Kenneth Muse (1910-1987) was an animator best known for his work on the Tom and Jerry series.
Biography[]
Muse worked briefly at Walt Disney Productions, where he was Preston Blair's assistant on Fantasia (he helped animate "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" scenes). Muse left Disney following the 1941 strike there and joined MGM's animation department in 1941, along with fellow animators Preston Blair, Ed Love, Walter Clinton, Claude Smith, and Berny Wolf. He was assigned to the Hanna – Barbera unit, where he remained for 17 years. He first provided animation for the eighth Tom and Jerry short, Fine Feathered Friend (1942), and would remain an animator on the series until its final Hanna-Barbera-directed entry, Tot Watchers, in 1958. Muse also animated Jerry Mouse dancing with a live-action Gene Kelly in the 1945 musical Anchors Aweigh.
Muse was not credited for the Tom & Jerry short Little School Mouse (1954). The reason for this was he very briefly worked for fellow MGM employee Gene Hazelton on a short called Mr. Winkle Returns (1954), before moving back to MGM.
When MGM closed their animation studio in 1957, Muse joined his former bosses at their new company, Hanna-Barbera. He was one of the most prolific animators working for Hanna-Barbera's classic period of the late 1950s and early 1960s.