Ken Spears

Charles Kenneth Spears (March 12, 1938 – November 6, 2020) was an American animator, writer, television producer and sound editor. He was best known as a co-creator of the Scooby-Doo franchise, together with Joe Ruby. In 1977, they co-founded the television animation production company Ruby-Spears Productions. Biography Spears was born on March 12, 1938, in Los Angeles but was also raised in New York City. His mother, Edna (née Graiver), died a month after he was born, while his father, Harry Spears, worked as a radio host and producer before joining a real estate business. Spears became a friend of the son of animation producer William Hanna while attending high school in California. As an adult, shortly after leaving the United States Navy, Hanna hired Spears as a sound editor for Hanna-Barbera Productions in 1959. He met Joe Ruby, also ex-Navy, in the editing department of the studio, and the two men began a writing partnership. Spears and Ruby wrote gags and scripts for several animated and live-action television programs, both freelance and as on-staff writers for Hanna-Barbera, Sid and Marty Krofft Television Productions and DePatie–Freleng Enterprises. For Hanna-Barbera, Spears and Ruby created the Scooby-Doo franchise and its main characters: Fred Jones, Daphne Blake, Velma Dinkley, Shaggy Rogers, and the eponymous title character. The original series, Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!, debuted on CBS in September 1969. After Fred Silverman, then head of daytime programming at CBS, concluded that, after about 15 drafts, a Great Dane was the star of the project, Spears and Ruby tried multiple ideas before settling on a cowardly dog who solves mysteries. For H-B, they also created Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, and Jabberjaw, among other programs. At DePatie–Freleng, they created The Barkleys and The Houndcats. In the early 1970s, Silverman hired Spears and Ruby to supervise the production of CBS's Saturday morning cartoon lineup, a position they assumed at ABC when Silverman defected to that network.