Ken Spears, R.I.P.

Last August, we lost Joe Ruby, who was half of the writing/producing team of Ruby and Spears, who created and/or supervised some of the most popular animated characters ever on television including Scooby Doo. Now, we must say goodbye to his long-time partner, Ken Spears. Ken died last Friday following a long illness.

Ken Spears was born March 12, 1938 and grew up in the Los Angeles area where one of his friends was the son of Bill Hanna of the Hanna-Barbera Studio. That led to a close personal relationship between Ken and Bill that lasted until Hanna died in 2001. It also led to Ken getting a job as a sound editor at the studio in 1959. There, he worked alongside Joe Ruby and forged another lifelong friendship.

From there on, most of what I wrote about Joe professionally is equally applicable to Ken so the following is a slight rewrite of what appeared on this blog when Joe passed…

H-B needed writers so Ken and Joe submitted some story and gag ideas…and I'm pretty sure Joe said they started with interstitial gags for the Huckleberry Hound show. Eventually, they were writing (not cutting film on) many Hanna-Barbera shows and their work found great favor with the networks. This was at a time when the studio was selling shows to CBS, NBC and ABC and there were many instances when the execs at one of those networks would say, "We'll buy this show if you put Joe and Ken on it."

At one point, Fred Silverman at CBS reportedly told H-B that they would buy nothing from the studio unless Ruby and Spears were employed exclusively on what CBS bought. Fred did the same when he moved over to ABC and finally, ABC just hired them…which is why Joe and Ken created and supervised, for example, segments like Electra-Woman and Dynagirl or Wonderbug on The Krofft Superstar Hour…on ABC.

They worked on many shows but their biggest hit, of course, was Scooby Doo. I don't know if Hanna-Barbera and its various owners ever formally acknowledged Joe and Ken as the creators of TV animation's longest-running character but almost everyone in the industry seemed to. They were also responsible for a dozen or more shows at H-B including Dynomutt and Jabberjaw, for The Barkleys and The Houndcats for DePatie-Freleng and on both the live-action and animated TV versions of Planet of the Apes. I am leaving out an awful lot of credits here.

In 1977 with the financial backing of Filmways and a commitment from ABC to buy programming from them, Joe and Ken founded their own studio, Ruby-Spears Productions. Their output included dozens of shows including Fangface, The Plastic Man Comedy-Adventure Hour, Thundarr the Barbarian, Saturday Supercade, Mister T, Alvin and the Chipmunks and the 1988 Superman series.

I worked for them there and so did a long, long list of writers, animators, designers and all the folks who go into making an animated cartoon. Most, I daresay, were there because they felt Joe and Ken treated them better than other studios for which they could have worked then. One of those was writer Buzz Dixon. I called Buzz eight minutes ago to tell him about Ken and he just sent me this…

Ken was a true gentleman in every sense of the word, kind and soft spoken, brilliant and insightful. He and Joe Ruby made a great creative and producing team, seemingly diametrically opposite personalities yet 100% complimentary to each other's abilities. It was always a treat when Ken could break free from his daily business responsibilities and come back to hang with the creative staff. He had a quick wit and a warm heart and more than once supplied the breakthrough on a creative log jam we had.

I'm going to miss him and Joe. They were quite the pair and it's hard to imagine anyone filling their shoes.

What Buzz meant about Ken's "daily business responsibilities" is this: Most animation studios of the time followed the model of Hanna-Barbera where one guy (like Bill Hanna) took primary responsibility of the production/business end of things — making sure the shows were produced on time, for instance — and the other guy (like Joe Barbera) was mainly in charge of the creative end and the sale of shows to networks.

There was great overlap and Ken — who took on the Hanna role — was as creative as anyone in the building. As a writer for their studio, I dealt a lot more with Joe than with Ken but I never for a second thought Ken wasn't roughly half-responsible for the successes of that team wherever they worked. And Joe would have told you the same thing. They were both clever, creative men and a joy to work with.

This post is the first public announcement anywhere of Ken's passing. Please spread word of it throughout the animation community, and I'm sure it will lead to obituaries in the mainstream media where they, like I did, can reference their recent obits for Joe. Ken and Joe were two of the most important figures in television animation and their lives and careers should be noted and celebrated. And I hope everyone also mentions that they were two really great guys. Like Buzz said.