R.I.P. Earl Kress

Just one of the many, many projects touched by Earl Kress. (Cover via Amazon)

On his blog, Mark Evanier wrote,

…a really great fellow named Earl Kress died about thirty minutes ago from the cancer he’d been fighting since earlier this year. He turned sixty last month.

Earl was a writer, an actor, a producer, a puppeteer, a voice artist, an animation historian…and he was very good at all of those endeavors. He hailed from Philadelphia and worked in broadcasting there before relocating to Los Angeles in the mid-seventies to broaden his avenues. Most of his efforts were in animation and he toiled for a time for Disney mostly on story (on The Fox and the Hound, mainly) but occasionally doing voice acting jobs, such as on The Rescuers Down Under. For TV, he wrote for dozens of shows including The Oddball Couple, The Transformers, Taz-Mania, Pound Puppies, Yogi’s Treasure Hunt, The Addams Family, Road Rovers and Baby Looney Tunes. He won two Emmy awards for writing on Pinky and the Brain and several nominations for that show and Animaniacs as well as some Prism Awards, plus he wrote the last Road Runner theatrical short, Little Go Beep. His most recent animation project to be released was the Direct-to-DVD movie, Tom and Jerry Meet Sherlock Holmes.

Much, much more in the link. Please click over and read; it’s well worth it, and a fine tribute to a man who did good work in fields that are too often given too little recognition.