studios, but was rejected due to his lack of formal art training. He did get hired at the Romer Grey studio in 1930 and helped complete at least two cartoons before the studio closed in 1931.

With the experience gained at Romer Grey, Ken joined Walt Disney Productions for five years before landing in Friz Freleng’s unit at Leon Schlesinger Productions working on the Warner Brothers’ Merrie Melodies shorts. When Freleng left at the end of 1937, Harris was moved to Frank Tashlin’s unit. Not long after, Tashlin left and Chuck Jones took over the unit. Ken would work under Jones’ direction for 28 years, the longest time an animator spent with a director in the studio’s history.

Some of the scenes Harris animated include Mama Bear’s tap dancing in A Bear For Punishment, inspired by Michael Maltese, Wile E. Coyote’s earthquake pills in Hopalong Casualty; and the What’s Opera, Doc? dance sequence.

Harris was a rapid animator and some days after finishing his daily assignments ahead of schedule, he’d leave the studio to play pool, tennis, or buy a new car during the workday. Among his other interests were his love of dancing, and he played the recorder. The mustachioed, pool-playing, motorcar-thieving Dan Backslide from The Dover Boys short was a caricature of Harris.

After Chuck Jones exited Warner’s, Harris stayed on for two more Warner Bros. cartoons with Phil Monroe before the cartoon studio closed. He moved around for a bit, working first for Friz Freleng on the titles for 1963’s The Pink Panther and next for Hanna-Barbera’s first feature film Hey There It’s Yogi Bear! In 1964. Ultimately, Ken rejoined Jones at MGM to animate Tom and Jerry shorts and How the Grinch Stole Christmas! for three more years before retiring.

Richard Williams lured Ken out of retirement in 1967 to come to his London Studio for 4 to 6 months each year for the next twelve years to train the studio’s young animators for work on The Thief and the Cobbler. Harris also animated Scrooge in Williams’ 1973 Academy award winning A Christmas Carol. When Blake Edwards asked Richard Williams to produce the titles for The Return of the Pink Panther in 1975, Ken brought his experience to the project, having animated the original Pink Panther opening credits 12 years earlier for De Patie-Freleng.

Ken Harris was awarded the Winsor McCay Award for lifetime achievement in the field of animation at the 1981 Annie Awards just a year before he passed away.